If Love Is The Answer, Could You Repeat The Question?

So it’s like this: The hotel room is freezing in the morning.

You curl further into his side, his body heat being the only thing to keep you warm since apparently the heating in this room is terrible and you can hear it still raining outside.

You lay there with your head on his chest; his steady breathing and heart beat are the only sounds that fill the room. You trace a light pattern along his hips and lower stomach, just above the waist band of his boxers. It wasn’t enough to wake him up but still enough to keep you entertained and touching him. And that’s all you really ever wanted to do was touch him all the time. Not in a sexual way, but in a he-has-an-amazing-body-and-you-want-to-memorize-every-single-part-of-it kind of way. You wanted to feel the smooth, warm skin that pulls across tight toned muscles, the curve of his hips, the shape of his thighs, the outline of his jaw. You wanted to run your fingers through his soft raven hair and down his neck, slowly and lightly scraping your nails across his back just to watch the Goose bumps erupt on his skin.

He was so undeniably beautiful and it was hard to believe that every inch of him was yours.

You stopped tracing patterns and rested your hand gently on his stomach causing him to stir.

“Did I say you could stop?” His voice didn’t have that thick, sleeping sexiness as it usually did. Instead it was scratchy and strained.

“I didn’t even know you were awake.” You say, looking up at him and he looks tired and worn out.

“I’ve was awake before you were.” He says and then coughs to clear his voice, but it didn’t help much.

“Are you feeling okay?” You ask sitting up and pulling him up too.

“Yeah I’m fine.” He answers, but you can hear the stuffiness in his voice as he sniffs and puts his head between his knees. “I just have a headache. No big deal.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re sick.”

“I can’t be sick. I have a job to do.”

“Well apparently your immune system didn’t get that memo.” You say, getting out of bed to find Advil for him. You hand him two small pills and a glass of water before calling room service for coffee and food.

“Once we’re done eating, you’re going straight down to the bus where there’s heating and you’re not leaving your bunk at all.” You tell him, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He laughs like him staying in bed all day was actually going to happen.

“I’m not kidding,” You say. “If you work feeling the way you do, you’ll just make it worse.”

“I don’t even feel that bad,” He protests.

“Your face and body language say differently.”

“Who’s going to run the show then?”

“I will,” You say in an obvious tone and he looks extremely unsure about that proposal, as if he didn’t think you could do it.

“That’s a lot of work for you.” He says cautiously and you can just tell he’s about to launch into a long argument about how he’s fine and doesn’t need to rest.

“Do you not think I can do it?” You ask before he can start and the question catches him off guard and sends him into a fluster of stuttering.

“No I-I- you can but I—it’s just that—”

You sit there watching him trying to find the right words to deny that he doesn’t think you can handle running the show for one night when you already know he doesn’t. You’re torn between being hurt that he doesn’t believe in you and trying to not think he’s adorable while stuttering.

“Okay fine, if you don’t want me to do it I won’t.” You say, interrupting him. “Colussy is probably feeling well enough to do it.”

You stand up to go get dressed because the room is drastically more cold without a warm body and blankets but he grabs your wrist and pulls you gently back down, wrapping his arm around your waist when you’re close enough and pulling you into his lap. You automatically rest the side of your head against his shoulder while he plays with your hair.

“I’m not saying I don’t think you can do it or that I don’t want you to, all I’m trying to say is that it’s a lot of work for one person to take on.” He says quietly.

“But you’re sick and I don’t want you to get any more sick.” You can see he’s exhausted and struggling to stay awake and alert. He sniffed and groaned as you ran a hand through his messy, flat hair. “See. Now just let me take care of you, and everything else until you’re feeling better. Plus we have another day off tomorrow so you should feel better by the next show if you get enough rest.”

He sniffed again and sighed lightly, “Alright fine.”

“Good,” You press a kiss to his forehead that is significantly warmer than it should have been and crawl out of his lap just as someone knocks on the door. You open the door and take the tray of food, setting it on the counter.

