A Match Into Water

I don’t think it had fully sunk it yet that I was Vic’s girlfriend. Even after staying up on the couch last night both talking and exchanging kisses, not to mention falling asleep on the couch with him, I was still in a bit of a daze as I wrapped my brain around it all. None of it really set it until about an hour after I’d woken up. Then, my brain started to panic a bit, and I did the only thing that I knew how:

Avoid my boyfriend the best I could and just act really awkward around everyone and everything.

To be fair, it’s not like I wasn’t happy about all of this or that I didn’t want to be in the this relationship, it’s just that I didn’t even know what to do or how to act now. The last time I was asked out by anyone was roughly five years ago, and that relationship lasted for several years. The relationship itself wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows either, so it was safe to say that I forgot what a relationship was supposed to be like. Now that I was in one again, especially with a guy that I genuinely cared about, I didn’t want to screw it all up just because I didn’t know what I doing.

So yeah, being awkward and avoiding people seemed like a great idea to me.

Vic almost immediately caught onto my odd behavior, and it wasn’t much longer until the others on the bus did too. Fortunately for me, our bus ride to the next venue wasn’t very long, so before anyone could properly interrogate me on what was going on, the bus had arrived and I was rushing off that bus as fast as I could.

I practically ran over several other crew members and other people with the venue as I bolted from the bus and tried to busy myself with unloading the equipment off the truck. And let’s not even talk about how I almost took Kellin’s head off after unloading one of Sleeping’s amps.

Minimal conversation was made. Gazes were avoided. Set up was rushed and my eyes were glued to the floor beneath me. Practically everyone could see that there was something going on with me, and the fact that they didn’t know what it was or how to fix worried them.

Unless you were a certain someone named Ricky. I did manage to sneak a few (unintentional) side glances his way, and he seemed to be more than thrilled to see that there was something wrong with me. Either way, it seemed almost too easy to avoid facing my fears all throughout soundcheck. In fact, I was almost convinced that I wouldn’t have to worry about figuring all of this out until later.

Of course, that all changed once I was forced to confront my newfound fears about this relationship head-on. Literally.

During Pierce The Veil’s soundcheck, Mike managed to break through his kick drum head, and even though it was technically the drum tech’s job to go grab the new drum head, I was more than willing to go back to the truck and grab a new head for the kick drum. Upon re-entering the venue with the drum head in hand, I hadn’t even closed the door behind me and covered any sort of ground before I ran straight into Vic. I don’t think he fully realized at first who he collided with, but when he finally did, a various mixture of emotions ran across his face. My stomach coiled at seeing him, and I was almost starting to regret being so weird and avoiding him this morning. It certainly wasn’t fair to him, and I was starting to worry that I was just being selfish and causing more pain than necessary for the both of us.

With that new thought added to my conscious, I couldn’t handle the newfound guilt piled on top of my awkwardness, so I mumbled a quick apology and tried to duck past my boyfriend.

“Dean, wait,” Vic called out, reaching out and grabbing my wrist. I almost pulled out of his grasp, but something made me stay. I let out a small sigh and slowly turn around to face Vic, almost flinching at the questioning, somewhat angry look on his face. “What’s going on with you?”

“It’s nothing,” I tell him, opening my mouth to continue, but Vic cuts me off before I can say anything else.

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” he counters, his eyebrows raising as he looks me over momentarily. Vic then lets out a small sigh and deflates a bit. “Did I do something? Or do you not want to be in this relationship anymore-”

“Oh my God, no!” I quickly blurt out, my cheeks reddening a bit in embarrassment. “No no no, it’s nothing like that, Vic, I swear, and you definitely haven’t done anything wrong, it’s-” I let out a bit of a sigh and shook my head, mumbling, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Well that’s comforting,” Vic grumbles in response, seeming a little upset by my words. I couldn’t blame him though, that line was a cliche way to breakup with someone, and I knew I had to fix this before it got any worse.

