As Long as You're Around, I'll be Safe and Sound

Sam just sits and looks at Jack for a little bit, his large brown eyes looking warmly back at her and she starts to smile again. She smiles because it appears to her like she’s found a diamond among the stones, and though some might argue she’s just found her favourite diamond among a whole lot of diamonds, because, you know, everyone’s special and all that; Sam definitely prefers the first metaphor, because Jack is definitely different to everyone else. He definitely shines.

She settles in front of him, one hand holding the ice pack to his nose and Jack has already taken her other hand in his own
“Does it not hurt?” she asks because he hasn’t complained once, almost half of his face is purple and there’s still little bits of blood around his nose which she wipes away with her thumb.
“Nope” he says and she just gives him a disbelieving look that makes him let out a sigh and give up on his attempts of trying to look tough because apparently its not working.
“It hurts like a bitch and it’s given me a headache” he says
“You’re an idiot” she tells him and moves the ice pack slightly, Jack trying to hide his slight wince as she does so
“You’re not making me feel any better you know?” he says but she can tell he’s joking
“Well you brought it upon yourself” she jokes back and they both just laugh a little before Jack leans over the short distance and kisses her. She wasn’t expecting it at all and so he manages to push her back a bit until she puts a hand up into his hair to keep herself steady, rocking back forward. She’s forced to move the ice pack because now her own face is moving to be in the way. Neither of them consciously make the decision to move, but when they do after a few moments, Sams nose hits Jacks and normally they’d just smile it off, but this time pain shoots through Jack and he pulls back quickly.
“Fuck” he says
“Shit I’m sorry I didn’t mean to” she panics, handing him the ice pack which he quickly presses to the side if his face. Sam just sits and waits for him to say something, not wanting to do anything in case she hurts him again.

“Don’t go all quiet on me now, it was my fault, I started it” he teases and Sam doesn’t know why but she blushes, and then Jack moves so he’s sat beside her. He plants his arm behind her and she leans a little back into it, and him, resting her head on his chest.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly and she turns ever so slightly so she can look into his eyes
“You have a potentially broken nose and you’re asking me if I’m okay?” she tries to joke but it doesn’t quite work because he’s being serious
“You know what I mean, Sammy”
“I’m surviving.” she smiles a smile that’s not half as big as Jack would like it to be
“All because your knight in shining armour came along and saved you” Sam laughs, the smile Jack wishes she could wear permanently re-appearing on her face. He really just can’t help himself so he leans in to connect their lips again and it takes Sam about a second after the initial contact to pull away.
“Jack” she says but he cuts her off with another quick kiss
“I don’t think this is a good idea, what if I hit your nose again?”
“I don’t care”
“But Jack,”
“Shut up” he chuckles and cuts her off before she can say anything else. Sam forgets everything for a little while, getting lost in Jack, her boyfriend. She still can’t quite believe she gets to call him that.

She and Jack are still sat together when Josh approaches, Sam gives him a warm smile as he sits himself down in front of them
“Hey, I’m Josh” he says, more to Jack who introduces himself in return “thanks for helping me out up there, I honestly thought for a minute he was going to take me out”
“It’s no problem, the guy had gone insane” Jack smiles back lightly. Josh hadn’t been hit quite as hard as Jack so he’s just got a black eye and not nearly as much bruising. They stay there for a little while, talking a lot about the split and then Jack asks the question that Josh had sort of been expecting
“Do you know what you're gonna do next?”
“Another band on the tour has invited me to sing for them for at least a few tours, uhh, their singer’s girlfriend is pregnant and he’s quit the band.” he sees Sam try to hide the hurt in her eyes as she musters a smile and Josh feels the need to defend himself
“I didn’t know that when I quit the band, I just knew I had to get away from Owen. They only gave me the offer today” he explains and Sam just nods
“So are you gonna take it?” Jack asks and subconsciously wraps his arm around Sam a little tighter
“I think so, it’s a good offer and I like the guys so why not?” he smiles a bit and that makes Sam smile too
“I think you should” she says, and that’s all Josh needs to be sure of his decision. He can’t help but feel bad for what he did, he knows he should probably have talked to her about it first and he definitely shouldn’t have sprung such a huge, life changing thing on her like he did but he reached a point where if he didn’t, he would have done something really stupid.