He wasn’t too open to eating but with a few kisses and sweet talking you got him to at least pick at some of it. He was like a small child when he was sick, and it was like his stubbornness increased tenfold. You consider the fact that he was probably used to being the one who took care of sick people and not the other way around.

After a while of laying around and cuddling in bed, you finally got dressed and you couldn’t help but to notice how sexy he looked in sweats. You made your way down to the lobby for check out and surprisingly everyone was also up and ready to check out too. Maybe running things wouldn’t be that difficult after all.

You led him out of the hotel after paying and onto the crew’s bus.

“Why this bus?” He asks as you open the empty bunk and look at him expectantly.

“Because Alex and them are going to be one the band bus for the better part of the day and there’s no way you’ll be able to relax and sleep with them screaming about boobs.” You explain. You grab the cold medication you brought with you and pour some into the little cup that came with it, kneeling down at his level. “Here take this.”

“No.” He states, looking at it like you were trying to poison him.

“Take it.” You command but he shakes his head. “I will physically force it down your throat if you do not take it willingly.”

That made him reach out for it almost instantly. He hesitated for a moment before drinking the dark, thick liquid that sorta did resemble poison. He made a disgusted face that was cuter than anything before handing you back the cup.

“See that wasn’t so bad was it?” You chuckle.

“I hate being sick.”

“Then go to sleep. I’ll be back to check on you periodically to make sure you didn’t drown in your own snot.” You kiss his cheek, wishing you could press one to his lips but you didn’t want to risk getting sick either, and then stand up.

He somehow managed to look good while cuddle up to a Mickey doll, the tip of his nose red from blowing it and his eyes puffy from tiredness. You left the bus quietly, hoping that he’d actually listen to you and get some sleep.

-x-

Things ran smoothly for about three minutes. You rounded up Danny, Greico and Vinny to get them to start setting up. Ian was feeling better enough to help with light tasks but Colussy was still down and out which meant you had absolutely no one to help you run things.

Alex had an interview at one and trying to track him down was one thing, and trying to get him to focus long enough to actually get ready was another. Jack wasn’t being helpful at all by running around like a little kid on a sugar high. He was the first person you had snapped at but all he did was tell you to go get laid.

After that the entire band had an interview to do and even though you told Alex to stay back stage he didn’t listen and wandered off backstage. Zack and Jack were both late, making everyone late for the interview. And you had to stand in for that one and it was right around that time that you had gotten a phone call from the hotel manager saying that one of the rooms got trashed and you owed then money for the damage.

Things weren’t going very smoothly during the set up either. One of the merch bins had been misplaced so an hour was wasted searching for it when it was in the wrong trailer. The venue staff was being pricks about where the meet and greet was going to be and asking a bunch of questions about how much security they needed that you didn’t know the answer to.
The venue staff also set up the stage wrong which meant everything had to be taken off the stage so they could fix it which put you another hour behind.

Nothing majorly bad went wrong, but the pile up of little things and the fact that not a single person would listen to you no matter how nicely you asked or how many times you did, and how someone in the band always wandered off when they shouldn’t because they were all stir crazy from being stuck on a bus. You had snapped at almost every at least once over the course of eight hours.

Somehow you managed to catch a break so you climbed up onto an empty crate which is where you were still seated minutes before the set started. You hadn’t even bothered to make sure all the guys were back stage and ready to go. You were on the verge of tears from pure frustration and if one more person walked away from you while you were talking you were going to snap.

“Are you going to do back up?” Danny asks as he busies himself with guitar stuff.

“Is it 100% necessary for me to?”

“Kinda yeah,” He nods without looking at you. “At least guitar is.”

You sigh, “Okay fine, but I’m not going out on stage.”

“Stage fright?”

“No more like All Time Low fans will have me slaughtered if they see me anywhere near that stage with the band.” You mumble.