“That’s not what I meant,” I say with another sigh, running a hand through my hair as I carefully chose my next set of words. “It’s just that, well, I haven’t been asked out in a long time, or even been in a proper relationship for awhile either. I started thinking about that this morning, and I was afraid I would screw this up by not knowing what to do or saying the wrong thing, which is strange to say because we haven’t even been going out for an entire day, but I really want this to work, Vic. I care about you and like you a lot, and at the time, avoiding you until I had this all figured out seemed like the best option.”

My voice had faded to a soft mumble towards the end of my words, and I couldn’t help but find the random stain on the floor to be incredibly fascinating. Saying my thoughts out loud made me realize how stupid they were, and now I was embarrassed and ashamed of how I was acting this morning. I was almost afraid that Vic was going to definitely be mad at me now for this sudden information, and I kept waiting for him to start yelling when he did something that kind of caught me off guard.
Vic let out a sigh of relief and almost instantly pulled me into his chest. “Oh thank God,” he mumbled, wrapping his arms around me as holding me tight. “Dean, you had me worried there for a second. I honestly thought I had done something wrong-”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” I say, my reply a bit muffled by his chest. “And it was stupid of me to avoid you like that, it’s just that I was just really worried about messing something up.”

Suddenly, a soft chuckle escapes Vic’s lips before a soft kiss is placed on the top of my head. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about messing anything up, Darling,” he tells me, a few butterflies floating about in my stomach at the use of the word ‘Darling’. “Plus, it’s kind of cute that you were so worried about something like this.”

“It was still stupid,” I grumble stubbornly into Vic’s chest.

“Eh,” Vic says, shrugging a bit and looking down at me to smile, “it was mainly cute.” I shake my head a bit at him, but a smile tugs at my lips nonetheless.

“Whatever you say,” I joke, getting another soft laugh from Vic that makes my insides get all warm and fuzzy.

“You know,” Vic continues, a ghost of a smile on his face, “there’s not much of a difference between how we act as friends and how we act now as boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Oh really now?” I ask him, my eyebrow raising slightly.

Vic nods. “Yep,” he says, “just think of this relationship as our friendship from before, just with a few extra ‘perks’.”

I caught the tail-end of his suggestive tone and the small smirk that had spread across his face. Even though I knew what he meant, I couldn’t help but laugh a bit and feign innocence. “Oh?” I ask, a slight teasing tone lingering in my voice. “And what exactly would these ‘perks’ be?”

That same smirk stayed plastered on his face, and Vic lowered his head to where he was only a few mere inches away from my lips. “Well, there’s several I can think of, but there’s one that really sticks out at the moment,” he explained, before finally closing the distance between our lips. Vic’s kisses were soft and slow, a few sweet little gestures that I was more than willing to return. But, before we could even get anywhere with any of this, foot steps echoed through the room and a dramatic gasp broke through our oblivious bubble.

“I fucking knew it!” a loud voice exclaimed, startling both Vic and I from the isolated world we’d submerged ourselves into. We both jumped apart from each other and turned to face a wide eyed, cheery Jaime. He had a large grin on his face that rivaled the Chesire Cat, and all I could really think is that he shouldn’t be smiling that much after walking in on two of his friends kissing each other.

“What?” I lamely asked, trying to ignore the sudden heat rising to my cheeks.

“I knew you guys were dating!” Jaime cheered, practically punching the air in excitement. “Man, I fucking called it too-” Then, Jaime paused his little excited rant and looked at the two of us with an almost accusing glare. “Hold on, you two are actually dating, right?”

Vic and I both glanced at each other, momentarily unsure about how to answer the question. Sure, it was simple to say ‘yeah we’re dating’, but we hadn’t even been dating an entire day yet, let alone talked about when we’d make the relationship public.

Then again, I always kind of figured that the guys would either find out or get told by one of us sooner rather than later.

“Yeah, we are,” Vic finally spoke, his body relaxing and a bit of a smile tugged at his lip as he glanced over at me.

