Unexplained Feelings *Most Likely on Permanent Hiatus*

R.I.P. Ryan Dunn and Erik Roner ~ Forever an Inspiration

Chapter 7

When Max woke up, he felt groggy. Groggy. That was all he felt. There was no more headache or any other pain. He lied in bed for a few moments, he hands clasped together, thanking all of the Gods that he could think off. Only when his stomach growled did he bother getting up. A washcloth fell off his head when he sat up and he smiled, playing with the edges lightly. He remembered Ville taking care of him until he fell asleep last night.

Pulling on clean sweatpants, a white tank top, and a beanie over his unruly hair, he lit up a cigarette, while walking down to the pirate bar. He smiled slightly when he saw Linde and Ryan sleeping on the couch. They’re cute, he thought. Walking to the fridge, he pulled out a Mountain Dew and an apple before heading upstairs to shower get dressed in better looking clothes, so that he could head to work.

--

“Do you like My Chemical Romance?”

Max sighed at the question. Ever since that day that Bam and Ryan had visited him at work, girls had been visiting him every day, during their lunch at school, in hopes that they would come back. To kill the time, they asked him random pointless questions.

“Uh… I guess they’re okay… I don’t listen to them too much, but when I do I usually enjoy it.” He answered. The girl looked satisfied with this answer and went to sit down in one of the waiting chairs. It was a couple minutes before another girl gathered the courage to walk up and ask him a question, but this one caught his attention.

“Do you think Ville Valo looks like William Beckett?”

“Who’s William Beckett?” Max asked. He’d never heard of this guy before.

“He’s the lead singer of the band The Academy Is… I think that he and Ville kind of look alike.”

Max quickly pulled up Google images and searched William Beckett on his laptop. “This guy?” He turned the screen to show the girl.

“Yeah, that’s him.” Max turned the screen back, so that he could look at this new kid.

“Sure… I guess you could say they kind of look alike. Ville’s hotter, though.” He added as an afterthought before clamping his mouth shut. Fuck , probably shouldn’t have said that. But instead of getting weird looks, he got a bunch of coos and awws and agreements. “So, it The Academy Is… any good?”

“They’re okay if you like the kind of music they play… It’s kind of hard to understand. Youtube ‘The Academy Is… Checkmarks.’ That’s probably one of their best. They’re older stuff seemed a lot better than the new stuff.” She shrugged.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Hey, don’t you guys have to be back in like, well… now, actually?” He asked, checking the clock. He had learned their schedule by now. They all jumped up and practically ran out of the hair salon. It took at least five minutes to get to the school if you were walking. Max smiled, at peace again, because he was alone. Well, not really alone, because April and Maggie were cutting hair in the back, but that was close enough to alone.

Searching on youtube for ‘Checkmarks’ by The Academy Is…, Max selected the first video that came up, figuring that it was the official video. His figuring was correct and he stared at the somewhat crazy acting band and the kind of sexy William Beckett… oh boy.

--

Bam was awoken by the sound of voices coming into the cave. He tried to get up, but found that his legs were tangled with another’s and that that other had an arm draped across his naked chest, holding him down. Light brown curls tickled his nose and he realized that it was Ville who was practically draped across him.

Bam looked over at the entrance when he heard the voices stop talking and saw Dunn and Linde observing him and Ville. Bam motioned for them to be quiet, with the hand that wasn’t under Ville’s body. They nodded and walked out of the cave and back up to the pirate bar, leaving Bam alone with Ville.

--

Jonne groaned and rolled over, covering his head with his pillow. Fucking doorbell, he cursed. “Vittu!” He cursed aloud when the doorbell rang again. Apparently, no one else was going to get it and the only way to apparently get it to stop ringing and making his head hurt, he had to get up and answer the door.

Rolling out of his bed, he made sure he was actually covered by clothes and headed down to the second story, where the front door was. Opening it, he got ready to curse out the person pressing down on the doorbell, but was stopped in shock when he saw the person behind the action. From the brunette curls just poking out of a baseball cap, the blue eyes peeking out from underneath dark lashes, the shirt advertising some company he didn’t know, the ripped up jeans, to the banged up sneakers that advertised the same company as his shirt, Jonne decided that the man was beautiful. Needless to say, he was standing there speechless, staring at the man.

“Hi.” Jonne finally pulled it together to say one word.

