Hello people!

FFnet is still being a PITA so I hope you can read this update.

Usual housekeeping:
1. None of this would exist without Team Momo: Midnight Cougar and Alice's White Rabbits are in the editing chairs. AgoodWITCH, AushaPasha, RobsmyymmyCabanaboy and Eternally Addicted pre-read. Lizzie Paige made the gorgeous banner. MarieCarro made countless manips for this story. A few have been unveiled in my FB Group LaMomo's Lair, and the rest will be as the relevant chapters post.

2. If you've been wondering when/how things would get rocky for our rockstars ... this is it. It starts slow. Also, dates and places at the top of chapters matter, so you can keep track of when/where things happen.

3. This story is dedicated to the loving memory of Taylor Hawkins (1972-2022).

Here we go ...


DREAMS UNWIND – CHAPTER 3

THEN – Edward's story

Los Angeles, CA – September 2008

The award show turned out to be loud, rowdy, and fucking long. More than that, it got boring after a while. We performed two songs live, which implied a whole lot of hurry up and wait during rehearsals. We took it with a grin; it was par for the course in big productions like these. We still had fun. We loved performing. Getting the chance to do that in front of music royalty of all stripes was a special kind of adrenaline rush for us. We still saw ourselves as relative newbies.

We also didn't win, but we got a kick out of the partying side of things to varying degrees. We'd been allowed plus ones for the show. My parents had declined flying in but had sworn up and down they'd watch me on TV. However, Jasper, who was in the third year of his neurosurgery residency at Cedars-Sinai, was already in L.A. and came as my plus one. Sam flew in his wife Emily, so Vic's girlfriend Jane and my brother acted friendly for the cameras while Vic and I still remained coy about our off-stage activities. Jake and Paul, being blissfully unattached, cozied up to two very blonde and very tipsy models at the after party.

I had no taste for meaningless fucks. Not anymore. I'd had some fun in college like everyone else. I'd had my share of one-night stands. But after a while, they'd all become nameless faces; phone numbers I discarded in the mornings because I couldn't even remember why I'd picked up the girl in the first place. Ah, yes. Release. That I did get in abundance. But by the time Avalanche broke it big, my horndog days were over. Acting on my urges now would mean dealing with a lot of shit I'd rather avoid.

I'd dated some in the years between our first and second album. Because Seattle wasn't the entertainment capital of the country, and we weren't that famous anyway, I could still get away with going out in public alone without hordes of paparazzi following.

But somehow, nothing ever went past the second or third date. The atmosphere changed immediately when my date figured out who I was and what I did for a living. When videos of me started popping up on Twitter after every date, geotagged to boot, and the press started hounding me everywhere in Seattle—in the ten yards from the restaurant to my car, outside the gym, outside my condo building, at my mom's office when I took her to lunch—I decided it wasn't worth it.

"Was it worth it?" I asked Jake and Paul the day after the show.

We'd rented a studio in L.A. to keep rehearsing during the touring break for the VMAs. They stumbled in well past lunchtime, which set us back two hours on our schedule for the day. I hoped the epic shag they got out of it had been worth it since I was living vicariously through their exploits at this point.

However, their ashen faces when they looked at their phones to turn them off seemed to say otherwise.

"What's up, jerks?" Vic greeted them. They were so massive she had to stand on tiptoes to slap their shoulders, but that was Vic's usual style.

"Oh, shit."

"Oh, fuck."

That didn't bode well. At all. "What the fuck is going on?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"We fucked up, man. Big time." Jake blew out a breath.

"You mean, you guys fucked? You two left with blonde and blonder last night, so we figured you would. You know, fuck." I had to hand it to Vic—subtlety wasn't her thing.

Deep breath. We'd sort it out, but we had to know what the hell had happened first. "First of all, are you both okay to talk about it? What do you need?"

With a shaky nod, they dropped in the nearest chairs, rubbing at their bleary eyes.

"Last time I saw you both at the after party you were having fun," I prodded.

I hoped jogging their memories would help. But meanwhile, covertly, I called in reinforcements. I texted Ang "911." She'd know what to do, which was calling in Jamie, Laurent, and Ben. I had a bad feeling about what Jake had said.

