Logan woke up to Kendall's cell ringing. He had pulled far enough away from James for the proximity not to be incriminating before he'd gone to sleep, but they were still facing each other, which was a little weird. Still, he doubted Kendall or Carlos would notice or care, considering the level of profanity Kendall was spewing as he clutched at his head and fumbled for his phone.

"'Lo?" he said in a voice like death. He waited while the person on the other end talked, then replied, "Yeah, that sucks, Natalie. I'm sure everything will be fine. I'm gonna sleep now, okay? Bye." He tossed the phone into a corner and burrowed under the covers again.

"What's the problem?" Logan called. Kendall groaned and swore at him. "Kendall," he ordered.

"My head hurts," Kendall whined. "Nat says the snowplows were redirected down a detour a few hours from here to dig out a hospital."

"And?"

"And we won't be rescued until tonight or tomorrow. Now shut up," he moaned.

"Lightweight," Logan muttered, glancing at the clock. It was already ten AM, but if they didn't have anywhere else to be today, he supposed it didn't matter how late they slept. Logan was already awake, though, so he swung himself out of bed and took a quick shower. A light headache was all he had to show for last night's drinking, so he ran downstairs to the gift shop after he'd dressed to buy some advil and bottled water, intending to leave it all out for the others when they woke up. He was so the band mom, he thought with a laugh.

He met Freight Train and Martin on the way back to the elevators. They filled him in on the snowplow situation. Freight Train seemed calm about the whole ordeal, but Martin was a nervous wreck. Apparently Gustavo had already called him twice that morning. Logan patted him on the shoulder awkwardly and made some hollow reassurances before escaping upstairs, shielding exactly what was in the plastic bag from the other two as well as he could. He didn't know their policy on underage drinking, but he didn't want to risk it.

He set his purchases on the dresser and went back to work on his laptop. He managed to get his whole science project outlined and the citations for his various articles drawn up before the others finally began stirring at noon. James was the first up, looking at him blearily before honing in on the water and drugs on the dresser. He grabbed some of each and ensconced himself in the bathroom for his usual morning primping.

Logan remembered the feel of James snuggled close last night, kissing him softly, and bit his lip. He wanted that again, to be allowed to touch James, to kiss James, when they weren't fucking. To be able to press close without having to slug him on the shoulder and call him 'buddy' afterwards to balance it out. It was a strange feeling, a sort of feminine feeling, Logan thought, and tried to push it away. It wouldn't budge.

Carlos and Kendall emerged from their blanket cave after James vacated the bathroom and were as grateful to empty their bladders as they were for the advil. Kendall showered and Carlos sat cross-legged on the bed, head in his hands and making shushing noises every time one of the other two said anything. Carlos apparently had got the worst of it—when they discussed going down for breakfast, he begged them, "Don't talk about food. Please. Ughhh," which was alarming, coming from him.

James, Logan, and a pissy, hungover Kendall eventually went down for the peanut butter and jelly they knew awaited them, leaving Carlos nursing a water bottle in a mound of blankets. The crew had already eaten, according to the text on Kendall's phone, so they ate at a small table near the window. No more snow had fallen the night before, and unless Logan was imagining things, it looked like the buildup was starting to melt. Logan fervently hoped the temperature kept rising—it would be just their luck for the watery runoff from the melting snow to freeze into a dangerous coating of ice that delayed the snowplows further.

James gradually perked up over breakfast, until he was back to his normal airy self. Even Kendall was looking decidedly less pale by the time they wrapped two sandwiches in napkins to take back up to Carlos in the hopes he would eat something. James whistled what Logan realized after a few bars was My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers." Logan forced back a scowl. He'd almost forgotten the other band was in the hotel. He walked ahead with Kendall to get away, and the whistling had died by the time they reached the elevators. Kendall punched the button and Logan looked around, suddenly aware that James had vanished.

"James?" he called, but there was no response. "You go ahead," he told Kendall as the doors opened. "I'll look for him."

