What Makes This Fragile World Go Round [Tom/Mark]/[Mark/Tom/Matt]

2: The Sun's First Ray Ends the Darkest Hour

There was something Tom always liked about the early hours of the morning, just before the sun arose.

Tom was, as you could call him, a night owl.

If he didn't have important things to do during the day, he'd only ever be awake at night, all night. To him, the most interesting things always happened at night. Several parties, meteor showers, lunar eclipses, and other cool shit that he could't quite think of at the moment happened after dark. Once when blink-182 played at warped tour, they stayed in a hotel room which had a perfect view of the city they had played in earlier that day. Tom stayed up all night looking out the window. He watched as all the buildings shone all kinds of colored light and each window on the skyscrapers were illuminated. Cars passed through, their headlights adding more lights. Tom thought it was pretty. He watched until eventually, the cars disappeared from the roads and many of the buildings shut their lights off. He watched as the moon disappeared and the sky was extremely dark as this quadrant of the world anticipated the rising of the sun. And he watched until the sun began to peek from between the city's tall buildings. He wished he had a camera back then, one with as high quality as the several that he owned back home now that were probably scattered about his house. He could have taken a picture of the pale blue sky with the sun's pink streaks shining between the buildings. He would've printed it out and framed it and hung it up on his wall. Or he could've printed a small copy and tucked it in to the trifold of his wallet.

A sudden sadness washed over Tom as he laid in the hotel bed, Mark a solid weight beside him.

The last time the two of them had fallen asleep in the same bed like this had been many, many years ago.

He remembered clearly.

Before the release of Enema of the State.

They were had finished the last few shows of their latest tour and were graced with sleeping in a hotel.

Blink was big, they could afford fancy hotels now. But they cringed at the thought of paying for several expensive rooms. They were still getting used to the fact that they had money they could spend. They just saw themselves as a group of boys who wanted to play music.

Scott had been gone for a while now, things were starting to change.

Tom remembered that night well.

Travis was crashed out in his own bed, sleeping soundly on the other side of the room, while Tom and Mark curled together on the other bed.

"I figured out how I want the bass in the song to sound." Mark said, sleepily. He had his arms wrapped around Tom from behind, spooning the younger man.

"Which song?" Tom whispered, staring blankly in to the darkness of the room.

"Adam's song." Mark said. "I've got it all planned out in my head and it sounds great. But I'm not gonna stress about it anymore. Now we need to relax. We just finished a long tour and I bet you're as exhausted as I am. Thank god it's over and we survived. Tomorrow, we're gonna be headed home. And then we'll put together our next album."

Mark hadn't told Tom anything else about the song. Only that it was called Adam's song and he found the perfect bass line for it.

"That's great," a sleepy smile formed on Tom's lips. "I can't wait to get home. And I bet the song'll sound great...your song's always sound great, Marky."

The memory faded from Tom's mind and he sighed.

They released the next album, All the Small Things became their hit song, and they made it bigger then they had ever imagined.

Raking in tons of money. They could afford separate hotel rooms and they rode in private jets. They bought huge houses and new equipment and started companies and families.