#that i have uhh.......tomorrow. at. 11:20am. in literally less than 12 hours

[clumsyclifford]

Hi! Are you still taking prompts? Would you do one where Alex is stressed out on tour and Jack comforts him?

hi anon this is sorta kinda what you asked for but also not really. but mostly yes. and it kicked my writer's block so i should thank you. even though i really just took advantage of this existing prompt to write some emo bullshit. enjoy

read here on ao3

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No one can find Alex.

He’s not in the tour bus and not in the venue, and he’s not answering his phone or any of his texts, which pretty much covers all of everyone’s guesses. They bring the problem to Jack, and Jack says, “Did you check the roof?”

“What?” says Flyzik, who looks like he’s mentally filling out his resignation form.

“Let me look,” Jack says. He doesn’t know why they insist on levying a whole search party before asking him; he always knows where Alex is. Jack calls it his spidey-sense. Alex calls it “fucking creepy.”

“If he’s on the roof, don’t tell me,” Flyzik says as he goes. “I need plausible deniability!”

It’s windy out, enough that Jack draws up the hood of his hoodie and pulls the strings as tight as they’ll go. Even brief exposure to the world puts a chill in his fingers. Only an insane person would be sitting unprotected on the roof of the tour bus in this weather.

Jack sighs and starts the climb.

As expected, the silhouette of Alex’s profile comes into view as Jack reaches the top. His fingers are close to numb and he’s a little worried he’ll fall; the bus has convenient ridges for climbing but they’re definitely not designed for that purpose, and he’s sure he’s not supposed to be climbing it. But he’s already gotten this far, and Alex is here, unmoving enough that he might have frozen into a block of ice, which means Jack is officially a witness anyway, so he may as well figure out what’s going on.

He clambers onto the roof and hastily pulls his hands back into his sleeves. Careful, he crosses to the middle of the roof, where Alex is sitting like a statue.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Jack says.

Alex remains unresponsive. Arms securing his knees to his chest like a seatbelt, chin resting atop them, he gazes out into the middle distance, stare as vacant as the parking lot around them.

“Don’t be surprised if Flyzik tries to quit later,” Jack says. “He’s just jealous I can always find you with my spidey-sense.”

Alex says nothing.

Jack bites his lip. It’s unfortunately chilly out, more and more the longer they stay here. How long did Alex spend up here before they realized he was missing? How long has he been sitting in the biting cold?

“Alex,” says Jack, a little lower. “Talk to me.”

Alex slow-blinks, so at least he’s alive. He opens his mouth. “I can’t—” His voice is hoarse; he clears his throat. “I don’t think I can do it. This. It’s too much.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “This is more serious than I anticipated.”

None of his jokes are landing right; Alex just shakes his head, barely. He doesn’t even have a hood on. He must be fucking freezing. Jack is tempted to reach out and touch his hand, just to gauge the temperature, but he’s getting the sense that one wrong move will shut Alex down for real.

“Sorry. I’m listening.”

Alex stares a little more. The look in his eyes is unfocused at best; Jack could set off fireworks right in his line of sight and he doubts Alex would notice, or care.

“Everything is stressing me out,” Alex says. “Everything. Even playing shows feels more like a job now. It’s not fun when I’m exhausted all the time, every day. Like, I drag myself out of bed and go answer the same fucking questions about the same fucking songs and then every night I have to go play the same fucking set over and over and tell every damn city they’re the best show we’ve played. I spend so much of my day just. Lying. That sucks, man.” He shakes his head again. “I thought when I got to be like all the musicians I admired that I could do it like them, like blink always did, and just be authentic and be myself and that we could be a cool band who’s real, not like all those cheesy media-trained cookie-cutter boy bands, but. We’re not. We’re just cookie-cutter in a different way.” The set of his shoulders doesn’t change, but his words come out faster, worked up, intense. “I’m not real. Blink wasn’t real. Nothing about this is real. None of this is real, Jack, I’m singing songs about people who don’t exist and relationships I haven’t had and stuff I haven’t done, and if I can’t be real about it then what the fuck is the point of doing it at all?”

