A/N: So, I decided to continue this story. This chapter follows after the events of the first, but I'm not sure if I'll keep doing that or not. Thank you for all of your reviews! And yes, they're sleepy again. I have problems. Please read and review :)
Ally wished the blue and pink lights flashing into the tour bus windows were generated by a patrol car scanning this seedy Las Vegas motel parking lot where they were expected to sleep for the night. While she'd never been to Nevada before, she was pretty sure law enforcement vehicles weren't likely to play a dubstep remix of "It's Raining Men" at two in the morning with the bass vibrating the entire bus like it was in the beginning stages of being beamed up into a hovering Zalien spacecraft. Covering her ears with her last clean pair of socks, Ally tried to think of any logical reason for how they'd ended up parked between what looked like a negative four star motel and Thorny Devils, a male strip club.
She plopped her forehead down against the kitchenette table and hoped the stickiness at her hairline was just egg yolk from Dez's failed attempt at breakfast.
"It's official," Trish said. She melodramatically smacked the table. "I am firing Jimmy Star!"
"Yeah? You and what unicorn army?" Dez's voice sounded like he was still on the couch, though Ally wasn't sure with her eyes closed.
Trish slapped down her other hand. "Ginger Brain Man, why don't you just shut your frosting mouth before anything else stupid comes out of it?"
Ally raised her head, squinting.
Austin was standing next to Ally with both arms out like a crossing guard. "You guys, let's not let a little bit of sleep loss make us turn on each other. I think this parking lot has seen enough homicide as is."
Trish scoffed. "A little bit of sleep loss? Austin, we were up at four A.M. for back-to-back morning show interviews, then a press conference, then a meet and greet with fans, dance rehearsals, sound check, and a concert with two encores. Then we spent two and a half hours finding this craphole, deciding not to stay here, and discovering all the nearby hotels are either too expensive or are apparently filled with gamblers and hordes of your four-foot, lip-glossed, clothes-tearing tween demon fans."
Ally nodded drowsily, her make-shift and inefficient sock sound-blockers abandoned. She propped an elbow on the table and rested her cheek against her fist. "So much sparkly Lip Smackers. I felt like I was in a seventh grade slumber party."
Dez snuggled into the couch cushions. "Weren't those the best slumber parties though? Staying up all night, telling secrets, eating an entire roll of raw double fudge chunk cookie dough, fighting over whether to watch Mean Girls or Pretty Woman first, avocado face scrubs and those tiny, little foamy things that separate all your toes when you get a pedicure."
Austin pursed his lips. "I don't think I did any of that stuff at sleepovers, which is what I call them, because I'm a man."
Dez shrugged. "I happen to have a sister. It's not like I've asked for a pedicure or something, they just happen between making seven layer bean dips and hearing Hillary explain how much she hates wearing baggy shorts in gym glass. It's like a natural event of the night. Not all of us can sling around tractor tires and roll around in the mud and yell on rooftops."
"Is that your idea of what men do?" Trish massaged her left temple. "Forget it. As I was saying, after being nearly trampled to death by 'adoring' fans, we drove back here. I know we're like eight blocks from the next show, but I seriously doubt Jimmy had any idea of what this place looked like when he made the suggestion. I got fleas from just glancing at that motel."
Ally listlessly played with the ends of her hair. "I am so tired."
"Ally, are you alright?" Austin's hand was warm on her back. "You look pale, like paler than normal."
She rolled her eyes. "Just because I live in sunscreen, doesn't mean you can make fun of my albino, skin cancer-free pigmentation."
Dez jolted up from his lounging position on the couch. "Ally has an albino pig? Ooh, what's his name?"
"Dez!" Trish glared.
"Sorry." He raised his hands in apology. "What's her name? I am all up for equal rights for all swine no matter their gender."
Trish was in the middle of angrily gaping when another burst of female shrieks filled the bus along with the sound of congas, synthesizers, and some sort of lyrics about Africa.
Ally grumbled into her palm. "It's bad enough Jimmy has us zigzagging across the country with no concern for conserving gas. I mean, who books the first show of a tour in Philadelphia when you start in Florida? Not to mention you went from Chicago to Portland, literally across the country. And now our new neighbors are sleazy, scantily dressed male dancers."
Austin frowned from his new seat on the couch. "What makes them so sleazy?"
Ally's mind had wandered to different varieties of breakfast burritos. "What makes who so sleazy?"
"The dancers in the club. They're just guys performing for a bunch of screaming girls. They have wardrobe changes and choreography and sometimes the audience gets a little handsy. What makes them so much different from me?"
"Uh, well, let me think." She furrowed her brow in faux concentration. "You sing, you don't take your clothes off, and, not to make assumptions about the surely classy establishment of Thorny Devils, which is named after a desert lizard native of Australia, which moves along the sand like a leaf and has a tail…."
Trish rattled the blinds next to her. "Ally! Make a point before every single neon bulb in Vegas consecutively burns out!"
"Right, sorry." She tried to blink her concentration back into her skull, but she swore her eyelids were collecting desert sand. "As I was saying, you're not going around giving any private, one-on-one dances."
"That's ridiculous. I can't even count how many times we've both been in the practice room or my bedroom or your bedroom at who knows what time in the morning, and you ask me to dance to help you come up with lyrics. We even reenacted the lifting over the head, shirtless scene from Dirty Dancing." He nodded, appearing pleased at making a point, paused, then looked petrified.
Ally could feel a blush creeping up the back of her neck like a color-changing thorny devil. It didn't help when Trish and Dez managed to simultaneously "Oooooh!" as if they'd suddenly morphed into a pair of seventh grade girls.