This time, Jaime really did punch the air in excitement. He even let out his own little enthusiastic cheer, causing me to laugh at his actions. He was getting way too excited over all of this, because after all, it’s not like me and Vic getting together was the biggest or most exciting news on the planet, right?

Jaime paused his cheery antics as he gasped in realization, staring off a bit into the distance. “Oh man, I’ve got to go tell the others,” he mumbled absentmindedly before going right back into this cheery phase and running off to go find the rest of the guys.

“Wait, Jaime hold up!” I say with a loud laugh, running off after one of my best friends with Vic not too far behind me. As soon as we all ran through the maze of backstage equipment and curtains, Jaime burst out through it all onto the stage and ran towards the little circle of people that had formed.

“Pay up, assholes!” Jaime called out, earning several groans from the guys along with the other half of the group cheering in triumph. At first, I was little confused as to why they were acting like this, but once the guys who had groaned started taking out their wallets and forking over their cash, it all finally clicked.

I started laughing almost as soon as it hit me what was going on, and judging by the slight shaking of Vic’s head next to me, he had figured it out too. “Wait, you guys placed bets on us?” I asked, still laughing a bit at the information.

“Yeah, we all kind of knew that there was a thing going on between you guys, so one day we got bored and placed bets on the possible outcomes,” Justin explained, shrugging as he did so and smirking a bit at the guys who were forking over their hard earned money.

“Basically,” Jaime continued, “we figured you would either get together during tour, get together sometime after tour, never get together at all because none of you had the guts to say anything, or that you guys were already together and just not saying anything-”

“And of course,” Mike added, rolling his eyes as he passed over a twenty dollar bill to Jaime’s growing money collection, “half of us went for the not-so optimistic options of the bet and will now be bitching about losing money while the others gloat about it for the next week and a half.”

A bit of a smirk tugged at my lips as I quickly threw back, “Oh, so you mean you’ll be bitching about losing 20 bucks while Jaime goes on and on about this for the next 50 years?”

Mike threw my smirk right back at me. “Duh.”

“But what I don’t get is that my brother didn’t believe I had any balls,” Vic interjected, looking at Mike with a mock-hurt expression.

“Hey, I said that you wouldn’t make any moves until after tour,” Mike retorted, throwing up his hands in defense. “I never said you didn’t have balls-”

“That’s not what you said when you placed your bet,” Kellin jokingly threw in, earning a few colorful words and a glare from Mike. A few of us, including myself, laughed a bit at that and as I was shaking my head at the guys, Chris had joined our little group and added into the conversation.

“You idiots do realize that the bet’s still not over, right?” he pointed out, rummaging around in his pocket and handing Jaime a crumpled up five dollar bill.

Kellin’s face scrunched up in confusion. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Chris rolled his eyes a bit and gave everyone a ‘you’re so dumb’ look. “I mean that yeah, you all figured out that the two lovebirds got together,” he explained, “but did you guys ever bother to find out when they got together?”

Literally everyone in the group went silent and looked around at each other, almost as if to say that they never even thought about that. I had to stifle a bit of a laugh at their priceless expressions and shake my head yet again. Jaime was the first to snap out of it and turn to both Vic and I, asking, “Well? When did you guys get together?”

“Last night,” Vic replied, glancing over at me with one of those award winning smiles of his. This got another loud groan from the other guys that thought they’d won the bet, yet Tony and Justin were the only ones who let out a cheer of triumph.

“This is totally not fair!” Jaime complained, scowling as the two guys who hadn’t lost the bet high five each other.

“You’re only saying that because you lost, Himes,” I say with a laugh. Jaime didn’t even reply, he just started pouting and and whining even more about losing the bet. He passed off all of the collected money to Tony, who was still pretty happy about winning the bet with Justin, when Gabe finally spoke up.

“Hey, didn’t Alexis go in on the bet with you two?” he asked curiously, causing me to snap my attention over to Gabe as he spoke.