Kendall agreed and Logan backtracked through the hotel, getting halfway to the dining hall before he heard voices. Specifically, James' and Gerard's voices. He gritted his teeth and followed the sound until he came to a sharp bend in the hallway, sure that the two were just around the corner. A huge potted plant was placed against the wall, and it's fronds were large enough to hide Logan's head while still giving him a good view as he peeked around the corner to see what was going on.

Gerard had James backed against the wall, one leg planted dominantly between James'. He wasn't much shorter than James, but his spiky red hair made up for it. James was grinning, leaning against the wall like he owned the space, like he could and maybe would push off and leave at any moment.

"…and you didn't reply to my text last night," Gerard was saying.

"Did it hurt your feelings?" James teased, pouting.

"It did. I was crushed. And I had no one there to help me feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Anything I can do to make it up to you?" James asked with a bit of a purr in his voice. Logan's heart clenched.

"Why don't you come by my room later? I can show you more of my…music." Gerard reached out a hand and ran it down James' side. James caught it as it neared his ass.

"Sure. I'll bring the band. You're so much more experienced than we are. I'm sure you've got a lot to teach us."

James was only saying what he'd told Logan last night, but somehow, saying it like this made it sound filthy. James was in his element like this, but Logan had never seen him seduce another man, especially not one who seemed so dominant. James had turned himself into something sultry, something that was all hooded eyes and dark looks and wet lips. It was hot and Logan hated him for it.

"Let's stop this song and dance," Gerard said with a smirk. "I don't want your band. I want you. In my bed, naked." He leaned in to wisp a breath in James' ear. "I wanna fuck you," he rasped, so low Logan had to strain to hear.

James ran the hand that wasn't gripping the other man's wrist up Gerard's front, stopping to fan his fingers over his chest. Logan burned with jealousy, feeling sick. Then, suddenly, James flexed his muscles and pushed Gerard away. "Listen, Gee," he said, in a normal voice, "you're hot, and flirting with you has been all kinds of fun, but…" He licked his lips. "I'm not going any further."

Gerard and Logan both blinked. "Why?" Gerard asked, looking lost, and Logan had to agree with him. James had certainly been leading him in that direction.

"Um, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm sort of taken?" James bit his lip, looking embarrassed.

"Taken? Jesus, by who?" Gerard's face was a mass of confusion, but then it cleared, leaving him looking amused more than anything else. "Oh wait. Don't tell me it's that one you're screwing—Logan?" Logan's heart leaped to his throat as James flushed red. "Just because you're banging him doesn't mean you're his, you know."

James shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and looked down. "I don't want to talk about it." Gerard huffed an annoyed sigh and James quirked a smile. "Hey, sorry about this. It's been fun, yeah? No hard feelings?"

"Was I this much trouble at eighteen?" Gerard muttered, looking James up and down with obvious lust. "Ah, fuck it. We're cool. Hey, let me kiss you. Just once."

"Just once," James agreed, leaning in. Gerard's eyes closed and at the last second, James turned his head and kissed Gerard softly on the cheek. Gerard gave a startled laugh.

"Bastard!" he called as James walked away, in the direction of the dining hall. "Hey, James, if you ever find yourself single, come find me. You're the hottest thing in Minnesota!"

"In LA, too," James yelled back cockily, turning to give Gerard a sweeping bow before disappearing into the dining hall. Gerard stared after him, hands on his hips, before laughing to himself and turning. Logan scampered, racing around the next turn and hiding behind a sofa in the lobby until he saw Gerard and his flaming red hair disappear into the bank of elevators. Then, heart pounding, he went after James.

He crept into the dining hall on tiptoe, seeing James slumped in a chair at a little two-person table in the corner. James jumped a little when he noticed him.

"Oh. Logan. Hi."

"Where'd you go? I thought you were right behind us," Logan said, dropping into the chair opposite him.

"I, uh, ran into Gerard. We were talking." James wouldn't quite meet his eye.

