Melt Your Headaches, Call It Home

Jon flipped his hair out of his eyes and cracked his knuckles before starting up the webcam. A screen popped up, showing him and Pete sitting on the couch. They both waved at the camera with a goofy expression on their faces, causing me to let out a short burst of nervous laughter.

"What?" he asked smiling turning to look at me, but I only shook my head while Ryan pointed back to the screen to remind him that he was recording.

"Oh yeah." Jon cleared his throat, "Hey everybody, so you might be wondering where we've gone. First off, sorry about that because I know it totally sucks to have us ditch you. But secondly, we have a good reason, here's what happened… wait, Ryan do you want to tell?"

Ryan furiously shook his head. "Ok then, so about two weeks ago we were walking back to the hotel from dinner and our very own superhero, Ryan Ross, took off sprinting for no apparent reason. We ran after him, and in an alley we found him fighting off a dude that was uh trying to uh… assault a girl. So we joined the brawl and chased the guy off. Let me tell you something though, this guy was enormous, and none of us got out uninjured, but in the fight he broke Ryan's arm in two places and cracked one a rib. He's ok and I'm sorry ladies, but you won't see a guitar in his hands for at least another month and a half." Cue an offscreen pout from Ryan.

Pete cut in, "I wasn't there, but I've seen the aftermath, you should see the war wounds these guys got. Jon himself got pretty scraped up. Spencer got stitches and Brendon almost sprained an ankle." Jon nodded proudly, while Ryan just rolled his eyes at the mention.

"But," Jon continued on, "Most importantly, our lovely damsel in distress is going to be fine, all thanks to Ryan."

"Yeah," I said under my breath to Ryan, "I still can't thank you enough."

"Oh so the pretty lady herself has something to say," said Pete with a huge smirk on his face, Jon moved the laptop so that Ryan and I were the ones captured in the webcam's frame, before Ryan could respond.

I blushed, "Not really."

"Uhm, this is Charlotte," said Ryan, "and despite what a certain magazine might say tomorrow –"

"Those pictures are fake and we are not dating." I finished for him. He nodded in agreement. "Ok so I just want to say, that I am so grateful to these boys…" Jon made an indignant sound, "…er, men for rescuing me because without them, I probably wouldn't be alive right now… but I'm sorry that I made them miss their tour. Uh, yeah, that's it."

I smiled around at them and then tilted the laptop back in Jon's direction.

"Hey," Ryan whispered as Jon and Pete started talking about random stuff to the web surfers.

"Hey what?" I whispered back.

"You want to go somewhere?"

"Like where?"

"I dunno, this is boring."

"You don't like talking to you fans?" I asked, slightly disapproving.

"No – I do, but I've never really been into the whole internet blogging thing, I'd rather go do something." He said defensively.

"Ok, let's go," I answered.

We stood up and tried to sneak away, like that would ever work, but Jon saw us as we were almost out the door, "Hey where do you two think you're going?"

Ryan slipped out the door, leaving me to answer, "Out. Finish talking to your adoring fans, Jon Jon." I wiggled my fingers in a wave, winked and stepped out into the hall where Ryan was waiting.

"Sooo…" he started after a moment of silence, rocking back and forth on his heels, "What should we do?"

"Hmmm… we could just walk around," I suggested, it was about eleven o'clock in the morning and still sunny and warm out.

He nodded and we made our way to the elevator in silence. During the ride down we traded quick glances through the mirrors that lined three of the elevator walls. This is the first time I've gone anywhere with Ryan alone since that afternoon at the park. Ever since I've realized that I do have a thing for him, it's been harder to talk to him and my mind tends to blank on things to say. Like now.

Compared to the cool shaded and air conditioned building, the heat and glare of outside are like a solid wall as we went outside. This was very unusual weather that we were having, and it was much too hot for my tastes. We both pulled out sunglasses and he nodded at me to lead on.

We walked along the street, looking through windows of shops in silence until Ryan caught sight of the Easy Street Records. He motioned for me to follow him inside.

He made a beeline for "B" section and when he found that artist was looking for, he grabbed about ten CDs and dumped them in my arms.

"What are all these?" I asked, trying to balance them all in my good hand.

"Your Beatles education," he replied, grabbing a couple more from the rack.

"I'd love to, but I can't exactly afford a hundred bucks worth of CDs," I told him and tried to put nine of them back.

"I got it, don't worry," he said casually.

I hesitated, I don't want him paying for everything just because he's got a lot of money.

He saw me bite my lip, "Hey, don't worry about it. I can take them when I go home if you're so worried about it."

"Ok," I caved.

As we were in line to check out, I saw a poster for Pretty. Odd. "Hey Ryan, I want to get something really quick." I said, and made my way over to the display.

I've only ever heard any of Panic's new stuff via online and I want a copy of the CD, since I've only heard a couple songs. I grabbed a CD and made my way back to the line.

When he saw what CD I had in my hand, he smiled, "You know I have at least five copies of that, I can just give you one."

"No," I said peevishly, "I'm buying this one myself."

He just rolled his eyes and let me cut in front of him in line. As Ryan was making his purchase, the cashier made some sarcastic comment about getting his Beatles fix. I could see a Pretty. Odd. Poster right behind Ryan, with his face on it, and I laughed quietly to myself.

We stopped right by the front door to combine our bags when I spotted a sharpie laying on the table. "Ryan Ross!" I said in my fan girl voice, "Could you sign my CD?!?"

He looked at me with an are-you-serious expression, but before he could make a comeback, two girls around the age of fourteen stopped dead in their tracks and huge grins appeared on their faces. They rushed up to us, clutching newly purchased Panic at the Disco CDs.

"Ryan Ross?!?" They gushed.

He shot me a smoldering glare before answering them, putting on a smile, "That's me."

They tittered to each other for a second, before the bolder one stepped forward, "Can you sign our CDs?"

"Yeah sure," he said and yanked the sharpie out of my hand with more force than necessary. "What are your names?"

As the bolder one was trying to flirt with Ryan,( much to my amusement I might add,) the shyer one came up to me and asked, "Are you his girlfriend?" I shook my head. "What happened to you guys?"

I gave the quickest explanation possible and she gasped, "Wow!" We glanced over and saw the one girl practically forcing herself upon Ryan, "Sorry about my friend," she muttered.

"He's used it," I said, waving it off, I pulled my camera out of my bag, "Do you guys want a picture with him? I'll send it to you."

"Really?" she said with excitement, "I'd love that!"

Pulling the other girl off of Ryan (not really) I got them all posed for a picture and had the girl to write down her email address. I told her that we'd send it to her when we got home.

As they walked off bouncing and squealing, Ryan gave a huge sigh and ran his fingers cutely through his hair, "Don't do that again," he said, looking with accusation written all over his face. I just smiled at him sweetly and innocently and walked along the street as he slowly trailed behind me.