Title: Life Is Life
Summary: Once upon a time there was a fanfic called Believe In Me. This is the revamped version. "Left his house at midnight, resolute and young, in search of something greater than the person he'd become." AU Smitchie.
Authors Note: At this rate I'll have everything finished by Christmas. I realise that Camp Rock isn't the most popular category these days on account of the movies having finished and the stars having moved on to other things, and I also realise that this is basically a story you all know already, but I got nearly 100 hits yesterday and one (lovely, I'm not complaining) review. There's going to be some fairly major changes, I can guarantee that. So please, if you think anything about this story, press that review button, yeah? And I'm sorry for all the emails, it kept screwing up my formatting!
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Music: King of Anything – Sara Bareilles
You've got opinions, man
We're all entitled to 'em
But I never asked
So let me thank you for time
And try to not waste any more of mine
Get out of here fast
Shane could see what was going to happen before it did, not because he had been hiding a psychic power for his entire life but because it was just so damn obvious. The only part that he wouldn't have found obvious – had someone explained this exact scenario to him and asked him, hypothetically, what he'd do – was his reaction.
His answer to the hypothetical situation would have been that he'd do nothing. This girl was on the roof, she knew the dangers, and therefore she had to deal with it if she fell off because she was so shocked at something as mundane (well, mundane where Shane was concerned) as the appearance of a celebrity at the bottom of her driveway. The words 'served her right' would have been used in his reply at some point, followed by an uncaring shrug.
His answer to the actual, real life, happening-in-front-of-his-eyes situation was completely different. The girl that he'd been conversing with was falling off of her roof and for some inexplicable reason, Shane felt like he had to save her.
One second he was running to try and catch her, the next second he was collapsed on the lawn underneath her, considerably more bruised than he had been the moment before. Well, he thought, as she groaned and moved off him quickly, that would teach him for trying to help someone.
"Ugh." She groaned again, sitting up slowly and beginning to inspect her body for any damage that might need medical attention. Shane presumed she found nothing too serious – his presumption based upon the fact that he wasn't being told to call an ambulance for a broken spine or something similar – and mimicked her sitting action so that they were both upright on the lawn.
"Well, that was lame. I'm sorry. I could say that that's the first time that's ever happened to me, because it is, but that probably won't make this any better. Are you okay? I'm so sorry."
She continued to apologise, the guilty expression on her face removing most of Shane's indignation about the position he had found himself in. People were always apologising to him, so much so that he was generally annoyed by every utterance of the word 'sorry', but there was something about these circumstances that made it more amusing than frustrating. Maybe he was amused at himself for thinking he could've caught this girl, or maybe he was just having a moment of weakness. Still, he didn't want the apologies to go on for too much longer and so he did the only thing he could think of; he smiled at her, and was pleased to see her opt to smile hesitantly back.
Except then, seconds after the smile, the girl's eyes grew wide and the smile on Shane's face faded. Oh no. Here it was.
He had been witness to many an occasion where that exact expression appeared on the face of a girl and it always ended in the same way. The all-familiar 'oh-my-god-you're-Shane-Grey' scream would pierce the air and this conversation would end in the exact way he'd wanted to avoid it ending. She was going to freak, declare her love for him, possibly even propose, and he was going to have to make a break for it. That was how this scene always ended.
"Oh my God!" She hissed, jumping to her feet in one swift movement, a feat that Shane would have been impressed by had he not been wincing at the imminent screech.
"Please don't scream my name," he said, taking advantage of the hesitation to appeal to her, though he was fairly certain it wouldn't matter. She didn't even look like she'd heard him. So, he closed his eyes, holding his breath while he waited for the inevitable.
"Oh my God!" She repeated, turning around to face her house and ignoring the famous person sitting on the front lawn opposite her entirely. "I'm… I'm… I am totally locked out!"
Beat.
Shane opened one eye. Then the other. Then he wrinkled his nose.
"Wait, what?"
Needless to say, that had not been what he was expecting at all. Nobody - nobody that he could remember anyway - had ever been concerned about anything but him when they met him. He was in this girl's garden at gone midnight, having just been crushed by her because of his pathetic attempt to try and catch her, and she hadn't even batted an eyelid at who he was? It was preposterous. It was unheard of!
The only way he could possibly justify it in his mind was that she was attempting to play it cool in front of him, and in all frankness he'd much rather she didn't. He may have been dreading the familiar undying love exchange, but this was unnerving.
