Chapter 110

He woke up to the sound of a knock on his bedroom door. Momentarily he was confused but his brain caught up quickly to remind him he was in a hotel room in Osaka.

"What?" He reached for his phone that was charging on the night stand to check the time.
"Gym time." Jon responded.
His phone read past 11am, at least he had gotten a decent amount of sleep. "Alright, give me a minute." Moving the sheets, he started to get up.
"Just looking out for you, man."

Richie rolled his eyes as he got up and found his suitcase. Last night, he had only rummaged through it to find toiletries, not needing anything else yet. Now, he searched for some gym shorts and a t-shirt to wear there.

By now, going to the gym in the morning had become a routine to him. Still, he didn't last as long on the treadmill as Jon did but he didn't care about that. After half an hour of running, he stopped the treadmill to get off of it and headed towards the weight rack, gauging which weights he should go for today before picking them up.

As he waited for Jon to finish up his shower in the bathroom they were sharing, he got comfortable on the couch and Facetimed Sarah. It was disappointing to find out his little guy had already gone to sleep but Richie was glad he was behaving for his mom and not giving her any trouble. This way, he could catch up with her before he'd have to head to the arena.

"Is that Sarah?"
Richie looked up at Jon who had just walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was sure it was obvious who he was talking to but answered anyway, "Yes, it is."
"Hi Sarah!" Jon called as he crossed the room.
Richie looked down at his phone to see Sarah laugh.
"Hi Jon. Are you guys having fun sharing a room?" She asked them both.
"I'd be having a lot more fun if Jon wasn't naked." Richie told her, watching as her happy expression turned to a question.
"You've seen worse." Jon responded. "At least I'm wearing a towel."
"I have indeed seen worse." Richie agreed.
"We used to share backstage showers." Jon reminded him.
"That's what I meant with worse."

Soundcheck went fairly smoothly. Jon was still working on the setlist but insisted on practicing a wide variety of songs. Richie knew it mostly would be the same as it always was, there was no way to leave out the classics and more and more songs were starting to become classics that had to be played during a concert.

"Why don't you do vocals on In These Arms?" Jon asked, looking over at David behind him.
What he said made Richie look up in surprise from fiddling with his guitar.
"Absolutely." David agreed easily, adjusting his equipment to do so.
Jon turned around again to look at Richie. "Ready?" He asked, getting a nod before counting down to start the song.

It wasn't far into the song that he felt the guitar string snap. He pulled his right hand back, shaking it at the sting he felt.

Jon stopped playing, confused, he started to get agitated at the mistake he heard but then looked over to his right to see what had happened. "You alright there?" He asked.
"Fuck." Richie swore, it stung a lot. He held his hand still to check it out.
"Did it cut?" Jon asked, walking over to him.
He used his left hand to put pressure on it, trying to ignore the sting he felt. "Yup."

Backstage, in his dressing room, Richie watched Jon open the first aid kit they had found. Finally he took his hand off of the cut, it looked like the cut had stopped bleeding by now. Disregarding that, he still cleaned it out with the disinfectant Jon passed him, making sure it would be alright.

"Do you want a band aid?" Jon asked him, going through the kit, looking for one.
"I'm good." It would only be in the way later and it had stopped bleeding.
Jon looked up at him. "Are you sure? I could probably find you a Hello Kitty band aid somewhere."
"I'm sure." He said, resisting the eye roll.
"Just looking out for you man."
That made him roll his eyes. "Thanks, you could be more useful and find superglue."

The actual show that night went a lot better and was without injuries or faulty guitar strings. Shows in Japan were always a little extra special. They had a lot to owe to their Japanese fans.

As they started In These Arms, Jon introduced David to the audience before leaving the stage and taking a break himself. Richie was too lost in the moment to even consider thinking if his guitar's string would do the same as it did during soundcheck.

Backstage, he took his time showering. They'd be on a plane in just a little while, he'd take his time enjoying his freedom before being stuck in cars and an airplane.

The flight was fairly quiet, it was almost midnight and everyone was fine with having some quiet downtime during their short flight. Their hour flight was spent by talking about the show and what they should repeat or improve for their show tomorrow night. Tomorrow would go by fast, Richie was sure he'd sleep in, by the time he got up, ate and would be ready to go it would most likely be time for soundcheck and then the show afterwards. At least they wouldn't travel until Thursday morning, their first show in Australia wouldn't be until Saturday. Thursday would be a travel day, Friday would be his day off to enjoy Melbourne, the weekend would be more concerts.

By the time they arrived at their new hotel, it was past 2am. Getting to their rooms was a lot easier than it had been on Saturday, no complaints.

"Are you going to be okay in a room on your own?" Richie asked as he walked up to his room with Jon next to him.
Jon gave him a confused look, wondering what he was on about.
"I'll just be next door if you get scared or anything, okay?"
"You're still on about that?" Jon asked him.
In response, Richie shrugged. "Just looking out for you man."
Jon pushed his door open and walked inside without giving a reply.

Richie smiled to himself, feeling accomplished in annoying Jon as he opened his own room and walked inside.

Not bothering with anything else, he started getting ready for bed. It wasn't that late but he looked forward to sleeping in.

He brushed his teeth and undressed before sitting down on the bed, leaning back against the pillows covering the headboard. Making sure his phone was plugged in, he started a video call to Sarah.

It didn't take Sarah long to accept the call.