The barbecue thing sort of half carries on around them, people often coming over and asking if they’re all okay and Alex sits with them for a little while at one point. Sam’s just happy that Jack and Josh get along and that Josh has something good coming up for him. She’s not so happy that after this tour ends she has an empty flat and no solid plans to go to, but she’s making a point not to think about that right now. Jack drops her off at her bus a little later, because as much as she’d like to stay on Jack’s bus again, she also feels like she should stay with Josh considering Owen won’t be there, having been sent off the tour.
“I’ll see you tomorrow” he murmurs and kisses her softly, pulling away too soon because he knows if he carries it on he’ll be forced to steal her and take her back to his bus with him
“Call me in the morning” she smiles and he gives her one final peck on the lips and a grin before actually leaving.

A few days later and she’s preparing herself for her first ever interview on her own, she’s terrified. She usually doesn’t talk much in these things, leaving most of the talking to Josh though she’ll always answer if it’s a question directed at her. They’re sat by a tree behind some of the busses and there are people around but there’s not a lot of noise. It’s some online magazine that Sam hasn’t heard of but they wanted individual member interviews on the split and so here she is, the pretty blonde girl beside her introducing her.
“So, Sam” she begins and Sam can already feel herself tensing up “was the split of the band a mutual thing?” she says yes because she thinks that’s what’s best. The questions continue in a similar way and though they’re not difficult to answer, they make everything seem a hundred times more real, like up until now it’s all been one long daydream that’s suddenly become a harsh reality. It only gets worse when she asks the next question and Sam can feel the pit of her stomach churning in the way that it does when you’re about to start crying.
“What’s happened to Owen?” the girl asks, looking up to Sam with a warm smile which she tries to return but she just can’t
“He, umm, got kicked out of the band” she knows that Josh is going to be asked the exact same questions and their answers will be compared in some attempt at getting the truth “he wasn’t pulling his weight in the band and generally wasn’t acting in a very nice way so we told him to leave”
“Is it true he got sent off the tour?”
“Yeah, he was being violent so he was forced to leave” she answers with a stiff smile and there’s a bit of a silence before the girl moves straight onto the next question without commenting
“Have you got any plans of where you’re going to go next?” Sam’s been avoiding thinking about it since its been important that she did, but she can’t run from the question anymore now that she’s being filmed.
“Not really, no”
“No idea at all? Are we going to be hearing from you again?”
“I don’t know, I have no idea” she can feel her chest tightening that little bit in the way that she knows always comes just before the tears.

“Finally, on a nicer note, there’s been rumour of you and a certain Mr Jack Barakat getting close, is it just friends or is there something more there?” she looks at her in an almost predatory way as Sam blushes and looks down at her hands as she pulls at the grass beneath them. Sam doesn’t know what to say because she and Jack haven’t discussed going public yet., she doesn’t know if she wants to herself.
“Yeah, umm, I guess we’ve got pretty close”
“A lot of people are asking how you two met, have we got a Warped Tour romance on our hands?” Sam knows it’s pretty much the exact same question but worded in a way which means she has to say exactly what type of close they are.
“He bought me pizza so I guess you could say so” she answers honestly but tries to make a bit of a joke of it to make it feel less intense and she can’t help but smile; this time it’s genuine
“Quite the charmer” the girl says as if she knows Jack personally, and Sam’s almost ninety-nine percent sure she doesn’t, so she just blushes again and gives a little “yeah”. The girl finishes up the interview and when Sam’s finally allowed to go, she goes in between two buses where she knows she won't be seen and cries a litte because she just needs to get it all out. Then, after cleaning herself up, she heads to where she knows Jack will be playing and stands side stage as she waits for him to finish his set.

When he does, he bounces over to her, full of energy and pulls her into a tight hug, lifting her off the ground for a few seconds before he places her back on the ground and grins at her
“I didn’t expect you to come today” he says, taking her hand and leading her away, following behind the rest of his band as they head back to their bus
“Interview finished early so I thought I might as well” she smiles back but Jack can see it’s not all there
“Shit, how’d it go?” he asks, eyebrows knitting together
“Okay I guess, I think I may have made us public by accident though” she bites the inside of her lip a little, hoping Jack won’t mind. He just laughs and lifts their joined hands
“It’s not like we’re subtle, Sammy, I think everyone already knows.” She blushes a bit and realises that of course Jack doesn’t mind going public, he doesn’t get worked up about these things like she does.
“I don’t mind being public with this if you don’t” he says seriously, looking at her with a warm smile
“I don’t mind either”. Jack resists the urge to stop in the middle of the venue and start kissing her because although they've decided they don't care who knows, that might be a bit too much. It's not been long but Sam just seems to fit in with Jack and his band, maybe it's because she doesn't really say much and mostly just stays curled into Jack's side but when she does speak as she is increasingly often, she makes them laugh. She's seen all the same films as they all have and tough she doesn't get any of their in jokes and she actually knows barely anything about any of them, she fits in a lot better than she ever thought she would. She feels safe and that means she's comfortable to be more herself.