"My parents are asleep! It's almost one in the morning! My keys are in the house; I put them on the table in the hall. Oh, shit! The only way back in that I have is through my bedroom window and the only way I'm getting up there is with a ladder, which I clearly don't have on me. Shit. This is not good, this is… really not good."
Shane did not know what to say. This girl was good at playing it cool, damn good. He was almost forced to concede that she genuinely didn't care who he was, but decided to question it just a little more to be completely sure.
Standing up, he held his hands out in the universal 'hold up just a minute' motion as he spoke. "You're worried about being locked out?"
An expression of incredulity washed over the face of the girl he was looking at and she nodded as though she were speaking to a child of five years old. "Yes. It's one in the morning. That is my house. My keys are inside. My mom and dad are asleep. Don't you think it makes sense to be worried about being locked out?"
Her words were enunciated and patronising and Shane suddenly felt very stupid – not that he was going to let this girl know that. He didn't let anyone know when he was feeling stupid, let alone strangers.
The words that he allowed to leave his lips next though did not help in his endeavour to appear less ignorant and accompanied with the grand gesture he made as he spoke (in which he pointed to himself as though she may not have yet seen him) it would have been fair to say that he looked a prize idiot.
"But… I'm Shane Grey."
Now: a word on Mitchie's take on the matter.
Of course, the fact that she had just fallen off of her roof in front of a celebrity was not lost on her. Not only that, but she'd fallen off of her roof and fallen onto him, leaving them both spread-eagled on her front lawn. Mitchie definitely felt like a loser, but Mitchie felt like a loser quite a lot of the time - and so while the situation was highly embarrassing it was not as vital as working out how she was going to get back into her house. This did quite a good job at explaining why she seemed less than bothered about Shane Grey being in her garden and very bothered about not having her keys; she was less than bothered about Shane Grey being in her garden and very bothered about not having her keys.
Still, even the crisis of being locked out of her house paled in comparison to such egotistical behaviour and for a fraction of a second Mitchie believed that he was joking. Hence her initial comment: "Are you kidding me?"
"I think we've established that I'm not."
It was difficult for even Mitchie, ex-fan of Connect 3 who had denounced her love for the band because of the actions of the guy standing in front of her, to believe that anyone could be quite this narcissistic. But here the proof was, his expression one of confusion as he stood in the suburbs of Cohasset, Massachusetts being given a big fat reality check; the world did not revolve around him.
"Well, Shane Grey, I actually think that being locked out of my house at midnight is a little more important than you stopping by. But you're free to think otherwise, we're all entitled to our own opinion."
She didn't even wait for a reaction before she turned around and glared back up at the house as though willing the structure to recognise who she was and open its' doors for her.
When it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen – well, it had been the mother of all long shots – Mitchie heaved a sigh and, as if she couldn't embarrass herself further, began talking to herself. "My mom is going to go crazy. Michaela Marie Torres, why were you sitting on the roof, don't you know what could have happened?"
Shane Grey was obviously more stupid than she'd ever anticipated, because even though she'd verbally dressed him down only seconds before, he piped up once again. "Yeah. Surely a girl who's that worried about being locked out should know better than to sit on the roof. Anything could have happened."
"Nothing would have happened if you hadn't come along and started hiding behind trees, pop star." Mitchie didn't even turn around to face Shane as she spoke, the scorn in her voice meaning that he didn't even need to see her face to work out how her words were to be taken. "And speaking of which, what was all that about? Hiding in trees and talking to strangers?"
And then, as a new thought occurred to her, she spun around to look at him, eyes wide. "Was it coincidental that you happened to find the house of someone who was at your concert? Or were you stalking me? That seems like it's the wrong way around, really; aren't I supposed to be the one stalking you? Not that I would, I don't even…" Recognising that she was probably digging herself into a hole now, Mitchie trailed off, her gaze still resting on the face of the singer.
Shane had scoffed loudly as soon as the stalking accusation had left her lips and almost as soon as he was given the opportunity to interject he took it to protest fiercely. "I wasn't stalking you. God. I was just walking and I happened to hear you and then you called out and you know the rest." Giving a short laugh, he shook his head in disbelief. "Stalking you. Please."
There was a pause of only a few seconds before Shane took a turn to throw another thought into the conversation. "And it's rock star."
This comment made Mitchie laugh, a real full-of-humour laugh, though she wasn't sure it was meant to.
"Whatever, pop star."