My jaw dropped at hearing that. Alexis? Betting? On the night we first started talking, we watched a few of the band and crew members start up a game of blackjack, and he then went on to tell me how he didn’t believe in betting and that he’d never do it, even if his life depended on it.

“Hold up, Alexis was in on this bet with you guys?” I asked in disbelief. “The same Alexis that’s on tour with us?”

Mike let out a snort and rolled his eyes a bit at me. “No, the other freakishly tall guy from Deaf Lions that we get along with so well,” he sassed, causing me to give him a bit of a pointed glare. In the same moment, the entirety of Deaf Lions finally made their way back into the stage, most of them laughing at something one of them said while Alexis trailed behind him looking annoyed at the entire ordeal. With a quick glance, Alexis caught sight of us all hanging out on stage, so without so much as a single word sent to his bandmates, he left their group and ran over to join ours.

“Why the long face?” I joked as Alexis caught up to us.

Alexis’ smiled turned up a bit in amusement as he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t ask,” he told me. “It’s really not all that interesting.”

“Well maybe you’ll find this interesting,” Justin piped up, coming over to where we were standing and clapping Alexis on the shoulder. “We’ve won the bet.”

His eyes lit up for a split second before he let out a laugh that echoed through the empty venue. “What’d I tell you?” Alexis replied with a smirk before motioning for Justin to hand over his share of his winnings.

Even with this confirmation that Alexis did in fact bet, I was still a bit in shock. I mean, this was Alexis that we were talking about here- if he said he didn’t like something or was even against it, nothing was going to change his mind of that.

“I thought you didn’t believe in betting,” I commented, looking over at Alexis with a cocked eyebrow.

Alexis stuffed his small wad of cash into his front pocket before looking back over at me with a slightly smug smirk. “Sweetheart, it’s not called betting if you know you’re going to win,” he explained. His eyes flickered back to Vic, who was behind me talking to Kellin and a still-pouting Jaime, before looking back at me and giving me a wink. A bit of a blush spread across my face, but I just rolled my eyes in response and playfully slapped Alexis on the arm.

“Shut up,” I scold, trying to keep a straight face, but failing miserably and starting to laugh. Alexis laughed along with me, and probably would have started conversing more with me and maybe even the rest of the guys if it weren’t for the assholes he called bandmates.

“Yo Sasquatch!” Joe, Deaf Lion’s drummer, called out. “Get your ass over here, we’ve got a set to run through!”

Alexis visibly flinched at being called Sasquatch, and the conversation buzzing about went extremely quiet in a matter of seconds. Everyone was watching to see what would happen next, but Alexis just stood there and looked away. His jaw was set and his body was tense, almost like he wanted to say or do something but stopping himself from doing so.

“Are you deaf or something, Boothe?” Ricky suddenly barked, his eyes narrowing at Alexis. “Some of us actually have places to be between now and showtime, so stop fucking around and get your goddamn guitar!”

Finally, Alexis let out a sigh and sent a quick apologetic glance my way before his face went back and he turned back to his bandmates without a single word. I wanted to call him back, tell him that he didn’t have to take their crap, but I knew that wouldn’t really get me anywhere. Not only would that cause an unnecessary confrontation, but I was aware of a certain vocalist eyeing my every move, almost challenging me to change Alexis’ mind. Yes, I was still afraid of Ricky, and I had been enjoying the lack of his annoying presence recently too, so staying out of the band’s business seemed like a great idea.

“Hey,” Vic’s sudden voice broke me out of my thoughts, “you alright?”

I turned my body to look up into the worrying eyes of my boyfriend. I gave him a small smile and nodded, looking back towards where Deaf Lions was before sighing. “Yeah, I’m just worried a bit about Alexis,” I tell him.

Vic sighed a bit as well and followed my gaze over to the tour’s supporting band. “Well,” he began, “his bandmates aren’t exactly the nicest people in the world, but he’s been with them for this long, so I’m guessing that he can hold his own.”