Jake winced, then groaned again looking at his phone. "Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. What the fuck do we do now?"

I snapped my fingers in his face. I needed Jake off the crazy train and into sane town right the fuck now. "Jake? Tell me what happened, man."

He eyed Paul, who groaned but motioned for him to talk.

"We took those two girls back to the hotel. We went to my room. That's where it got weird."

"Were you all in the same room?" Sam asked.

He'd been silent so far. Normally, he tried not to judge how the livewires among us got their kicks. As the lone married man in the band, last night he'd had a flute of bubbly with Emily at the after party, then they'd disappeared to their suite to celebrate in private. Being apart was hard on them, especially now they were trying to have a baby.

A pang of envy struck me full in the chest. I'd fallen asleep at 3:00 a.m. after shooting the shit with my brother, whom I'd not seen in months. Now I had a potential clusterfuck to deal with, and we had to be back on the road in three days. We were lucky the show had come during a short touring break, but on second thought, it was more likely Jamie had an inkling we'd be nominated and had scheduled the tour accordingly. The record label didn't care as long as we sold out the gigs and fulfilled our contract.

"I think they put something in our drinks, Edward," Paul said. His voice came in a tortured whisper. "I blacked out at some point after we had sex."

"Define 'we'," Vic threw in.

"Me and the girl who came upstairs with me, Vic. Who the fuck do you take me for?"

"Hey, Pac-Man," she replied in a softer tone, using her nickname for Paul. "I'm just trying to understand what happened to you. Will you tell us?"

That was Vic and her multitude of faces. She could be abrasive, impatient, caustic, sarcastic, but if a friend were in a bind, she'd turn the mama bear on. She was fiercely protective toward all of us.

"So, did those bitches drug you? Do we know for sure?"

Jake shrugged. "I guess we can't. When we woke up, we were both tied to the headboard and there was no sign of the girls ever having been in the room. We weren't tied up last night. Fuck, I'd remember it. Now they're sending us pics, and videos … God, I can't even tell you." He looked disgusted, embarrassed, and absolutely terrified.

"But you'll have to tell us, Jakey. Otherwise, we can't help you. Do you want me to look so you don't have to say it out loud?" Vic said, her tone still gentle. She kept eyeing me from where she sat, kneeling beside Jacob, checking in with me silently.

I nodded at her. She was on the right track with these two; until the cavalry came rushing in, the best we could do was get Jake and Paul to talk.

Without a word, Jacob handed her his phone.

She browsed through, tapping the screen here and there. She kept shaking her head, but when she was done, she passed it back to Jake with a scowl on her face. "Yuck. I seriously didn't need to know what your junk looks like, bro. I'm scarred for life. But I agree; there's some fucked-up shit going on here."

Paul handed me his phone, but I shook my head. "No, man. I'm not going to invade your privacy that way. But give me a barebones version of what we're dealing with, please."

Jake jerked his head at Paul in silent consent to get on with it and tell us.

Paul flinched, then heaved a deep sigh and started talking. "We didn't drink a lot at the party. We were having fun but tried to keep track. We had a lot of fruity, diluted stuff. So yeah, we were tipsy by the time we went upstairs with those girls, but we weren't out of it. Not enough to black out. Which is why I think they must have slipped us something. They wanted us to order champagne from room service, which we did. After that, I have huge gaps. I do remember having sex with one of them. I don't remember the pictures they sent us. They're demeaning. Unsettling. You can tell we're too out of it to know what's going on."

Vic gave a retching sound before cutting in. "Yuck. The bitches slipped you a roofie, fucked you while you could remember it—and please tell me you remembered to use rubbers?" She stopped talking to throw them a scathing look, and when they both nodded, she sighed. "Good. Then when the two of you were out in la-la land, they tied both of you to the bed—still naked—and filmed themselves having sex with you and with each other."

"Holy fucking Christ on a cracker." That was all I could say at the moment. It was going to be a clusterfuck of biblical proportions, if we didn't do damage control now. "Do you know those girls' names? And please don't say Candy or Barbie. Real names."

"Hang on. We might have better intel than their Swiss-cheese recollections," Vic said. "Ang will know who was at the party."

"Right. The fact alone that this shit exists is …"

"Potentially problematic, I know," she hedged.

