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There was nothing Frank liked more than a nice, hot shower. Emphasis on the hot.
Well, no. Music was a big one—he didn’t think he could manage to survive throughout a lifetime without the twinge of a guitar beneath his finger tips. And Frank should know, because he almost did have to face that reality. More than once.
Diet Coke was another one. He could always go for a nice, cold can of aspartame in the morning, especially now that he had given up smoking.
He needed a vice.
But, honestly, a shower could be a vice-worthy addiction, if he wasn’t careful. There was little that Frank enjoyed more than being clean—it was the one thing most of his fans didn’t seem to understand. He was always characterized as a rat – probably, he figured, because of his ill-conceived hairstyle choices in his early twenties – when, in any of his bands, Frank was probably the cleanest among them. He was always the first one into the shower after the show, the one hosing himself down in the parking lot if push came to shove.
Part of it was, of course, his lifetime of health issues. The cleaner he was, the less likely he was to succumb to some viral infection that would knock him off his feet for an indeterminate amount of time—or worse.
But, frankly – pun not intended – he simply liked being clean.
Which was why he stood beneath the spray of the hotel shower, far brighter and whiter than his own at home – and without his gnarly black “goth” shower curtain (he wasn’t the one who characterized it as such) – humming along to a tune he had heard every single night for the past couple weeks, a tune he had played nearly as many. He couldn’t help that he enjoyed his own music—and that he wrote some damn catchy riffs.
He was pretty sure someone was waiting impatiently outside the door. Even at their ages, it was rare that they managed to snag a hotel night.
They could wait. This was Frank’s time.
His bandmates knew better than to interrupt the guitarist when he finally had a chance to shower, especially under hot water—the bus shower usually ended up being used for laundry, but that was mostly because nobody wanted to fight with the icy temperatures that would emerge from the showerhead. Plus, the heat was better for Frank’s limbs, anyway—it was like enveloping himself in a life-size hot water bottle, except that, since the hotel was thankfully not on wheels, he wasn’t swishing back and forth within the contains of the steamy glass walls.
He practically moaned with delight as he turned the water up, ignoring the Gerard-sounding voice in the back of his head that said it wasn’t good to practically burn your skin. Maybe Frank liked a bit of pain. Maybe Frank liked a lot of pain.
Maybe Frank just damn well liked to take advantage of something he might be without again for some time. He moaned again through his humming.
Whoever was outside the door probably thought he was jerking off. As if he needed privacy for that.
However…
He considered it for a moment, fingers dancing around the softness between his legs. The shower was an ideal place for such a task—he would barely have to clean up afterwards, unless he managed to hit the wall. Knowing him, he might.
But, he wasn’t young anymore, and he didn’t want to waste probably the only orgasm he would be able to achieve all night on his own hand—not when there was a nice, soft bed outside that door, and one of the many musicians who, somehow, managed to deal with Frank’s libido. Well, he supposed that wasn’t a difficult task when he considered who else was in this band—they were all a bunch of horny motherfuckers.
So, he reached instead for the loofah, lathering it with soap.
His loofah. He brought it everywhere. If a toddler had a security blanket, or Tucker had a security middle finger, for Frank, it was his loofah.
For a hotel bathroom, it really seemed to lack the ventilation needed to take a shower this hot for this long. The room was practically heavy with steam, and although Frank was having the time of his life, he feared he may not have a life if he didn’t get some oxygen soon. He could take another couple minutes – finish soaping his red skin, pruney as the day he was born (naked, too!) – before his lungs gave out on him. Frankly – pun again not intended – he could think of fewer better ways to go. He could hear it now: “He died doing what he loved…”
It was with a sigh that he finally turned the knob, the shivers coming to him almost immediately without the hot spray thrumming against his back. That was the part he always dreaded—having to step back out into a world that suddenly felt colder than it had before.
But, there was always one upside.
It was a world that was cleaner. At least, Frank felt much cleaner as he stepped softly onto the bathmat.
The mirror was so cloudy that he had to reach up with his hand and wipe the glass, steam already attempting to reclaim its place as his reflection quickly began to fade once more. His hair hung in his face as it dripped around him, prompting Frank to grab the towel from where he had left it across the counter. It was soft, like hotel towels always were, and smelled like it had just come out of the wash—not unlike Frank himself. Clean.
He barely had time to muss his hair before he heard a rap on the door.
“Hey, Frank?” came the familiar voice of his bassist, a warm curiosity in his tone. That was the thing about Tim—he was so expressive in inflection alone that one could read him like an audiobook. “You haven’t used up all the hot water, have you?”
He might have laughed if he didn’t think Tim’s question was genuine. Frank was pretty sure a hotel shower never ran out of hot water. With the number of guests staying in the building, they probably would have heard screaming by now had that been the case—though none louder than the bassist would hear right inside this room if Frank had used up all the warmth before stepping out of the glass box. “Nah,” he called toward the door, towel moving around his head in a flurry to bring his hair to a more respectable level of wet—damp, perhaps.
And, as he stepped out of the room in a cascade of steam, soft white fabric wrapped around his inked hips, he smiled at his patient bandmate.
“It’s all yours.”
The door shut behind him before Frank even made it two steps. He had only just reached his bed, bending down – oh, his muscles were tender – to rifle through his bag when he heard a loud noise echo from the bathroom.
Well, it was good to know he wasn’t the only one enjoying the shower perhaps a little too much.