West of Mars -- the Meet and Greet

Warning: this outtake contains sexual inneundo and abuse of cookware. Please do not read further if this will upset you.

They could hear the crashing from where they stood outside the practice studio, across the driveway from the house. They'd actually congregated to listen; it was that loud.

"Sounds like your woman needs to get laid," Trevor said, bobbing his head like he knew it all. Then again, when it came to tantrums like this, he did.

"Hardly," Daniel said with a snort.

"That time of the month?" Eric asked. Like he knew about those things, Trevor thought. Mr.-I'd-rather-be-their-friend. His girls got one boringly chaste week on the bus with the band and then forever bought him dinner whenever he blew through town.

Come to think of it, having women buy him dinner wasn't such a bad thing. But that lack of getting off? For-get it. Trevor hadn't formed a band to keep his pants on. Or zipped, for that matter.

"No," Daniel said with a sigh. He hung his head and shook it, looking like a dark brown mop. Trevor snickered, wondering what sort of shit he'd have to clean up later on. Val was not a happy woman in there.

Lately, she'd been like that a lot.

"It's her fault, really," Daniel said. "She told me to make dinner, and I did. No big deal, right?"

Trevor wasn't so sure about that. Part of Val's miserable mood had started when she'd quit the restaurant. That'd been years ago now, but her mood wasn't even a bad wine -- it hadn't even tried to improve with age.

"So what happened?" Mitchell asked. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave Daniel a look like he wanted this to hurry along.

"I told her it was time to clean out the freezer. Maybe reorganize it. I swear, there were twenty pounds of chocolate in there. Candy bars, those big bricks for baking, bags of chips, you name it, it was in there. I swear, it took up half the freezer and didn't leave room for the extra sauce I made! Gram would kill me if I let it go to waste; that's her secret recipe!"

"And the frozen margarita mix took up the other half of the freezer?" Trevor asked, bored with the story of the spaghetti sauce. He'd been hearing about how wonderful Gram's sauce was for years, but every time he had it, he thought it wasn't much better than the jarred shit Mitchell's mother would stock his apartment with.

"She didn't care when I said that ought to go downstairs, too!" Daniel half-whined. Trevor cringed, but when Daniel continued, it was in a better tone. "You know, maybe we could put some food in that freezer? Food, kitchens -- you know what I'm saying here?"

"So now she's throwing things because--" Trevor asked. He needed to hear this. To make sure it was real. And to laugh his ass off when it was.

"You heard it," Daniel sighed. "She's pissed because I asked if she'd move the chocolate."

"Oh, Dans," Mitchell said. He scratched his arm, his face screwed up like he was in pain. "That's harsh. I think if I did that to Kerri, she'd take my head off. Along with other choice parts of me that I'd rather keep."

Trevor couldn't get a word in before Daniel said, "That's our roasting pan she's throwing around now. It better not go through the windows."

"Let's go make some music," Mitchell said, putting a hand on Daniel's shoulder to turn him in the right direction. Eric jumped eagerly for the door of the practice space. Trevor took one last hit of his cigarette and ground it into the gravel.

"Music soothes the savage beast," Mitchell continued, reaching above Daniel's head to hold the door open.

"The only thing soothing that beast is her chocolate," the drummer said, giving the house one last, mournful look.

"And you fuck-ups tell me how great your monogamy shit is," Trevor grumbled, resisting the urge to provoke Mitchell more severely. This would have to do for now.

Sure enough, the big idiot cuffed the back of his head as he walked by. "It is great, you loser. Just sometimes… you gotta take the bad with the great."

"And keep the chocolate upstairs!" Eric laughed.

It didn't escape Trevor that neither of the stupidly attached men in the band laughed along. In fact, Trevor thought, they sorta looked like they wouldn't mind if Eric joined Daniel's head in that roasting pan of Val's.

Just so it wasn't his, Trev thought as he picked up his bass. He had more important things to do.

Thankfully, a steady woman was at the bottom of the list.

Labels: chocolate, creative writing, Daniel, fiction, Mitchell, outtake, ShapeShifter, Trevor, Val