Jack swallows. He could so easily fuck this up, can feel how delicate it is, and yet he’s completely at a loss. What is he supposed to say to that, exactly? Agreeing with Alex won’t help, but disagreeing won’t help, either.

“Yeah,” he says, stalling.

Alex isn’t done. “And,” he says, with a renewed dejection, “I can’t sleep, and it’s fucking freezing cold out here, and I just wish we could have more than one night in the same bed. Real bed. I want to sleep in a real bed for more than a couple hours at a time. I’m so fucking tired.”

Jack hums. He’d like that, too, for both of them, for all of them. Alex’s pseudo-insomnia isn’t news, but he’d always given the impression he was fine in spite of it. Or “dealing with it.” In retrospect, they should have checked in with him.

It’s just, Alex doesn’t like being checked on. He’s stubborn when he wants to be, and he’s too proud for his own good. His problems are locked in a safe behind a shiny brass door and a keypad whose code changes every day. Sometimes Jack guesses it by pure chance. Sometimes he’s as pitifully locked out as everyone else.

“I talked to my mom and she told me to see a doctor,” Alex says hollowly. “I thought she meant for, fuckin’, melatonin or whatever. So I said I didn’t think that would fix the brain problems and she was like, ‘Not that kind of doctor, honey.’” He breathes sharply out. “Told me to get therapy, basically.”

“Irony, thy name is Izzy.”

“Yeah.”

Finally. Jack can’t help but feel relieved; if Alex is acknowledging his attempts to lighten the mood, there’s hope yet.

“I don’t know,” Alex says quietly. “It’s like…fuck, I probably do need therapy, but…only if I don’t just. Quit right now. If I quit right now, all of these problems will go away. And I can go home, wherever that is, and I can— like, sleep, and I won’t have to talk to annoying interviewers or pretend to be happy when I’m not and I could just. You know?”

“And you would do that?” Jack chews his lip. “Quit right now?” He clenches his jaw, swallows. “Leave us high and dry?”

“I don’t know,” Alex says. “I don’t wanna feel like this all the time, every day, so.”

“Well, these feelings and problems might disappear if you left, but rest assured you would have a new set of feelings and problems,” Jack says. “You would miss me, for one. And that would be debilitating.”

Alex exhales. “I guess.”

“You guess?”

“No, I—” Alex sighs. “Come on, Jack, I’m not…I’m not gonna just quit and leave. I’m not.”

Jack can’t help the sigh of relief. “You promise?”

“No,” Alex mutters.

“That’s fair.”

“It’s just…like…how do I know what to choose? At what point am I putting the band over myself?”

The only answer Jack has is when the band starts making you miserable, but that just sounds like what Alex has been describing. They’re not out of the woods yet; Alex is still very much teetering at the edge of this cliff.

“Would you be happier if you weren’t in it?” Jack asks. As soon as he says it he wants to take it back. It’s too easy to imagine Alex nodding his head in response, maybe ushering in a brand-new realization. Maybe Jack has just sealed their fate in a bad way.

“No,” Alex says. His gaze travels down to his beat-up Converse. Jack watches his eyes move without seeing.

“Are you happy now?” he asks quietly.

Alex turns his head, locking his impassive stare onto Jack for the first time. It changes as he does, melting like ice, watery droplets of distress streaking the glacial exterior. Like wiping away condensation to see through glass, the dull disguise dissipates, and Alex watches Jack with sad eyes.

“Not really,” he says. “But I don’t think it’s the band. I think it’s my fault.”

“How so?”

“Attitude problems?” Alex lifts a shoulder, looks back at his shoes. “I don’t know. I could try. Instead of giving up. I contemplate running away at least once a day. That can’t be normal. Even for this job. Especially for this job.”

