Dangerous

They were traveling to the next city that night. Their bus loading time was midnight, so that they all had a few hours to unwind from the show before being cooped up in a bus all night. Elle and Jared were the first ones on the bus, but they usually were. Even though Elle definitely had a partier inside her, she also hated being late, and therefore rarely took advantage of the free time in between the shows and the loading times.

Shannon, however, was a big fan of being as late as he possibly could. To everything. At 11:45, Elle started to worry. She called his phone, and it went straight to voicemail. He loved to send her to voicemail when it really mattered.

"No answer?" Jared asked, sitting on the couch in the lounge beside her.

"Of course not," she said, and he shook his head.

"I'll go if you want," he offered, but she knew he didn't really want to.

"I'll go," she said, making her way back to her bunk to change out of the pajamas that she'd just put on.

She called him again as she hopped down the stairs of the bus two at a time. It rang this time, but only twice before he sent her to voicemail again. She called three more times as she walked around the surrounding area of the venue, looking for a bar. There didn't seem to be one in the immediate area. She called again. She'd walked almost three blocks and still hadn't stumbled across anything that looked like it might appeal to Shannon. She called two more times and walked another block. Still nothing.

Finally, just as she was getting ready to head back to the bus, her phone rang and Shannon's name flashed across the screen.

"Where the fuck are you, dickhead?" she asked into the phone, and the only response she got was some heavy breathing. "This isn't funny, Shan. We were supposed to leave twenty minutes ago!" she yelled at him, hoping that would make him stop being a creep. There was breathing for a few more seconds and then he hung up. She called right back and someone answered, but they didn't say anything. Then, he blood froze in her veins when she heard what she knew for sure to be Shannon's voice let out a small cry for help.

"Shan? Shan? What the fuck?" she called into the phone, but it was hung up before she could say anything else.

Instantly frantic, she searched through the apps on her phone, desperately looking for the 'Find My Friends' button. Finding it and opening it up, she crossed her fingers. She and Shannon had been drunk one night a couple of months before and thought it would be hilarious to track each other's locations with the app. She'd turned hers off the next day as soon as she was sober, but she was hoping more than she'd ever hoped anything that for some reason he'd forgotten his.

His name flashed on her screen as she realized that he had forgotten. The tracker told her that he was about two blocks away in what looked to be an alley. She ran, not for a second thinking maybe she should call Jared or anybody first. She just ran until his little dot was right in front of her. She didn't see him at first, and was terrified that whoever had just called from his phone had just dumped it somewhere, but then there he was huddled in a small heap on the ground.

"Shan? Shan!" she yelled his name, throwing herself on the ground beside him. He turned his face to her and she could see that his nose was bleeding pretty heavily.

"Ellie," he whispered, reaching for her. She took his hand.

"What the fuck happened?" she questioned him, and he shook his head, as if to steady himself.

"I was... getting food... and these two dudes came out of nowhere and wouldn't leave me alone. The one... said he liked my watch. I told them to fuck off and... and the other one punched me in the gut. I don't really remember much after that. They beat on me a lot... and then one of them accidentally called you back when you were calling me," he recounted the story to her, slowly seeming to get more and more aware and alert.

"Are you okay? Is anything broken?" she asked him, and he shook his head.

"We're gonna have some matching nose bruises though, looks like," he said, and she laughed out a sob.

"I thought you were just being a douche and missing loading call like you always do," she told him, sitting down beside him all the way.

"Yeah, well, don't you feel like a bitch?" he asked, and they both laughed.

"If your nose wasn't already bloody, I'd punch you in it," she told him, and he nodded.

"Good thing it is, then, huh Ellie-Belly?"

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

Her phone rang then, and she realized that she'd totally forgotten to call Jared at all. Shannon grabbed the phone from her hand and answered it.

"I got mugged," he said, and she could hear Jared freaking out through the phone. "I'm fine. They took my watch and my jacket, but I guess didn't even think to get to my wallet.

No.

She's fine. She came to my rescue like a fucking fairy-tale prince."

He gave Jared the approximate location of where they were and hung up.

"They're on their way," Shannon told her, and she nodded.

"Fairy-tale prince, huh?" she asked him, standing up and reaching for his arm. He stood shakily at first, but seemed to be overall okay.

"Lately it seems like that's our job for each other, yeah," he said, shooting her a wink and a smile.

"I think maybe I'm the princess," she said, and he shook his head firmly.

"Nah. You're much too badass to be the princess," he told her, and odd little butterflies rose in her chest.

"Shannon, I-" she began, but he shook his head as if he knew what she was going to say.

"Not now," he told her, and she wondered if he did actually know.

The bus pulled up a moment later and Jared rushed out, ushering them both inside. She waited to get a chance to ask him about his 'not now', but she didn't get one the rest of the night.

She lay awake in her bunk that night, thinking of him and wondering if he was thinking about her.