“Hi, is Bam here?” The male asked, in a quirky, but cute voice that had Jonne speechless again. He nodded in response, letting the male in. Jonne was surprised when another male followed the gorgeous one in, but he recognized this one. He had been one of the guys that had been there yesterday. Jim, he recalled the guy’s name. He waved at Jim.

“I don’t exactly know where Bam is at the moment, but I guess the best guess is the pirate bar.” Jonne said. “I can find him for you, if you want or you guys can search for him…” His fingers reached for a strand of his hair, twirling the hair between them.

“How about both? I’m sure you know the house better than Jim and I and we’d like to surprise him… well, at least I would, Jim was going to come back anyways,” he smirked at his friend. “He’s found a love interest.” He whispered.

Jim punched him in the shoulder, muttering: “Ass.” The other laughed, rubbing his arm. Jonne winced, that had to hurt.

“I’m Travis by the way.” He did have a name. Jonne was starting to get worried.

“Jonne.” Travis raised his eyebrow questioningly, that was a weird name to him. “I’m from Finland.” Jonne knew the questioning eyebrow rise by heart. He got it a lot.

“Oh, you’re one of the guys from the bands that Bam likes.” Jonne nodded.

“Yeah, I’m the singer of Negative. Anyways, I guess we should go find Bam.” He headed down to the pirate bar, not really wanting to talk about Negative. “Linde, Dunn, hey.” He waved at the two sitting at the counter. “What are you guys doing up?”

“Max woke us when he came down this morning for his morning Mountain Dew and apple.” Dunn stated. “That kid, I swear to God. He lives on nothing.”

“He’s had practice.” Jonne responded, Linde nodding. Dunn looked at the two weird. As far as he knew, they had only met him yesterday, but they were acting like they’d known him for, a while. Weird. “Do you know where Bam is? Travis and Jim are here.” Jonne gestured to the two, causing Dunn and Linde to notice them.

“Hey Pastrana. Thought you weren’t coming. Dechamp, weren’t you going home?” Dunn asked looking at the two.

“Jim here has a new love interest in one of the guys shacking up here and what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t come and see you guys? I just had to do some MotoCross stuff.” Travis shrugged. “The others still have more stunts to do and we wanted to come without everyone else.”

“Who are you crushing on, Jim?” Dunn asked, looking at him. The taller male looked down at the ground and Dunn was shocked. Jim had never been one to be shy, sure he never really brought himself to be the center of attention, but he wasn’t shy.

“He’s totally crushing on Max.” Bam said walking up behind everyone, Ville following him, dragging his feet. The other’s looked to Jim for a response and the flushing of his cheeks told everyone the answer. “Where is Max anyways?”

“Work, dumbass.” Dunn stated. “Unlike all of us, he actually
does that.”

“Oh… yeah. That sucks… I was gonna make him eat.” Dunn looked at him weird.

“Eat what? Dude, we own no food.”

“Oh… well… I’m going to go sleep… on my bed...” Bam decided. “Want to come, Ville?” The brunette nodded, following Bam up the stairs sleepily. “By the way,” Bam called. “Freddie and Miles are coming sometime later.”

“I feel like we’ve just been ditched.” Jonne stated, the rest of the room nodding in agreement with the statement.

“They did not just go upstairs to fuck… did they?” Dunn asked, shocking everyone and when they heard a moan from only one level above them instead of two, they decided that it was a really nice day out.

--

“Thanks for fitting me in today, Maggie.” Max said brushing his fingers through his now brown again locks before slipping his usual beanie on top of his head.

“It’s no problem, honey. I was actually surprised you lasted as long as you did. Usually, you change back to your normal hair color a week or two after, not a month.” She laughed.

“Yeah, I dunno. I think I was just testing myself.” To be honest, he really couldn’t stand a change in himself for usually longer than a week or two, it was this weird quirk of his that he and no one else understood. He shrugged. “I’m going to head back to Bam’s. I’ll see you on Thursday.” He had Wednesday, tomorrow, off. He waved before going to the front to get his stuff from underneath the desk.

He had his things relatively quickly and was headed to the front door when he saw two people that he wished to never see again walking towards the building. For seconds, he was a deer caught in headlights, but he ran off to the back entrance, waving good-bye once more, pretending he had parked in the back and forgotten. He got waves and laughs from April and Maggie. Exiting the salon, he walked around the side of the building until he was at the front corner, looking around the corner, he saw that Freddie and Miles were in the salon, talking to April.