“I don’t know, Zack’s snoring does things to a man,” Jack says. Alex huffs. “Well, look. Can I say something as someone who’s known you for years? And been your best friend and seen you grow up and blah blah blah?”

“Sure,” Alex says. “I’m most interested in the blah blah blah part.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “I just mean, not as your bandmate who’s trying to get you to stay. Not even as your friend who’s trying to get you to stay. Just honesty, right? Just being real.” Alex inclines his head. “Um, okay, well…you love this job.” Alex sighs, and Jack says, “I know, and maybe you don’t feel like it right now, but you do. Trust me, okay? I know you think you would know best because you’re the one who’s inside your brain but your brain is lying to you, about this and a lot of things, and it always has, but I never lie to you. I don’t lie to you. You’re like the only person I never lie to. Everyone has one person like that and you’re mine.”

It's hard to tell, but Alex might be smiling. Imperceptibly. Jack takes a breath.

“And, so, obviously I want you to stay in the band because I’d lose my job and/or be fucking miserable if you left, but I want you to be happy too, and I know you won’t be happy if you leave. ‘Cause you’ll miss me, maybe, but eventually you’ll miss the shows and the music and even the annoying interviews. And Alex, honestly, not a single person in those crowds believes you when you say it’s the best show of the tour. You’re not lying to them, and you’re not being any less yourself just because sometimes you put on a front. Everyone does that. Every person in the goddamn world pretends to be someone else sometimes, how do you think people get jobs? You think people go into job interviews and say ‘By the way, I know every word to ‘Rap God’ by Eminem and I play for both teams but I prefer dudes’? Of course not, man. Stuff like that is personal, and just because you aren’t saying it doesn’t mean you’re being fake. You’re still you. I promise you, on my life, you are real. Some of this” — he gestures around them— “is staged, but some of real life is also staged, like my mom would always make us clean our house before we’d have guests so they wouldn’t know that we live in filth every other day of the week. But you are real, Alexander William Gaskarth. You are as real as they come. Okay?” He swallows. “Am I making sense?”

“I hate to admit it,” Alex mumbles, “but yes.”

“Thank God,” Jack says under his breath. He presses his lips together. “It’s not perfect, obviously, none of this is perfect, nothing is perfect. But the solution isn’t to run away or quit. I’m sorry, but it’s not. You’ll fucking hate yourself.”

“I know.”

“But we can fix it,” Jack says. “Some of it, at least, like you could see a real doctor and maybe they could give you the good drugs so you could at least get a normal amount of sleep, and maybe that would help. I don’t know, I can only do so much, but it’s not hopeless, you know?”

“Okay, okay,” Alex says. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Are you just saying that so I’ll stop talking?”

“No,” Alex says, shooting him a look. “I get it. I love my job.”

“You believe me.”

“Yeah, I know you’re right.” Alex breathes out, and it sounds suspiciously like a laugh. “You’re right. My brain lies to me, but you really never do.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Gotta be good for something.”

“You’re good for a couple things,” Alex says. “Not too shabby on guitar.”

“Pretty sure if you check my resume, the first thing right at the top is ‘Alex Gaskarth’s Best Friend.’ It’s, like, my full-time job. The band thing is just to pay the bills.”

“Barely.”

“Yeah, barely.”

This time they both laugh. Relief settles in Jack’s chest, light and airy.

“It is so fucking cold out here,” he says. “You think we could maybe get on the bus?”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “I’m completely numb. Literally cannot feel any of my limbs. Not sure I still have them.”

“No wonder you’re miserable, you self-sabotaging asshole,” Jack says, and reaches for Alex’s hand.

It’s icy in Jack’s, but even as they both shiver themselves upright, Jack can feel the barest hint of warmth steal between their palms, like thawing Alex out is as simple as holding on.

And maybe it is. It can’t hurt to try.