Autumn Tears And Winter Leaves

A new silence coated Our Teenage Kick's home. One that hummed subconsciously with anticipation, gold-leaf futures and elevated possibilities. Within the confines of her bedroom, Lawen strew clothes across the floor in a serrated jigsaw pattern, frowning slightly in contemplation. She crumpled a t-shirt in her hand as her thoughts tumbled around her head. She had no idea what was necessary. The only tours she had ever been on had only yawned into three venues before snaking back home. This one was destined to sprawl across a few months. How was she to know what she was going to need in four months when she couldn't decide what she needed for the next day?
Drained of hope, Lawen rested her head against the wall and listened to the hyper-active treads of her band mates, all probably as anxious as she was. It was a sliver of hope that she grasped; that she wasn't the only one who was the epitome of paranoia. Devouring the tense air surrounding her, Lawen pushed herself from the wall determined to make an effort. Folding the t-shirt scrunched in her grasp, she stepped over her wardrobe display coating the floor to place it in her baited suitcase.
Trawling her gaze across her room, Lawen's brown eyes nested on the top shelf of her wardrobe, the only part of her room yet to be explored. Coaxing her steps across to it, Lawen bit her lip in anticipation and, as her first pull at the shelf crowned her head with a green feather boa, she grinned. "Pasco," she cursed quietly.
As Lawen stepped back to analyse the shelf's potential, her eyes bounded over a hoodie that had been forgotten with her college memories. Smiling fondly, she hauled it down and edged her nose across it, inhaling the scent of innocence, adventure and defiance. Opening her eyes from the onslaught of memories she unstitched from the fabric, Lawen noticed a glimmering photograph on the floor, gleaming with an enticing invitation.
Kneeling cautiously, Lawen scooped the photograph from the floor. Her hoodie created a blue pool at her feet as the memories became too vibrant to keep her rigid in reality any longer.

"Hold still!" Conall called. "I can't take the damn photograph if you're wriggling." He lowered the camera to his side in annoyance to frown at Lawen. The sun was already wilting beneath the horizon as the camera tapped an impatient rhythm against his side. Still, the couple in front of him would not remain still.
Grinning apologetically, Lawen slid away from the clutch at her waist. "It's not me, Conall. It's this idiot!" she giggled helplessly as two familiar arms clamoured at her waist again.
"I can't help it, Lawen. You're just too gorgeous."
Lawen twisted her gaze lovingly back to Craig who smirked openly at her. Grazing her lips lightly with his own, Craig turned to Conall. "Come on, Dude. Just take the picture already." Briefly analysing Lawen's upturned face, he tagged on, "I want to remember this moment forever."
"Forever?" Lawen questionned in innocent excitement.
"Forever." Craig echoed.

Forever. It didn't seem like that extended paradise that Craig had always promised now that Lawen was encroached by isolation. A penitent sigh stained Lawen's lips as she let the one photograph that escaped her bonfire create a pure of her hopes. She could be warmed by the future possibilities but past certainties always rekindled realisations of herself back into life within her.

The motorways plunged into roads, the roads snaked into country lanes and the country lanes entwined with car-clogged streets. Lawen passively allowed the laughter-punctuated conversation in the car to provide her soundtrack to the band's arrival on the tour. Distantly tending to the notepad across her legs, she watched the slideshow of suburbia slink past her window. Her thoughts were aeons away and reverberating with regrets and, somehow in their insistence to be heard, they seeped onto the page in tear-shaped expressions of angst.
Lawen traced her fingertip along each dip and bend of the letters on the page. As she followed their lyrical pattern, their message sunk through her skin, deepening their meaning in her mind. It was a punishment tormenting enough to cause Lawen to seal her eyes from reality to combat it, as she allowed the notepad to fall disregarded to the floor of the van. Her ragged breaths punctured the conversation the other band members were absorbed in and Conall twisted in his seat to look back at her.
"Lawen." he called, cautiously. As her eyes flickered open, he coaxed his gaze across her ambivalent expression. "Are you okay?"
Suddenly aware of the attention she was receiving and the concern it provoked, Lawen urged herself to grin apologetically. "Nerves." she explained with a gentle laugh.
Unconvinced by her efforts, Conall scrunched his face into a frown. "Are you sure?" he questionned.
Summoning every grain of conviction she felt left inside her, Lawen leant forward to rest her head on the arm Conall had draped around the car seat. "Yes," she stated forcefully. "I'm. Fine."
Pressing his lips together in thought, Conall allowed himself to be persuaded. He gently pulled his arm free from Lawen's clutch and pivoted back to Torben again, lunging into conversation as if he'd never been tempted away from it. In desperate relief, Lawen shuffled back against her seat, her thoughts netted together in unmerciful dedication. As the scenery painted onto her window bled into another country lane, Lawen rested her head against her seat and hoped that sleep would purge her of her menacing thoughts.

The van rumbled to a stop outside the designated hotel and Pasco had the door gaping open before the wheels had stopped rolling. "Concrete!" he gasped as he collided with the pavement. "Solid ground! I missed you, baby." he added as he placed a passionate kiss on the ground.
"Pasco. Get up," Conall ordered as he gently tapped Pasco's stomach with his foot. "People are staring."
"Do you really think I give a damn?" Pasco questionned, his lips still attached to the concrete. "I've been jammed in that damn van for an eternity. I've forgotten how good solid ground feels."
"You do realise how many dogs have...well, let's just say relieved themselves on that pavement?" Lawen asked as she slid out into the street.
Pasco's lips gradually eased themselves from the ground as he elevated his eyes to look at Lawen. "Eww." he said simply. Kneeling up, he flicked a grin at staring pedestrians before standing and sauntering into the hotel. Chuckling, Conall and Torben slung random bags over their shoulders and followed him.
Outside on the pavement, Lawen traced her anticipation-glazed eyes over the stretched building, absorbing the repetitious gleam of a thousand windows like voyeuristic eyes scouring the city. She swallowed the tension groping her throat and attempted to gather her thoughts long enough to paint a vibrant facade over her insecurities. Her anxious thoughts had followed her in a steam trail to the hotel and seemed to linger around her heels as she considered her possible future now that Our Teenage Kicks were on a tour of Britain. She just hoped that the tour would provide the idyllic escape from the nightmares in her consciousness.
"There you go, Miss." the van driver said, drawing Lawen back to reality as he dropped the last of the bags at her ankles. "There's the rest of the baggage."
Lawen smiled weakly and wondered if he knew how distanced from the truth he actually was.