Although he'd made himself look stupid, Shane wasn't stupid. He knew full well that she wasn't going to be getting into her house unless she woke her parents up, and he knew that if she got inside her house then there was no way that they were going to speak any more. And for some reason – whether it was the fact that she'd stood up to him, or the fact that she'd been honest, or just the fact that she was a pretty girl and he was Shane Grey – he wanted to speak to her some more. He just needed an idea, a way to give them more time to have more conversation.
"Want to go for a walk?"
It was his ego talking, but he couldn't imagine her turning him down, even though she'd been less than impressed with him so far. Even the people that didn't like him wanted to spend time in his presence, he'd learned that over the years, and Shane refused to believe that this girl – Michaela – would feel any differently.
That was why, even when she narrowed her eyes at him and uttered a "why?" that was loaded with suspicion, he didn't even falter.
"Because you're not getting into your house any time soon, you probably have a lot of questions about me and you might end up having more fun than you'd admit."
He watched with confidence as her eyes flickered back to the front door of her house and then slid back to meet his own.
"So what do you say?" he asked, his five words stamping out all hesitation in her mind.
"Okay. Sure."
Mitchie was intrigued; that was her only excuse. She was curious about Shane Grey, and despite the fact that she'd decided a long time ago that she disliked him she couldn't resist the opportunity to quench that curiosity. That was why she'd agreed to go for a walk, that was why she'd agreed to ignore the voice of reason in her head that was telling her to wake her parents and get back into the sanctuary of her house, away from pop stars who may or may not also be stalkers.
But she had to admit that so far Shane was disappointing her. Okay, so they'd only been walking for about a minute, but he hadn't said a thing, and she certainly didn't want to end up walking around Cohasset in silence. She might as well have gone in to bed.
Just as she was racking her brain to think of something to break the silence with, Shane inhaled sharply and then his voice cut through the tension.
"So…" he began, stealing an awkward glance in her direction. He hadn't really thought this thing through, if he was honest with himself, but he'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it. Even though that idiom made no sense to him at all. If he'd made his bed, why was he going to lie in… unnecessary tangent. "Are we going to say anything?"
Mitchie laughed lightly, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know. Are we?"
"I'd like to…"
The silence crept back upon them and this time Mitchie felt compelled to forge forwards with a topic that stuck: "How about we play twenty questions?
"Do the ones you already asked me count?"
"Nope. We'll start anew. Twenty questions each."
"Is passing allowed?"
"No," was her instantaneous answer, but at the look on Shane's face she revised it somewhat, rolling her eyes as she did so. "Fine. What about… It's a game. You can only pass if you have a very good reason and if the other person answers the next question without passing… they win. And you lose."
Shane nodded, a steely glint in his eye as though this were a challenge of the mind, body and soul that he had to conquer. "Okay. But I get to go first."
There seemed very little point in protesting as far as Mitchie was concerned. She had, after all, been the one asking all the questions earlier on in their conversation, even if she was at the disadvantage of not being able to target the questions to who he was on account of the fact that she didn't know who he was. Then again, he was at a disadvantage now; all the trivial stuff about him was practically common knowledge, but he wouldn't know a single thing about her. She didn't have her own fan site.
He had obviously been thinking the same thing, because his first question went a little something like this: "Back to basics. How old are you, Michaela Marie Torres?"
This unnerved Mitchie more than a little bit; her eyes widened and then narrowed in quick succession and she tilted her head to one side as she turned her body so that it was facing him a little more. "How do you know my name?"
A cocky smile appeared on Shane's face, and with a tone to match he replied. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to answer a question with a question?"
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to hide in trees at midnight?"
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to sit on your roof without your keys at hand?"
"Nope. Nobody ever told me not to do that. Seriously though, my name? How do you know it?"
"You said it back there," Shane revealed, not reluctantly. "When you were talking to yourself about keys and your mom going crazy."
Mitchie's face coloured slightly – at the time she hadn't felt embarrassed by it at all, but when he spoke about it like that the notion of talking to herself did seem odd. "Oh. Right." Well, she wasn't going to allow them to dwell on that thought for long, and so after clearing her throat to dispense of any lingering awkwardness she went on with the question. "I'm eighteen. Born on the 5th of November 1993."
After she'd answered the question at hand, her thoughts turned to the question that she was going to ask. There were the obvious ones, of course, but they all felt rather rude and confrontational even in her head, so aloud they'd probably be even worse. She couldn't ask him them; even if he had proven himself to be a bit of a jerk, Mitchie didn't have to be a jerk back.
As a result, she went with the first non-offensive question she could think of.