And just like that time in the seventh grade when Ally spilled chocolate milk down the front of her white jeans, she stood up and announced, "I have to go to the bathroom."
Fifteen frantic steps and two closed doors later, she was hiding in the shower, sure that Trish had conjured up some mental image of Ally instructing Austin to dance around like her personal cabana boy. She wasn't even sure if dancing was technically in a cabana boy's job description. What the heck was a cabana boy anyway? She couldn't think.
Aside from wanting to escape humiliation, she'd thought the bathroom might be a little calmer than the main area of the bus. Unfortunately, the heavy use of metal in the room seemed to absorb even more of the throbbing wub wub wub of the music.
After about five minutes or so of contemplating sleeping standing up and maybe having a brief image of Austin in nothing but leather chaps cross her mind, she heard the door open and close.
"Ally?" Austin whispered.
It was kind of adorable because she knew him enough to hear in that one word that he was sorry, ashamed, and a little scared. And it made her feel guilty because she had overreacted. Austin had been her boy friend at one time, and they weren't exactly subtle about how much they'd missed each other before she joined the Full Moon Tour. There was also that time in her bunk two nights ago that they hadn't talked about, but Trish had definitely overheard. Surprisingly, she'd only brought it up once and was bored when she found out it was just some light making out.
Ally cleared her throat. "Austin, I'm in here."
In the next moment, the door was ajar as Austin practically leapt inside. The force of his lurch made the glass marbled shower door swing shut, knocking him into Ally as she slammed the back of her head into the wall. With the spacing equivalent slightly less than an airplane bathroom, Ally made a vain attempt to rub the surely forming bruise on her scalp. Instead, she elbowed a toiletry shelf.
"Sorry," he said. "I was trying to be dramatic or gallant or something when I jumped in here, not knock you unconscious and try to grope you." He'd had to brace himself when tumbling forward and his palms were on her upper chest/bra strap region. After momentarily pausing, he lifted them to rest against the wall on either sides of her, further showcasing his snug white v-neck. "Also, I'm sorry about what I said in front of Trish and Dez. That was a jerk move on my part."
She smiled. "It's not a big deal. I got embarrassed for no reason. I was acting like one of those tween demon fans Trish was talking about…except for the demon part…and I guess not the fan part either."
Austin puckered his lips in his perfect puppy dog pout. "You're not a fan anymore? Have you outgrown me? Moved on to Harry Styles?"
She chuckled. "Just because I pretended to be Taylor Swift once doesn't mean I'm into any of her ex-boyfriends. And not that you need to hear this or anything, but you're much cuter." She trailed a finger down his chest. "You're also not covered in tattoos."
"Very true. I'm afraid of needles, and my parents would smother me in a pile of discounted mattresses."
She let her head thud against the wall. "A pile of mattresses sounds like the best thing in the world right now."
They didn't say anything for a second, just standing there in the shower stall, listening to the start of a song she'd thought she'd heard in Magic Mike that made innuendoes about saddles and horses and it also sort of reminded her of those leather chaps from before.
"Think Channing Tatum is in there?" He shimmied, smirking.
She laughed and shook her head. "As fun as this is, I really want to sit down."
Somewhere in her fuzzy, wee-hour-of-the-morning logic, she decided the best way to get them out of there was to knee the door open, because her left one was pretty close to the glass and her upper body had been unintentionally pinned in by two muscled arms. Once this action had been performed, she realized the barrier between her and the door prevented her from lodging it open. That barrier was Austin's hips, where her leg was hoisted up like she was in the middle of some sort of uncoordinated ballet stretch.
He inhaled sharply. "Whoa."
She attempted to back away, but her foot found the one wet spot on the floor. On instinct, she hooked her leg around his to keep herself steady, but it only made them both knock into the wall again. Gaining some balance, she shifted her hips, only to feel his against hers, because oh yeah, she'd started this whole indecent position in the first place. But, his hand was cupping the inside of her knee, matching her shifting motion in a way that made her close her eyes. "Whoa."
He groaned. "Sorry, I shouldn't have done that. We're both super tired and kind of trapped in a shower."
She would later, during private retellings of this story between the two of them, deny she made such a bold, crass next move. She'd deny lifting her other leg to match the angle of the first or pushing into him several times until he was kissing her as her body rhythmically hit the cool surface of the wall still thrumming from the background track of a male stripper.
She gripped the back of his head as his lips found her shoulder. "This feels really good."
He sighed, moving to her collarbone. "I'm so glad you said that."
His pace seemed to quicken. She moaned. "Why?"
"I was going to ask if you wanted me to stop."
"Don't."
He's breathing was heavier. "Are you…?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Pretty close, yeah." He kissed her again.
Just a few seconds later, she was there, frozen as the feeling rained down on her like the dripping nozzle above her head. One or two more rough movements and he slumped against her, their cheeks pressed together. "There's no way I'm not sleeping like a baby now."
She sighed contentedly. "For real."
It was in that instant they realized how quiet it was. No music, no screaming, only the noises of cars and chatter in the parking lot.
She smoothed her palm up and down his arm. "How long ago do you think that song ended?"
Someone knocked on the door. "Are you guys having a dance party in there without me?" Dez's voice was high-pitched and whiny.
Austin whistled low. "I need to have a serious sit-down with that kid, like have one of those where-mattresses-come-from talks, except not mattresses."
"No, Dez. I just fell…a couple of times. We'll be out in a minute," Ally said.
"Take your time." It was Trish, sounding smug and snarky and basically very Trish. "Take your time."
Ally pecked his cheek, patting his chest as if to reassure herself. "Yep, I'm going straight to the bunks. I'm going to make no eye contact and dive right into bed."
He nodded. "Same here."