Logan steeled himself. "I know. I saw. And heard."

James stared at him, eyes wide and going a little pale. "How much did you hear?" he asked nervously.

"I think I only missed the very beginning," Logan said. James closed his eyes.

"Fuck," he whispered.

"Were you just saying all that to make him go away?"

James was silent for nearly a minute. "James?" Logan prodded. James ran a hand through his perfect hair, messing it up. When he spoke, his voice was shaky.

"I can't decide if I should say yes or no to that."

"Why would you say no?" Logan asked, hope flaring in his chest.

"Because it would be the truth," James said, and Logan's heart fluttered.

"James, what are we?" Logan asked, catching his gaze and not looking away. James was silent again and looked a little scared. "I don't think we're just fuck buddies," Logan continued. "I think we might be…um…" He slanted a smile and didn't finish.

"And you're okay with that?" James asked, glancing away out the window behind Logan.

"I am perfect with that," Logan said, and finally James smiled and blushed a little. "I'd kiss you, but I think we might scandalize the chef who's been watching us from the kitchen back there."

James laughed, and Logan joined in, and when they finally walked back to the elevators together, Logan bumped his shoulder against James' and James brushed the backs of their hands together.

Neither of them had confessed anything, not really. There were pages of words they hadn't said, but Logan was relieved. They had talked—sort-of—and nothing had been ruined. In fact, he thought he might have been saved. He absently began to organize the new dynamics of their relationship, but then James caught his eye in the elevator and he forgot why he was trying.

XXXXXX

The rest of the day passed normally, with all of them hanging around in the hotel room as lazy and bored as they'd been last night. They absolutely had to get out of there before too long or Logan suspected they might turn down a dark path for entertainment. Carlos recovered from his hangover fairly quickly after he'd choked down his sandwiches and begged Kendall to go down and get him three or four more. Then Kendall discovered a website on which you could paste your head onto dancing elves, and watching the video over and over and over again occupied them for a good hour. It was as if nothing had changed, really, except that Logan and James kept catching each other's eye and smiling self-consciously.

The sun was setting when Kendall's phone rang, and when he answered it they could all hear Natalie's excited "The snowplows will pass us in an hour!"

"We're saved!" Carlos crowed

"How's the bus? Ready to go? Maybe we can still make it to the next venue," Kendall said into the phone, and he and Natalie continued their strategizing while the others shoved clothes and, in James' case, hair products, into duffel bags. Kendall hung up and they rushed to the lobby to wait.

"Does MCR know?" James wondered, sitting on the edge of one of the couches. Logan looked up from where he was pacing in front of the windows.

"I don't know. Text Gerard." James raised his eyebrows, but did as told. My Chemical Romance arrived in the lobby just as the snowplows rumbled past the drive, tossing snow off to either side to form walls eight feet high. Big Time Rush cheered while Natalie looked like she might faint from relief. The snowplows faded into the distance and Kendall stood up, shouldering his duffel.

"Can we go now?" he asked.

"Uh, guys?" Martin was staring out the window, brow furrowed. "I think we have a problem."

"No! No problems!" Natalie moaned.

"The snowplows cleared the road…" Martin began.

"…But not the parking lot," Logan finished. "There's still almost five feet of snow covering the lot! The cars are still buried!"

"You're kidding," Mikey said, laughing as he came to stand next to Logan.

"What are we gonna do?" Carlos said shrilly. "Wait for it all to melt?"

"Our bus is still on the road, so if we can walk to it we'll be fine," James said.

"We can't just leave Natalie's car and the rest of the cars stranded here…" Logan argued unwillingly.

"Don't be dumb," Kendall told them all. "I have a plan."

Twenty minutes later, Big Time Rush, My Chemical Romance, the hotel staff, a handful of assorted hotel guests, and various crew members were bundled up in eight layers of coats and sweaters and trudging outside, snowshovels in hand. The hotel apparently kept a storage room full of them—something about a screwed-up shipment with one too many zeroes.

