Chasing Death Metal Dreams
Read Chasing Death Metal Dreams Online
Authors: Kaje Harper
Tags: #M/M Romance, Love is an Open Road, gay romance, contemporary, musicians/rock stars, visual arts, in the closet, F2M transgender, family, men with pets, tattoos
CHASING DEATH METAL DREAMS
Carlos Medina has spent years of sweat, pain, effort, and money becoming the man he is. He writes original songs, plays lead guitar, and wears his death metal front-man persona like armor. With an excellent drummer and a talented bassist, his band, KnifeSwitch, has what it takes to succeed, if they can just catch a break. But it’s been a long road already, and there’s still a mountain left to climb. Carlos isn’t looking for anything more in his personal life than an occasional hook-up with a hot guy, preferably outside the less-than-gay-friendly metal scene.
Nate Goldstein has no intention of dating a musician. His twin brother fronts a band, and he knows band guys are all busy, broke, and obsessed with their music. But Carlos catches his artist’s eye. Nate is wary— he has a history of picking the wrong guys. Still, he might be willing to break some personal rules to find out what’s behind Carlos’s dark gaze and imaginative lyrics.
Getting together the first time is easy and fun. The second time is more complicated. And when music, ambition, and personalities clash, the guys will have to decide if they have a future worth fighting for.
Table of Contents
Chasing Death Metal Dreams – Information
Love is an Open Road
An M/M Romance series
CHASING DEATH METAL DREAMS
By Kaje Harper
Introduction
The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the
Love is an Open Road
promotion sponsored by the
Goodreads M/M Romance Group
and is published as a gift to you.
What Is Love is an Open Road?
The
Goodreads M/M Romance Group
invited members to choose a photo and pen a letter asking for a short M/M romance story inspired by the image; authors from the group were encouraged to select a letter and write an original tale. The result was an outpouring of creativity that shone a spotlight on the special bond between M/M romance writers and the people who love what these authors do.
A written description of the image that inspired this story is provided along with the original request letter. If you’d like to view the photo, please feel free to join the
Goodreads M/M Romance Group
and visit the discussion section:
Love is an Open Road
.
No matter if you are a long-time devotee to M/M Romance, just new to the genre or fall somewhere in between, you are in for a delicious treat.
Words of
Caution
This story may contain sexually explicit content and is
intended for adult readers.
It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The
M/M Romance Group
strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.
Each year, a dedicated group of Volunteers from the M/M Romance Group work hard behind the scenes to bring these stories to you. Our Editors, Formatters, Proofreaders, and those working on Quality Assurance, spend many long hours over a course of several months so that each Event is a success. As each and every author also gives freely of their time and talent, it was decided that all edits suggested may be accepted or rejected by the author at any given time. For this reason, some stories will appear to be more tightly edited than others, depending on the choice of the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This eBook may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. This eBook may not be sold, manipulated or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.
Chasing Death Metal Dreams
, Copyright © 2015
Kaje Harper
Cover Art by BookCoverMasterClass.com
Copyright © 2015
This ebook is published by the M/M Romance Group and is not directly endorsed by or affiliated with Goodreads Inc.
M/M Romance Group Publication
CHASING DEATH METAL DREAMS
By Kaje Harper
Photo Description
A young bare-chested man stands staring boldly outward from below his raised arms, hands pressed together in his black hair, elbows winged out, colorful dagger tattoos on his forearms. Another tattoo near his neck forms swirl of dark curves with “Boy” over his left collarbone. His biceps are strong, his stomach and pecs flat, his nipples small, above a thin treasure trail leading downward. Below each nipple is the unmistakable, long-healed scar of top surgery.
Story Letter
Dear Author
,
I was sent to the US at the age of 10 by my father who could not accept me. You see I was misgendered at birth and I started fighting against my body at a young age. My father sent me to live with my cousin’s family along with enough money to pay my way for a few years. Little does he know he helped to fund the many surgeries and hormones to fulfill my dream of having my outside gender match the gender my brain has always known myself to be.
What do you think Author? Not many know of his secret. He is a gay man. Is he in a gang? Is he in a band? How will he find love? How will he be accepted?
Thank you!!
Sincerely,
Melissa
Story Info
Genre:
contemporary
Tags:
musicians/rock stars, visual arts, in the closet, F2M transgender, family, men with pets, tattoos
Word Count:
94,050
Acknowledgements
I had a lot of help with this one, especially with all the aspects that were out of my expertise. Thanks to Gaby, Maria, Tala, Jari, Kate, Kiracee, and Jess. Without you this story could not have been written. I appreciate all the suggestions of unique details, large and small, that created Carlos and his world. As always, any remaining mistakes are my own.
CHASING DEATH METAL DREAMS
By Kaje Harper
Prologue
Dios mío
. Everything was different.
