#jon and tim have a strong will they/wont they that all their fans pick up on

[lizard-queen-izzy]

Alright, it's not 4 am anymore, I have more coherent thoughts on this matter.

-Jon is the lead singer. Because naturally. When they were first coming up with the idea, Tim laughed when Jon implied he would be their lead vocalist. He said (lovingly) "Mate, you're too shy to ask the server to fix your order when we go out. How are you gonna be lead vocals?" And then he heard Jon sing, and suddenly all his arguments dried up.

-Tim is on drums and bass [and back up vocals when it's called for]. That man has so much pent up anger and it needs to go somewhere, and I just know beating the shit out of some drums would help.

-Sasha is Keyboard and bass [her and Tim swap bass depending on songs]. She's is, in fact, classically trained on the piano. She bought a keyboard to play with when she wanted to play in her flat. Which came in handy when her friends wanted to start a band.

-Elias is their manager. He heard them playing in the basement and decided 'if you're going to play in my basement, you're going to play with some order' He is a shit manager, but he does his best. (They can't decide if that makes it better or worse)

[We will get to Martin, don't worry]

Plot!

Jon, Tim and Sasha all get jobs at a local record shop called "The Eye". It's a decent sized shop, and it sells music from so many different eras and genres, it kept steady business despite being the early 2010's and record's being not as popular.

Jon and Tim were associates, up front and manning the registers and talking to people. They both had a lot of music knowledge in opposite directions, so they covered the clientele pretty effectively. They could always find a customer something to buy. Tim with his charm and "totally not flirting, Jon.", and Jon with how passionately he talked about the music.

Sasha was originally hired on as a back-stocker, organizing the back room and putting new merchandise on the floor. She also handled ant of the new acquisitions when Elias was out. If you needed to find something? She was your girl. She eventually got bumped up to associate as well, once her piano schedule changed and she could work less restricted hours.

Jon and Tim started within a week of eachother [because I'm me and I'm predictable] and Sasha started about a month later.

Jon and Tim were anxious around eachother at first but became close after (2 weeks after Tim started) Tim saved Jon from an angry woman who came in raving her record player wouldn't play the record he sold her and she demanded her money back. It turned out she had been lining the needle up wrong and Tim explained how to fix the issue, and even sold her another record. Jon thanked him a million times and Tim told him as they were leaving that night "Don't worry about it, let's be friends and call it even." And Jon couldn't argue with that.

Tim met Sasha on her first day. Jon wasn't in yet and Elias had told them a new employee was starting but that she'd be mostly in the back per her schedule. Tim decided to investigate and found Sasha, sure enough, in the back room organizers everywhere. (She got the back rooms organized in her first month there and kept them that way by running any and all movement of inventory through her) He made a comment about her being an 'organization machine', which she laughed at before introducing herself. This playful banter was most of their interactions

Jon and Sasha met when he wandered into the backroom to find a record he knew he'd seen back there and was scared half to death when Sasha popped up from behind a stack of boxes. She would later describe his reaction to him as "yknow when a cat gets scared in a cartoon and it jumps real high with its limbs out straight?" while Tim cackled on his stool behind the counter.

They got the idea to start a band when the topic of instruments came up one day and trailed into if any of them played any. Jon said something about how he used to play guitar but was 'put of practice', Tim said he'd done percussion in school, and Sasha mentioned her piano lessons since she was 4. Sasha and Tim had both been interested in learning guitar as well, and begged Jon to teach them (totally not to get him to play for them, idk what you mean).

They found that the basement of the shop was mostly empty, but had some old instruments stored in it. Sasha had been exploring on one of her early morning shifts and found it, and dragged Jon and Tim down st the end of their shift the next day. They found a lot of instruments, some really old and some looking still brand new despite their location. They found a guitar, 2 bass, and a drum kit amongst the piles, and dragged them to the middle of the floor into a semi organized formation. The original plan was to use this as an opportunity to make Jon teach them guitar, but an hour later Tim was playing with the drums and Jon was very intently still tuning the guitar.

That's when Sasha made the joke they looked like a band prepping for rehearsal, and Tim's face lit up.

...

T-"Sasha James! You genius!"

S-"Naturally, I agree with you, but why specifically?"

J-*snort*

T-"We should start a band!"

J-"A what?"

T-"A band! Think about it! We've got all the pieces, and Sasha could bring her keyboard. Then we just have to figure out singing and we're set!"

J-"A band is not that easy, Tim."

S-"I agree with Jon, we can't just become a band."

T-"But we could! We don't have to be good, and we don't have to play for anyone else! It could just be for us!"

J-"I don't know..."

S-"I mean. We could give it a go, but I'm not making any promises this sticks."

T-"Yes! Jon? Please say you'll do it? I will do anything."

J-"Anything?"

T-"Anything."

J-"Tell me if you actually think my bad haircut last month was 'a dashing choice' that 'even Elias couldn't compete with'."

T-"I- um. No. I was just trying to make you feel better."

J-"Right. Thought so. Sasha, I believe you owe me £5."

S-"Yeah, yeah. You know Tim better than I do."

T-"You bet on this?"

J-"Bet makes it sound so..so dirty. We made a friendly wager."

S-"We bet on loads of things."

T-"I cannot believe you two. Wait! Does this mean-"

J-"Yes, Tim. We can start a band."

T-"YES!"

...

They started out practicing in the basement during the shops off hours. About two months in, Elias found them out. After he assured them they weren't fired, and offered to be their manager, they started taking the band a bit more seriously. They eventually started scheduling more structured practice times around their work schedules, and would go to eachothers flats to practice when they couldn't make it to the shop. [They could only really practice with the drum set at the shop tho]

They started getting some small, local gigs and picked up a few fans. Not a lot, but enough they were getting recognized in coffee shops when all together. Everything was pretty steady for a few years. Until 2016.

That's when Martin showed up. Elias hired him at the record shop, because with his staff now also in a semi-popular band, the extra help of an unknown face seemed a good idea. He also appointed him the bands groupie. Which Tim tried to explain you don't usually hire a groupie, but Elias had made up his mind. It mostly just meant Martin carried the equipment during gigs, drove them to venue's in the van, and guarded the green-room from any fans who wandered backstage. Jon hated it, insisting hiring a groupie wasn't how it went and even if it was, why did they have to hire one who dropped equipment and got lost on the way to venues? But Elias didn't budge. So Martin stayed.

____

*stumbles in bloody and shaking* TMA band au.