"But why can't I have your room?" Pasco pouted as he sprawled his sugar-induced limbs across Lawen's bed. "It's so tidy."
"Because you'll mess it up again, Pasco darling." Lawen replied, kicking his trainers to the corner of the room.
"Exactly!" Pasco exclaimed. "And then I can go back to my nice, neat room."
Rolling her eyes, Lawen turned from Pasco to support herself against the door frame. A faint smile flickered on her face in rebellion against her thoughts as she viewed Conall curled lovingly around his accoustic guitar, his fingers tiptoeing over each string with delicate precision. Torben lay back on the floor, his eyes closed as he absorbed the random rhythm of Conall's song and the peace he knew probably wouldn't last much longer. A faint sensation of relief seemed to trickle tentatively through Lawen's mind knowing that these were the people that she was testing her career and happiness with. Despite her insecurities about her own ability and state, she couldn't think of a better trio to circle herself with to risk it.
A gentle thunder on the door tore through Lawen's thoughts and Conall's song. Slipping out of intoxication, Conall looked up at Lawen with a dazed expression that steadily grew into a smile as he recalled his surroundings. Lawen offered a sliver of a smile in return as she crossed the room to open the door. "Oh. My.... Hi." she greeted, somewhat breathlessly.
"Hey," Billie Joe greeted, the smirk on his face rich in his voice. "How you doing?"
"Um...I'm.... We're...OK. Thanks." Lawen stammered, helplessly.
"We just thought we'd see how you guys were settling in." Billie Joe explained as Lawen slid aside to let the three members of Green Day into the room. An immediate sense of paranoia pierced the air as Torben vaulted upwards, Conall placed his guitar to the side and Pasco sat cross-legged on Lawen's bed. "Hey." Billie Joe greeted as he wandered further into the room.
"Uh. Hi." Conall replied, his eyes darting to Pasco for support. To his dismay, for the one time in his life, Pasco sat in rigid silence, watching the scene unwind in front of him with a bemused expression.
"They don't exactly give you the nice rooms, do they? I mean, fuck." Tré commented, absently flicking the lampshade disregarded on a wobbly table.
"Well, we're not multi-millionaires like some people," Pasco finally mumbled with a slight smirk on his face. "We have to take the shit. It's all we can afford."
"Ignore him," Lawen sliced in desperately. "He hasn't been walked today. He gets a bit...moody." she added, hurling a silencing glance at Pasco in despair.
Laughing, Mike leant on one of the chairs. "Don't worry about it. Tré gets like that all the time."
"Do not!" Tré exclaimed.
"See?" Mike questioned with a grin.
Lawen released a gentle laugh in light relief and watched as Billie Joe slunked down next to Conall to his wide-eyed surprise. "So who's who?" Billie Joe asked, drifting his eyes over the group.
As Billie Joe's gaze fixed Conall with questions, he shuffled slightly in his seat. "I'm Conall," he explained in a subdued voice. "I play guitar."
"Torben. Bass." Torben offered.
"And I'm Pasco. Drummer." Pasco stated with a confident grin fired at Billie Joe.
"Figures," Tré shrugged. "The sarcastic ones are always drummers."
"Are you insulting your kind, dude?" Pasco asked, raising an eyebrow in disgust.
"Fuck no," Tré answered. "It's an extremely admirable quality."
Smiling slightly at the two drummers' exchange, Billie Joe turned to Lawen. "And you must be the singer." he said.
"Yeah," Lawen almost whispered with a nervous smile. "I'm Lawen."
"Weird name." Tré commented with a heavy frown.
"Coming from you, Tré." Pasco defended.
"Oh. I'm sorry, Pasco." Tré retorted, an amused expression decorating his face. Spinning suddenly to address Lawen, he danced his gaze over her slightly, "So, is there a drought in here or are you going to offer us a drink any time?"
Tinged with embarrassment, Lawen's gaze tumbled to her feet. "Uh. I...um...haven't got any drinks yet."
"We've only just got here," Conall finished, reassuring Lawen with a subtle smile. "We haven't even unpacked properly yet."
Shrugging in dismissive acceptance, Tré faced the room once again. "To the bar!" he declared loudly, causing his audience to grin at his display.
"Sounds like a good idea to me." Mike supported, following Tre's brisk path to the door.
"Me too." Billie Joe added, pushing himself from the couch.
Our Teenage Kicks passed a look of disbelief between them before Pasco broke their surprise by jetting from the bed. "Well, what are we waiting for? Look lively, ladies."
Grinning, Torben clambered up from the floor and joined the train out of the room. Lawen watched the company in her room diminish with an apprehensive expression but, before her nerves could grip her into adamant panic, she attached herself to the crowd and followed the carved path out of her room. Just as her hand sealed around the door to haul it open, Conall gently hugged her from behind. "Relax," he whispered. "Everything is going to be fine."
Turning in his grasp, Lawen raised her dubious eyes to Conall. "I so hope you're right."