"What were you doing walking around Cohasset?"
It was a lame question, she was well aware of that fact, but the scoff that Shane gave as the question rolled from her tongue annoyed her more than a little bit. Like his had been imaginative or hard-hitting.
"That's your question?" he asked, the derision dripping from his tone.
"Well, aside from the variants of 'why are you such a douchebag', yes," she snapped.
Such a remark was not new to Shane; in fact it was the sort of thing Nate said to him on an almost daily basis. It was the circumstances in which it was being said that halted him in his tracks. It was the fact that he was so used to people worshipping at his feet, so used to people telling him how great it was, and here was this girl whom he had never met before completely contradicting that. Was this how people really saw him? Was this how normal, sane people who didn't want to marry and have his children saw him?
He opened his mouth to say something, what he hadn't really decided yet, but Mitchie had continued, speaking with ire in her voice.
"I felt guilty, you know, when I found out that it was you because I'd said that your show was void of passion and soul. But I can see exactly why it was void of passion and soul now. Look at you! You're exactly what HotTunes says you are; you're arrogant and self-obsessed and angry and bordering on cruel sometimes, throwing tantrums like a two-year-old when someone doesn't straighten your hair perfectly or they catch you in a bad light when they're taking your picture. How can you have everything – everything that I, and a million other people all over the world, can only dream of having – and still be like you are? I didn't even want to go to your concert tonight, you know. I didn't even want to go, my friend got us tickets and I always cave when she begs, but I went into that hall open to the possibility that maybe you weren't like they said you were. But you are. You are and I can't believe that someone hasn't said this to you sooner. I'm a person, Shane. And funnily enough, I was taught not to treat people the way that you're treating most people around you."
People were scared of Shane. Intimidated. Nobody wanted to be that forthcoming with him because his reputation pegged him as a guy with a fierce temper, not much of a conscience and not a care regarding what people thought of him. Nate had tried to serve him a reality check or two, but his anger tended to get the better of him before he could say anything of real impact. Magazines and TV channels had said their fair share too, but that was like water off a duck's back.
These words, from a girl who only knew vague hearsay and what she'd been presented with tonight, were different. These words were like bullets. Here was a girl who had no real impact on the world. Not many people would be influenced by what she said, which meant that out of everyone she was the most likely to tell it like she saw it. And boy was she telling it like she saw it.
As Mitchie reached the end of her tirade, she too was feeling something akin to shock and for similar reasons. Shane couldn't believe anyone had the courage to say that to him, Mitchie couldn't believe she'd had the courage to say that to him. Guilt wracked through her, she had probably gone too far with her rant, but she remained stone-faced. She may have stepped over the line, but he needed to hear it. Now he had.
It was clear to the both of them that the only person who was going to break the silence would be Shane, but he hadn't a clue how to go about it. What was he to say in reply to that brutal honesty? Yes, an apology would have been ideal but, again, apologies were not Shane Grey's forte. "I… I do not yell at people for not straightening my hair perfectly."
She had to admit, she was inclined to breathe a sigh of relief at such a typical Shane Grey response. At least he hadn't completely flipped out. There was something new in his eyes though, a flicker of an unidentified emotion that hadn't been there before. Hurt, maybe? Anger? Could the bomb still go off at any moment?
"Whatever," she shrugged, starting to walk once again. "Where are we walking to?"
Shane forced himself to drag his thoughts away from her words and back into the present. Where were they walking? Where was he? Where was the tour bus? He looked to his right and to his left as though a sign were about to sprout up from the ground pointing him in the exact direction of Nate and Jason and then, when it didn't, he groaned.
"You don't know where you are, do you?" Mitchie asked, surveying the man in front of her carefully. When Shane finally shook his head (he saw no other alternative) she sighed, stopping once more and gesturing for him to catch up. "Come on, I was at your concert. I know where your bus is."
Looking at her momentarily with a confused expression painted across his features – she was still going to help him? – it took Shane all of two seconds to decide that yes, he was going to follow her. Lost in Cohasset, Massachusetts was not something he wanted to be.
When he got level with the brunette, she stuck out her right hand. "Okay. Start over. Hi, I'm Mitchie Torres."
"Hey, Mitchie. I'm Shane Grey." He shook her hand with a genuine smile on his face.
The smile he received in response was a natural reaction, there was very little doubt about that, and Mitchie dropped his hand and continued on her way with a more chipper spring in her step. "Well, pop star. Let's go and find your band. There's a small possibility that they're missing you."