Ten-year-old Carlos Medina stared though the doorway of the fifth grade classroom at his new school. Almost the same as the
primaria
he’d gone to back in Puebla, and yet a thousand little differences rose up to trap him there, standing in the hall, unable to take a breath or move his feet. His pulse pounded and he blinked hard. Ahead of him, the morning sun hit the star-spangled flag on its pole in the corner. The poster beside it on the wall said, “D.A.R.E. to resist drugs and violence” in bright, angry, English letters. The school even smelled different, and around him so many students were big and blond and loud and…
“Move it, stupid!” A push between his shoulder blades jolted him over the threshold and into the room.
He’d have turned and snapped an insult back, but he still had no breath, and he was humiliatingly grateful for the shove that had unstuck him from that doorway. He glanced around. Many of the desks were already taken, but he spotted one in the back row and dived for it. Tía Lisa had checked and found out there was no special seating and he could just pick one. The back was safest, where no one could get behind you. He slipped into the chair and set his bag with his notebooks and pencils down by his feet.
The room was filling up fast. He sneaked a look at the other boys in the back row, watching how they sat, what they did. Subtly, he slid his butt forward in the attached metal-and-wood chair and stretched out his legs, slouching, his knees casually apart. Two of the boys in the back row had their arms crossed across their chests, and he did that too.
The teacher at the front of the room rapped on her desk. “Two minutes, class. Please find a seat.”
A pretty dark-haired girl asked, “Will we be stuck with these seats all year, Miss Boston?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out. Soon.” The teacher’s smile seemed real, and Carlos relaxed a bit. A teacher who had a sense of humor was a good thing, right? He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth like Tío Ramón had taught him the time he got stressed out at the mall. He could do this. He would.
Pa’ lante
. Not like he had a choice.
The bright, busy conversations of the other students were a maddening chatter he couldn’t begin to understand. Despite a summer spent frantically improving his English with Tía Lisa and Tío Ramón, he couldn’t follow these fast, slangy, mixed-up words. He swallowed panic. For the first time in his life, there was no big brother, no Fernando, or Juan, or anyone, just down the hall to have his back. His youngest cousin was a senior in high school, blocks away. He was on his own.
Carlos tossed his head, lifting his chin.
So what?
He’d always been alone, in a way, a stranger in his own house, his own family. A pang of homesickness washed over him, and he shoved it down, pressing his lips together, folding his arms tighter. Mamá and Papá didn’t want him, not the way he was. There was no going back.
He stared out the classroom window at the scrap of schoolyard he could see, a strip of flat green-brown playing fields with the pale-blue sky arching overhead, clear in the bright morning light. That same sun was shining back home, where Mamá might be braiding Silvia’s hair and Leticia would be complaining about having to get up so early for school…
He only realized he’d missed the beginning of class and roll call when he was startled by the teacher’s voice. “Beatriz Medina?”
He jerked his head up, heart thumping, snapping his gaze to where she stood with the class book, her pencil on the page, looking around the class. Her eyes landed on him. “Beatriz Medina?”
He could say, “
Here
,” as he’d practiced with Tía Lisa. He could even just nod or wave and she might let it pass. But he hadn’t given up his home and family and everything he knew to be a coward now. He gathered himself, cleared his throat, and said the thing he’d practiced in secret a thousand times that summer. “I prefer the name Carlos.”
The teacher’s eyes were kind, but a bit perplexed. “As a nickname? It’s not much like Beatriz. Isn’t that a little confusing? ”
He couldn’t even begin to explain, with the other kids looking at him and the bright American flag in the corner and his fingernails cutting into his palms. He managed to say, “No.”
The teacher hesitated. Carlos heard a mutter of something from one of the girls across the room, the words impossible to make out, but the disgusted tone clear. He couldn’t spare his attention from the teacher to look over there. Instead, he tried to use his eyes, to beg and plead with this pretty American woman to
hear
him, to understand him, as even Tía Lisa did not when she told him to take it slow, to give her and Tío Ramón time.
This is not a game. This is not a whim or a wish. See me.
Her eyes skimmed over him. Did she notice the new haircut, shorter than Mamá had ever allowed, but still not the cropped boys’ cut he’d really wanted? Did she see that his jeans were baggy, his shirt plain and loose? He slumped a little lower, fists tight under his crossed arms, his muscles clenched so hard that the pressure hurt his chest.
“I suppose you can choose any nickname you like,” the teacher said slowly. “As long as you stick to it. Welcome to Northside School, then, Carla.” She looked down at her book, made a quick note with a pencil, then said, “David Mendelssohn?”
As someone to his left said, “Here,” Carlos closed his eyes.
Almost.
He wasn’t sure if she’d not heard him, or just decided that a Beatriz couldn’t be a Carlos. He tried to tell himself it was a start. Anything was better than being Beatriz. To his right someone whispered loud enough for him to hear, “Hey, new kid, you some kind of dyke?”
He didn’t know the word, but the tone made him guess it was something like
machorra
. Nothing he hadn’t heard before. Nothing he wouldn’t face down and get past, soon, later, once he gathered the energy to try again. Carlos Medina was a boy, no matter what they said, and someday everyone would know it. He listened to the teacher’s voice calling on Lisa, Matthew, José, Mark, Zach, María, Nancy, Jason… familiar names and alien ones, names he should learn but couldn’t bother right now.