You knew exactly what the fans said and thought about you. They weren’t the friendliest fan base ever and didn’t take too well to the band’s announcement about having a new female crew member who was also dating their tour manager. It had caused an explosion in the fan base and there hadn’t been a single show that you hadn’t heard at least one of them talking none too nicely about you. You didn’t let it bother you much, it was mostly petty jealously and anger that it wasn’t them, but on a day like today, it was definitely going to hit home and if you even showed your face on stage they’d have your head on a platter. Even the ones in the meet and greet earlier weren’t very kind about you being there in his place.

Danny nods understandingly, knowing exactly what you meant, “You better go find them and make sure they’re ready.”

You sigh and slide off the crate, walking further back stage.

“Where’s Jack?” You ask Rian who’s doing warm up riffs on the side of another crate and the tapping is slowly driving you crazy.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, too focused on what he’s doing. You roll your eyes because it seemed that everyone picked today to be the most irritating and hard to deal with.

You searched the backstage area while checking to make sure things were in order but still couldn’t find Jack.

He still wasn’t there when you gave the two minute warning and now you were just pissed off with him.

“Where is Jack?” You demanded to no one in particular but still didn’t get an answer.

You were about to start panicking when the lights went out and the crowd started screaming. Finally you spot him come out of the dressing room with a shit eating grin on his face and you wanted to take the guitar in your hand and hit him with it.

“Where the fuck were you?” You almost scream, thrusting the guitar at him. “Actually I don’t even want an answer just get the fuck on stage.”

He gave you a surprised look at your outburst and took the guitar from you and going on stage to join Alex, Zack and Rian. You took the guitar from Danny and stood at the side of the stage, out of sight from the crowd but still enough to see the band jumping around.

Playing back up was mindlessly easy for an hour and a half but didn’t unwind you enough to deal with taking down and cleaning up calmly. You were still pissed about Jack’s disappearance and on edge from everything else and you were pretty sure if one more thing went wrong you were going to dissolve into a pile of tears.

The worst part of the entire day was having to watch Jack and Alex as then did their after show signing because it seemed like the fans were extra bitchy towards you and it took everything in your power not to tell one of them to fuck off when they started whining that Jack didn’t pay enough attention to her.

Time seemed to drag on as you stood a few feet away and observed them, trying not to glare at them but you couldn’t keep the intimidating look from your face. This was not how you expected today to go and all you wanted to do was get out of the skin tight jeans you were in and crawl into his arms.

Finally after what seemed like hours they got through the line of fans and turned to face you. Alex looked like he was about to say something but at this point you didn’t want to hear him and gave him a sharp look that shut him up before he even spoke.
You opened the bus door and let them in before trailing them and almost slamming it closed.
Without a single word to anyone in the bus you went straight to the bunk area and crawled into his bunk. During sound check you had woken him up and made him switch buses since the band wasn’t on it and it had better heating.

Surprisingly he was awake.

“Feeling any better?” You ask quietly, trying to stuff your foul mood down.

“Yeah a little,” He answers, “You look angry though. How did it go?”

You sigh and tell him about your miserable day of trying to fill his shoes and get things to go right and how frustrating everyone was. He pulls you in closer when you finish and kisses your head.

“I have no idea what got into them today that made them act like that. They usually aren’t that difficult to deal with.” He says.

“Please get better so I don’t ever have to do that again.” You roll into him and put your head on his chest and he wrapped both his arms around you tightly. You tilt your chin up to look at him. “I have no idea how you manage to do that day after day but wow you deserve a lot more credit for it.”

The smile that he broke out into made you smile for the first time since this morning. “Having you around to help makes things a lot easier.”

You laid there for a few moments smile at each other and just enjoyed being with each other while he played with your hair again.

“I love you,” You whisper and watch him smile again.

“I love you too.” He returns instantly.

And before you even have a chance to change out of your jeans you fall asleep in his arms to the steady beating of his heart.

So it’s like this: You could definitely get used to waking up and falling asleep like this every day.