Frustration -SERIES- [Part 2] Headphones & Reveries [boyxboy]

Chapter Twenty Four

'You're gonna meet us in Miami, right?' I double-, triple-, quadruple-checked with Chloe.

'Of course,' she said breezily. 'Freya and I will both be there.'

I was feeling unreasonably anxious about being separated from her for any length of time, having spent a full two weeks living practically in her pocket.

'You'll be fine,' she said softly, pressing her forehead to mine and grinning. 'Look at how well you've done. I'm very proud of you, you know.'

I looked away, feeling self conscious. 'Shut up,' I muttered, and she laughed, pulling away. We glanced over to where Freya was saying goodbye to Philip; he was hugging her, petting her hair and looking panicked while she cried.

'She gets attached very easily,' Chloe explained. 'She falls hard, Freya. She'll be okay though.' She rolled her eyes. 'It's only two days.'

The girls were staying behind in New York while the rest of us suffered through the two day bus journey south, opting instead to fly down and meet us in Miami on Wednesday. They were going to be pretty busy after that and wouldn't make it to many of the other shows until the end of the tour, so they wanted to make sure they got to the Miami gig.

Eventually we all piled onto the bus and waved at Chloe and Freya through the windows as it pulled away.

Conor was focusing intently on something on his phone and suddenly he turned to Sarah, looking triumphant. 'Look,' he said victoriously. 'See? We'll be in Miami by five pm on Wednesday. Just like I promised.'

'Oh well done, Conor,' she said sarcastically. 'Next time you want to jeopardise a whole tour to go to a party, you tell the record label.'

'I would have told them this time if you'd asked me,' Conor said archly, before getting up and walking to the far end of the bus and climbing into one of the bunks.

Good idea, I thought, following him.

'Hey you,' he said happily, when I closed the curtain around the bed and squeezed in next to him under the covers. 'Naptime for you too, huh?'

'Not exactly,' I said, grinning, and pushing him down, leaning him over him, kissing him.

'Oomf,' he mumbled, surprised, against my lips, but kissed me back. I was going pretty hot and heavy but he pushed me back, kissing me gently instead. 'It really is naptime for me,' he said after a minute.

I made a face. 'You just woke up two hours ago,' I said. 'I sleep right next to you. You slept all night.'

'Yeah,' he argued, 'but beating up perverts really takes it out of me. Here,' he said, turning me around and spooning up behind me, wrapping an arm around my waist tightly. 'You can be my teddy bear.'

'Hmph,' I muttered, but let him, even though I wasn't tired at all. I wriggled until I could reach my phone and spent a few hours scrolling through Tumblr instead while he breathed evenly into the back of my neck. I thought when he woke up we could resume fooling around but no - he'd had a dream about a melody and jumped out of bed in a rush to find Sally to have her help him get it down on paper before it dissipated.

We spent that night in a hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, and once again, figuring he'd be pretty well rested at this point, I tried climb on top of him and get something going but once again he tried to fend me off. Annoyed, I played my trump card and pulled out The Tyler, but he just put his hands playfully over the top half of my face, kissed me, and manoeuvred us back into the spooning position.

Confused and frustrated, I lay awake for a couple of hours fuming before finally drifting off to sleep. When I woke up the following morning he was already in the shower and I was starting to feel like I knew better than to try and join him. I got dressed and left the room before he emerged from the bathroom, slinking into the hotel's dining room for breakfast and dropping sulkily into a chair beside Jackson.