He smiled at his phone screen. "Hey baby." He knew he sounded excited.
"Hi, how was the show?" Sarah asked right away.
Richie could see from the background that she was in the living room, he could imagine Daniel was playing in his corner. "Show was good, just got to Tokyo. Thought I'd phone you and show you my battle wound before going to bed."
She gave him a questioning look, confused at what he meant by that. "What? Battle wound?"
"Yeah." He sounded more excited than he should be as he switched to the back camera, knowing full well that would be showing the boxers he was wearing before he moved it to show her his hand. "A guitar string snapped and hit me." He showed her the red cut on the back of his right hand.
"Ouch." Sarah said as she saw the red line next to his tattoo. "Does that happen often?"
"Nope. One time I sliced my thumb doing the windmill though." Richie almost sounded proud at his injuries, or accomplishments. "I don't even know how it happened today, never done that before."
"Don't do it again, it looks painful."
"It was painful, stung like a bitch when it happened."

Their conversation changed topics as Sarah told her husband about her day so far, it was only mid-morning, the previous day for her. Doing the same as Richie had done, she switched her camera to the back one to show Daniel playing on his own in his little corner. The boy was happily occupied by all of his toys, playing nicely. Sarah only had to mention daddy once before he looked up and understood what was going on. Richie watched as Daniel crawled over to the couch where Sarah picked him up to say hi to him as well. Seeing Sarah with Daniel in her lap made him happy. The two of them always made him happy.

The next day was almost a repeat of the day before, when he finally got out of bed, he had a small breakfast before meeting up with Jon for some gym time. After showering his work out sweat off, he had lunch, then was ready to head to the arena for another soundcheck. Luckily, this time it was without injuries to cut it short for them, leaving them with the usual hour they took to complete soundcheck.

Backstage, he kept himself busy with various things. There was a lot of time before the show and he was waiting on a good time to give Sarah another call, knowing it was still early at home or she would be busy. Instead, he made sure to text Ava, making sure she was getting ready for school. Surely she had some time to text in between getting ready and having breakfast, that phone was mostly glued to her after all.

Around 5, he left his dressing room and went to knock on Jon's door, as he did so, he pushed the door open. He didn't need to wait. Seeing Jon sitting down on the couch was what he had expected, he walked over and joined him. A frown formed on his face as he saw what Jon was working on.

"That's the same setlist as last night." Richie pointed out.
Jon looked up agitated at his comment, "It's not."
"It looks exactly the same." He knew it was hard to play around songs if there were so many that were songs they had to play. There was no way they could leave out the hits or the new songs but at least mix them up a little.
"There's a few differences."
Richie looked more closely. "The ninth song is different."

He pulled out his phone that still had a picture of last night's setlist, taken before he was given a paper copy of it and showed his phone to Jon. How much clearer was he supposed to make his point?

"Yeah, well, fuck it." Jon grumbled frustrated with it.
Richie shook his head. "That's not very nice."
"Fuck that too."
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" His question was more annoyed than actually worried.

He watched Jon's face turn serious just before he went off into a rant.

In the end, there wasn't enough time to actually change anything more about the setlist and they stuck to what Jon had so far. This time, Richie didn't bother taking a picture of it to remember it before seeing the one taped to the floor next to his mike stand.

Regardless of the setlist's lack of quality, in his opinion, the show still went well. The crowd loved it and was just as excitable as last night's. On stage, no one noticed Jon's bad mood, except for the rest of the band. They knew all the little signs when Jon tried to hide how he felt on stage, the show didn't have to suffer because of it.

Not until they were back at the hotel, getting to their rooms did Richie try to catch up with Jon. During the drive they both simply had wanted some peace and quiet but now at the hotel, they had that.

"Do you want to talk or something?" Richie asked, not bothering to take his room key out just yet, depending on Jon's answer.
"No."
"You sure?" He asked. "Talking can be helpful." He wanted to add the running joke they had had for the last few days but thought better of it.
"No."

Richie watched as Jon went into his hotel room, then decided to do the same. If Jon didn't want to talk, he wasn't going to insist on it. The man could deal with his issues however he wanted, although Richie knew it would be a bottle of wine.

Inside his room, he went for another shower. They had rushed out of the arena to get to the hotel as quickly as they could and a hot shower after a show always felt good.

The next morning, he slept in, knowing it was a travel day so what else did have to do? Figuring Jon was still grumpy like the day before, he wasn't going to bother with getting up early and going to the gym with him before travelling. Especially on his day off and having to be on a plane for ten hours later on.

When they got on the plane, everyone steered clear of Jon, leaving Richie more choice of seats when he joined Jon at the table. Instead of going for his usual window seat, he sat down opposite of Jon.

He sat down quietly, then looked up at Jon. "You okay?" He asked carefully.
Jon nodded. "Fine."
"Alright." Richie agreed, at least there was no snapping. That was a good sign so far so he added on. "Just looking out for you man."
It made Jon chuckle just that tiny bit for them both to know he was alright. "Thanks."

Richie didn't question anything else and decided to let it be. Not because he liked to express his feelings that Jon was the same way. He knew that. While he liked to talk things out, Jon preferred to deal with them privately. It had been like that for the last thirty years, it definitely wasn't going to change now.

From his shoulder bag, he retrieved the book he had finished on their last flight and passed it over to Jon. "Want to finish it?"