Later on when Jack has to go do some press Sam joins Josh on the bus, he’s sat in the back lounge and she sits on the opposite sofa with her laptop perched on her knee.
“How was your interview?” he says as a way of starting conversation
“It was okay, some of the questions were a little difficult to answer” she says
“Did they ask you about Jack?” Josh smirks
“Yeah, she was pretty insistent about it as well”
“Have you gone public?” Josh asks with genuine interest
“Yeah, I guess so. We’re going to be honest about it without being overly open I think.”
“Well good because I think he’s great” Sam blushes a little. Jack is great.
“You’ve met him once”
“And he was great” they both smile, laugh a little and the conversation ends because Josh knows what he wants to talk to her about, he just doesn’t know how to bring it up. Sam doesn’t mind the quiet, she’s still bathing in the afterglow of being with Jack and she’s just doing things that need doing on her laptop when she logs into twitter, she doesn’t use it much but she likes to check it now and then. She has more mentions since she last checked it last week sometime than she’s ever had in her whole time having an account, and surprisingly few of them are about the split of the band, the majority being about her and Jack.

Her curiosity gets the better of her and she has a quick look through them. Most are just speculating whether they are actually together or just good friends, some “fangirling” over how good they look together which makes Sam smile more than she’d care to admit. She finds a few with attached photos of them together, a lot from the dodgeball, lots showing them backstage at each other’s shows and a few just of them hanging out. One tweet she sees tells her that Jack followed her and she doesn’t know why it makes her so happy but it does as she follows him back and feels like the smile on her face is never going to fade. Josh speaks and she quickly exits out of the tab

“What?” she asks and turns to find him looking at her
“Have you thought at all about what you’re going to do now?” he says, he’d been asked the same question during his interview and only then had he wondered what Sam’s answer to the question would be
“They asked that in the interview” she sighs, shutting her laptop lid because she knows that this is a conversation that needs proper attention
“What did you say?”

“That I don’t know, I honestly don’t.” she stops for a moment, thinking “I feel kind of lost right now” she admits and Josh’s heart sinks a little as he sees the sudden vulnerability in her eyes
“I’m sorry” he continues, still feeling to blame “we could have just got a new drummer but I still don’t think it would have worked out.” there’s a pause as Sam doesn’t know what to say and Josh tries to word what he wants to say in the right way “I guess I just wasn’t feeling it anymore in the band, I needed something new. I think we all did.” when he finishes he looks at Sam and waits for her to speak
“Yeah” she says, because now he’s put it into words, it makes a lot of sense “There was something about the band that never felt quite right” Josh smiles a little because she agrees but it’s sad because they’re basically just admitting to themselves that the past few years of their life have been a waste of time.
“I don’t even know where to begin starting again, Josh. This band has been all I’ve had for so long.” she says
“Well do you want to join another band? I’m sure you could find something, you’ve got experience” Josh offers and she thinks it over for a moment before deciding that no, band life isn’t her thing
“I don’t think so, not yet anyway.” she answers before adding on the end “I think I want to stay in music though, if I can.”
“You don’t have to start doing something straight away, you can always take a bit of time off”
“Yeah” she says because she’s not really the sort to spend a lot of money so she’s got a fair bit in the bank “I’ve got my apartment still” she’d started renting it about six months before and had six months left, at the moment she just uses it as a place to keep all her things and somewhere to go when they break from touring.

They go through a string of other things that Sam starts thinking about doing, Josh thinks she could be part of a band’s crew but Sam’s fairly sure she wants a break from life on tour. The idea of being a session guitarist floats about, there are lots of things in the industry that she could do it’s just that none of them feel quite right when she thinks about it.
“You could write songs, you’re really good at that and you can always try something else at the same time” Sam smiles at the thought, it sounds nice. Something she can picture herself doing
“If you sent some demos to a producer I bet they’d love to have you write for one of their artists. People do make a living off it” he pushes quite excitedly, because he’s known Sam for a long time and he genuinely thinks this could be the right thing for her and it’s also the only job he’s mentioned that’s made her smile
“Yeah. It’s worth a try” She smiles “I can always get a job somewhere in the meantime.”
“I swear to god Sam, if you settle for some shit part time job in a crappy shop I will actually kill you” Josh warns her completely seriously
“Well I’ll have to see what I can get, Josh, I don’t exactly have the best qualifications”
“I’ll make it my mission to get you fired from every crap job you get, this is your warning.”