Billy and Martin had left, shoving their way through the snow to reach the road. The plan was for them to drive the BTR tourbus over to the hotel driveway to pick up the boys when their shoveling was done. Logan watched them make their slow, steady way across the lot. It looked like a lot of work.

"All we need to do," Kendall called to the assembled group, "is shovel pathways that the MCR bus and the cars can use to get to the road. We don't need to clear the whole lot."

"Uhhh…" Gerard began, leaning on his shovel. "You do realize that there are cars in about eight different areas of the lot?"

"We'll split up," Kendall asserted with undiminished confidence. "Everyone pick a spot and get shoveling!"

"C'mon," James said from behind Logan. "Let's go take that one." He pointed to a lone red truck off to the left, partially hidden behind the tops of a trio of topiaries sticking out of the snow. Logan followed him over to it. The going was as slow as he'd suspected watching Martin and Billy attempt it; they were forced to bodily shove their way through the piled snow to reach the truck. While the snow had melted a bit since yesterday, there was certainly enough to make things difficult. They took turns breaking trail and when they got to the truck, they worked their way behind it and shoved armfulls of snow off the bed to create a space to sit.

"That was exhausting," James said, leaning back against the snow still piled behind him.

"We haven't even started yet."

"Fuck, I know."

"Okay, so the truck is about…oh…five feet wide, so we'll need a path about six feet wide, at an angle of let's say…" Logan trailed off, lost in his calculations. After a few moments of tracing his formulas in the air as he thought, Logan was suddenly dragged onto his back by a sharp tug on his hood. "James, what the hell."

"You know…no one can see us back here." Logan could practically hear him waggling his eyebrows.

"Whatever you're thinking, stop thinking it. I'm not doing anything out here in the cold."

James barked a laugh. "So you're more worried about your butt freezing than us getting caught? Interesting."

"It's not like that! I have vital bits of anatomy to protect," Logan replied hotly. He was no exhibitionist.

"Sure, sure," James said, and suddenly he was looming over Logan and leaning in. Logan shoved him off.

"My nose is runny." Logan snuffed for emphasis.

"I don't care."

"Ew," Logan said decisively, pushing himself up and off the truck bed. James reluctantly followed. "Basically, we don't have to get to the road from here; we just have to join up with the path Freight Train is digging over there. No sharp corners or curves, which will add more work, unfortunately."

James sighed and they began shoveling, working side by side and dumping the snow on top of the already towering drifts. It was long, hard work: the snow was so deep that it took three or four shovelfulls to even reach the ground, and hefting the snow was exhausting. Logan was ready to drop by the time they'd gone ten feet. It was unfortunate that they were in the spacious back lot instead of clearing the small hotel-front parking—it would take the group ages to work around the hotel and to the road. It was full dark only fifteen minutes in and hard to see with only the glow from the streetlights placed at intervals around the perimeter of the lot to guide them.

"All right, boys?" Freight Train called to them from the other side of the lot after half an hour.

"Yeah," they chorused, sounding totally worn down.

Freight Train was having better luck—his size allowed him to push through the snow like it was cotton candy, and he'd abandoned his shovel in favor of this less effortful manner of clearing.

"I'll come help you when I'm done," Freight Train promised.

"Thanks," Logan yelled back.

"Okay, this is ridiculous," James muttered, pitching two quick shovelfulls of snow to the side and tamping down the remaining two-foot-high wedge. He turned and plopped down on top of it, grabbing a fistful of snow to munch on.

"That might not be safe to eat…" Logan said as he cleared his own snow chair to make it a snow bench.

"Fuck it. I'm tired. Now come here," he said, grabbing Logan's arms and dragging him close. Sighing, Logan resigned himself to cold knees and straddled his friend. They were hidden from sight by the towering walls of snow all around them, but when James tried to pull him down again for a kiss, Logan still stopped him. James opened his mouth to say something, but Logan merely held up a finger. He rummaged in his coat pocket and extracted a tissue, skinning off his gloves to blow his nose with a honk.