“I guess you’re right,” I admit, still looking over at Alexis in worry. Of course, there really was little doubt in my mind that Alexis couldn’t take care of herself, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to worry about him having to deal with his bandmates’ shit.

Before I could make much more conversation with Vic or anyone else, my cellphone started to go off. I was mildly startled by the sudden ringtone blaring from my back pocket, and with a shy smile, I quickly excused myself from both Vic and everyone else before running off stage to take the phone call. I hadn’t even bothered to look at the caller ID before pressing the green icon and holding the phone up to my ear. “Hello?” I greeted.

“Hi, is this Ms. Manchester?” A familiar female voice spoke. Even though I had been expecting this call, it still caused my throat to close up a bit and my mouth to run dry. However, I still nodded and verbally reassured it was me before she continued. “Great, this is Dr. Joseph’s assistant, Ms. Black. I was the nurse that helped you with the-”

“Right, yes,” I quickly cut her off, nervously looking around for someone standing around who could overhear the conversation. “I remember.”

“Awesome,” Ms. Black piped up, her voice sounding quite cheery and peppy. “Well, I do apologise for taking a week to get back to you, but I would just like to let you know your results are in…”

My mind trailed off at those words. I was almost hoping I’d never get news about the operation I had the nurse do. It was the one test the guys didn’t know about, and she made sure that it didn’t appear on the paperwork Chris signed off on until I gave her my consent about it. I honestly didn’t know at the time if I wanted to tell everyone about what I did, and even know, I still wasn’t entirely sure about it either.

“Ms. Manchester?” Ms. Black asked, bringing me back to the present.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” I reply, my voice a little shaky. “Could you please repeat that?”

“I asked if you still wanted to keep this information confidential,” she repeated, sounding quite casual about the entire ordeal.

I nodded my response before remembering that she couldn’t see me, letting out a nervous cough and saying, “Yes, I still want this kept between the two of us. That isn’t a problem, right?”

“Of course not,” Black reassured. “There is a level of doctor-to-patient confidentiality that is always in place. Now, back to the results of the test. First off, I’d just like to tell you that if you need any sort of help or person to talk to-”

“I think I’ve got that covered,” I say, my words still coming out rather unsteady, “but thank you for the offer. I really just want to get this over with.”

The nurse hummed her response and the sound of shuffling papers could be heard on the other side of the phone. “Well,” she began, “I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

I let out a dry, humorless chuckle and shook my head. “Normally, I’d say bad news, but I think I’d like to hear the good news about this entire thing first,” I admit.

Black let out another hum in response and let out her own some-what shaky sigh before speaking. “Well, Ms. Manchester,” she said, “after running the test a couple of times, the good news- well, actually I’m assuming that it’s good news for you, is that you’re not pregnant.”

My heart stopped. Although that news beyond relieving, that same bit of good news meant something else entirely. It was bad, very, very bad, and I wasn’t for sure if I was ready to truly face or accept that.

“...now, this test might not be 100% accurate due to the early sample we took, so I’d suggest double checking on your own,” Ms. Black rambled on, obviously still thinking that I was listening. I barely caught on to what she just said before I quickly cut her off.

“Okay, okay, I got that, but-” my voice cracked and my body started to shake. I clear my throat and tried to regain my composure, but the nurse beat me to it.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Manchester, but the test came back positive,” Black told me, her tone almost sorrowful as she spoke. “You were correct in your assumptions, ma’am- you were raped.”

Notes

Merry Christmas everyone! Yes, it is the 26th, but it's still technically the Christmas season, so it's still appropriate. I hope everyone has been doing well, and I do apologise yet again for the late update, but I really have been trying to my best to update. Also on that note, I've edited several of my chapters (one, two, three, and nineteen to be exact), so they're not as choppy/crappy hopefully, and contribute to the plot a bit more as well.

Anyways, I want to thank you all again for sticking with this story and for reading it. I never imagined it would get this much attention, and the fact that people are still coming to read it blows my mind. So yeah, thank you everyone, you're all amazing and the best people in the entire world.