“Shit.” He cursed before running to the red Hummer. Quickly getting in, he reversed out of his parking spot and flew out of the parking lot. He saw April trying to get his attention, but pretended that he didn’t. He needed this extra time.

--

He reached Castle Bam quickly, speeding down the empty back roads of West Chester. Punching in the code, he drove through as soon as the gate was open enough to let him in. He had maybe fifteen minutes and a lot to do in that time slot.

“Max!” Jim called when he saw him rushing into the house. He and Linde had come inside to see if everything was clear and to get a drink. The others were on the balcony and lounging around the pool.

“Hey.” He stopped. It might be inconvenient, but he really liked Jim and didn’t want to leave him hanging. Then he spotted Linde. This was good. He would need to tell at least one Finn where he had gone and maybe he could stay with Jim for a little bit. “Can you guys come with me? As fast as you can?” Linde nodded, he knew what this was. Max was running away again and if Max wanted Jim to know, than Jim was important, so he pulled the taller male behind him as he followed Max to his room.

Max immediately began to throw stuff into his duffel bag. “Linde, can you do this for me, so I can tell Jim what’s going on?” Linde nodded and started to throw the clothes littering the ground into Max’s bag, going into the bathroom and doing the same.

“Jim. Okay, I know this is weird, but I need you to know that I really like you. Not only are you aesthetically pleasing, but from that one conversation we had, I can feel that we’ll get along great and maybe we could be in a relationship together.” He paused for a moment. “Wow, that sounds really bad, but it’s true. I’d really like to be in a relationship with you, but I have to leave now. Two people are coming here, relatively soon, and I have to be gone. I’m bad for them and my running away is just because I’m trying to help them. I don’t want to seem like I’m taking advantage of you, but can I maybe go to your house?

“I’m taking Bam’s car. He gave me his Hummer, signed it over to me, and put me on his insurance. But I have nowhere to go. Can I please stay at your house? Where ever you live?” Jim was looking at Max in shock. He had spoken so fast that Jim hadn’t clearly taken in everything, but he had heard that Max wanted to try a relationship with him and that he needed somewhere to stay.

“You can stay at my place. Here,” Jim took the key out of his pocket and gave it to Max. “I can text you my address and I’m sure that the Hummer or your phone has GPS.” Max nodded, pulling Jim into a huge hug.

“Thank you so much!” He pressed a chaste kiss to Jim’s lips. “Hey, Linde!” Linde came out of the bathroom where he had been grabbing the rest of Max’s stuff. “Can I have your phone?” Linde nodded and handed it over, picking up the rest of Max’s things of the bedside tables and the pillow, blanket, and book off the bed. Linde exchanged the bag for Max’s phone. He stuck it in his pocket and followed Max and Jim out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Jim was giving Max his phone number while they ran out the front door and around to the garage to avoid the pool. Max ran and got into the backseat of the Hummer, motioning for Linde and Jim to climb in behind him and they did, closing the door behind him.

“I’m going to wait for them to get here before I leave, but I need to write a letter to some people.” They nodded. He pulled out his journal and started to write quickly. Linde watched as the PT Loser pulled up next to them, out walked April, a curly-haired, redhead, and a curly-haired strawberry blond male.

“Are those them, Maxxie?” Linde asked. He looked up at them, his face softening when he saw them together and their clasped pinky fingers as April led them to the pool area where the others were.

“Yes.” His face hardened again and he continued to write.

Jim studied them. He was confused. Were his ex-boyfriends together? Were his ex-boyfriends really that mean that they would get together after they had broken up with Max?

“Okay. Here.” Max ripped out the sheet of paper and folded it up giving it to Linde. “Thank you, Linde.” He kissed the blonde on the cheek. “It’s time for me to go now.” Linde opened the door and got out of the car, followed by Jim, and then Max. Linde walked off and Jim started to follow him, but Max stopped him. Jim turned and looked at him.

“I’m really not trying to use you. Please believe me when I say that. I’m going to go to your house and wait for you and when you get there, can we go out? On a date?” Max asked sounding and feeling more insecure than he’d been in a long time.

Jim nodded. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

“Awesome.” Max smiled, pressing a kiss to Jim’s lips, this one harder than the last, but still chaste. He climbed into the driver’s seat of the Hummer and pulled out of the driveway, waving at Jim as he went, watching in his rear-view mirror as Jim walked to the pool area.