Levitate (A Bad Omens RPF)

Chapter 9

Our first rest day came on November 6th, nestled nicely between a show in Tampa and one in Houston. After three nights of shows, I was already beginning to appreciate how important the breaks were.

Though I had expected to be tired, I still found it within myself to be shocked at just how exhausting touring really was.

I had been a part of plenty of live gigs before, but nothing like this. Doing festivals and performing at local venues left me feeling inadequately prepared for life on the road. At one off shows, it was almost always the same. We would sing our songs, clean up, enjoy some of the other bands, and leave.

Touring, obviously, was much different. At the end of each set, we would watch from side stage and cheer for Noah and the guys. Then we spent an hour or more in the front lobby of every venue, talking and interacting with more people than I'd ever spoken to in my life.

This had become routine after the first night, when Folio dragged me and the girls along with him into the lobby. At these times, when people asked for pictures and signatures on increasingly strange parts of their bodies (seriously, who wants a musician to autograph their left kneecap?) I tried my best to ignore the feeling that I did not belong there.

It was difficult, of course. Spiritbox and Bad Omens had been at this a lot longer than we had and it felt as though we were just trailing in their shadow like a group of lost puppies hoping for scraps of their stardom.

Though the girls agreed when I raised this comparison to them, no one in either band would hear of it. They insisted that they wanted us to do well, and that we deserved all the recognition we got. I did my best to believe them.

So, for the last three nights, we had performed and talked to anyone who wanted to talk to us. Then we helped to clear off the stage and clean up the green room after every show. It was far more taxing than a regular one off performance.

I was beyond grateful for a break when it finally came, to say the least. However, the day didn't start off very well.

On the morning of November 6th, I was jolted awake to the grating sound of an alarm blaring through the sleeping area. I stared dazedly at the bottom of Jolly's bunk, allowing my eyes to adjust to the half-light.

Several of the other's seemed to have been awoken as well. Nic, Noah, and Analie groaned in sleepy unison. I rolled clumsily, bumping my elbow on something in the darkness, and let out a pained hiss as my entire arm began to tingle.

Poking my head around my privacy curtain, I was blinded by the morning light seeping into the bus. It took a moment for my eyes to feel as though they were working properly, and I squinted to see what was going on around me.

"Turn that shit off," Noah griped, and I saw that he too was peering out of his bunk, looking about as disoriented and drowsy as I felt.

His hair was tousled as though he were having the best sleep of his life moments before, and his eyes were narrowed against the early sunlight. He looked... my sleep addled brain couldn't put a word to how he looked. However, I blearily decided that I liked his bedraggled appearance a little more than I probably should have.

"Sorry," I heard Jolly say sheepishly, from above my head.

"Dude," Analie mumbled, her voice dampened, as she hadn't even bothered with moving her curtain, "it is seven-thirty in the morning. We are supposed to be resting. Why do you have an alarm set?"

I squinted, reaching behind me and finding my phone tangled in my blanket, to see that it was, indeed, just after seven-thirty.

"Jolly likes fish," Nic grunted, as if this clarified anything.