James shook with laughter under him. "Sexy."

"Shut up," Logan said, and pulled on his gloves again before pushing their chapped lips together. James' mouth and James' body were so warm that Logan felt himself relaxing into him, glad of a respite from the cold that was descending with ever-increasing speed now that night was upon them.

James slid his hands down the slick material of Logan's coat to rest on his ass, pulling him closer. Logan was on his way to hard, but with his long underwear and ski pants, he had no hope of getting relief. He rubbed against James' stomach twice and groaned in frustration.

"This is such a tease," he muttered against James' mouth.

"Warmed you up though, right?"

"I'm hotter than I need to be right now, thank you so much." Logan slid off of James and offered him a hand.

"My butt was going numb anyway," James said. They returned to shoveling, and nearly an hour later, with Freight Train's help, they'd cleared a path snaking around the building to join up with one of the trails Ray and Frank had blazed out front. Kendall and Carlos joined them after clearing paths for a few cars in the front lot, and together the four of them dug out the remaining four cars in the back.

They regrouped by the bus at eight PM. It was parked just outside the drive, looking only slightly the worse for wear. Martin and Billy were arguing over the engine while Natalie scraped ice off of what seemed to be every possible surface. Across the lot, the My Chemical Romance band and crew seemed to be in a similar situation.

"Is it working?" Kendall asked anxiously.

"Shorted out twice on the way over, but I reckon we got it fixed now. Let's us see," Billy said. "Fire it up, Freight Train!"

The bus roared into life and Natalie handed them the keys to the back. Carlos had the door open and was inside in about five seconds, Kendall following.

"Hey, shouldn't we say goodbye?" James asked.

"To the hotel staff? I think they're just glad we're gone," Kendall called from inside. Logan stuck his head in to find Kendall stripping off his winter gear by the couch.

"I think he means to MCR," Logan said.

"Oh. I think I've personally had quite enough of them. Feel free, though."

"Carlos?" Logan asked.

Kendall craned his neck to look into the bunk area. "He's asleep."

Logan had to laugh. "We'll be back soon." Kendall made a face, but Logan ignored him.

He and James set off down one of the newly-cleared paths to the MCR bus and were excitedly hailed by the band once they got close.

"We came to say goodbye," Logan said awkwardly. Mikey pulled them both in for a silly group hug but as usual, Gerard had eyes only for James.

"If we ever cross paths again, just call me. I'll get you tickets and backstage passes," he said.

"Likewise," James replied. "If you can bear the screaming girls."

"We have our share," Mikey said, laughing.

James allowed Gerard to embrace him, and Logan narrowed his eyes as Gerard whispered something into James' ear. "Dick," James said as he pulled back, but he was laughing. The BTR bus honked twice, and James returned to Logan.

"We've got to go," he said.

"I'm sure we'll see you soon," Mikey said. Ray and Frank waved, and Logan and James turned to go.

Logan barely waited until they were out of earshot before rounding on James. "What did he say?" he demanded.

"Jealous much?" James said breezily, but he answered. "He said he wouldn't mind a threesome with me and my boyfriend. He was probably kidding. Maybe."

"Ugh." Logan shoved James into the snowbank and ran the rest of the way back to the bus.

XXXXXXXX

Author's Note:

Hey, so remember last chapter when these idiots couldn't think of a good drinking game to play that wasn't Never Have I Ever? Basically I've determined that no one knows any other good drinking games. Please prove me wrong! If you can describe a good drinking game I haven't heard of (and please none with cards, dice, movies, or tv; that's waaaay too much effort for drunk people), I'll write you a teeny smut ficlet. Either tell me about the game in the reviews of this story or through messaging.

And speaking of reviews, if you haven't already done so (yes, I see you out there, shuffling your feet and looking shifty), I'd be chuffed if you left me a few words. :)