"Potentially?" It was no time for understatements. "I'm already seeing the headlines. 'The pounding drive of Avalanche's rhythm section now in a sex tape'."

That was when Vic, God love her, snorted. I couldn't stay irritated with her. I started laughing right along with her, and soon, the rest of the guys joined in. It was what we needed to defuse the tension.

"Well, if you're laughing your skinny asses off, it mustn't be that bad of an emergency," Jamie groused when he walked into the studio.

Laurent, Ang, and Ben flanked him. Jamie and Laurent were in their usual uniform of pricey, tailored suits. They'd tried to coax us into wearing monkey suits last night for the red carpet, but we'd put our foot down. We were rockers and would dress the part. Leathers and Docs were more our speed.

"Actually, Jamie, we have a problem," Jake admitted.

He raised a perfectly groomed, blond eyebrow, then leaned an elbow on a stack of amps. "What kind of problem?"

"Of the impending sex tape variety." Vic dropped the bomb.

&&&DREAMS&&&

Ten minutes later, Jamie was directing operations with the drive of a field general. He'd dispatched Ben to check surveillance footage from the party to see when the girls had left the hotel and Ang to try to sweet talk the party organizers into letting her look at the guest list so we'd have real names to go by.

He'd also called in the big guns—our publicist, Leah Clearwater.

Leah had been working with the band occasionally on big-ticket items, but we didn't interact with her on a daily basis. That, as it happened, was just fine with good old me. Leah was a consummate professional, with a no-nonsense attitude that chimed with our style. But her toughness often came across as indifference. In a word, she could be scary as fuck. I hoped she wouldn't be too harsh on Jake and Paul. If they'd been roofied, they were victims.

She marched into the studio in a whirlwind of long, pin-straight black hair, armed with an immaculate pantsuit, a clipboard, and a take-no-prisoners expression.

"What do we have here, Jamie?" She spat out the question without bothering to look at any of us, as if we didn't exist.

Jamie rattled off a summary of the whole thing, complete with sordid details. She mulled things over for a few minutes, then started tapping on her phone at a furious speed. She had yet to address either Jake or Paul directly. At last, she raised her head and turned toward us.

"Where was everyone else? Did any of you talk to these girls?"

We all shook our heads to her second question, then blurted out our whereabouts last night.

"Jake, Paul—that was a shitty thing to go through. Are you feeling okay? Do you need medical attention? Drug testing? A counselor?" Her tone was matter-of-fact, but at least she addressed the crap hand they'd been dealt with some consideration. To say that, for once, I was pleasantly surprised was a fucking understatement.

"Why would we want to be drug tested?" Jake asked.

"If they roofied us, the drugs can be detected in urine up to forty-eight hours past ingestion," Paul answered before Leah, no doubt relying on what he'd learned as a bio-chem major. "But the real question is … what would be the point?"

Leah sat on a nearby stool after eyeing the worn pleather seat with a mildly disgusted grimace. "The point is the best defense is a good offense. I'm not going to bullshit you about any of this. There are only two ways out of sex scandals: you either monetize them or make them go away. Now, you don't strike me as the kind of band or people who would monetize this crap. Not after volunteering for Make A Wish, D.A.R.E., you name it. You're establishing yourselves as the new, clean rockers of your generation. A sex scandal wouldn't help. This ain't the '80s anymore either, and with all due respect, Jake, you're not Tommy Lee. You don't have the brash, over-the-top personality it would take to tell the press where to shove it." She rattled all of this off in one go. A well-practiced script.

"So, what we're left with is making it go away. And in that, our best defense is confirming what these girls did. Because then we'll know what to use to stop them from going public. The threat of possible criminal charges is great leverage. Having them declared persona non grata in the industry is also great leverage. But we need to get ahead of this and fast. We can't sit on this shit."

While Jake and Paul contemplated Leah's advice, their faces still drawn and ashen, Ang catapulted into the room. Ben barely managed to sneak past her before she slammed the door behind them.

"We got 'em!" she shouted. Her gleeful tone contrasted Ben's thunderous expression. "Hi, Leah. I have the info you wanted."

Leah looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Well? Don't tarry. I'm growing old here."

"The two girls left the hotel around mid-morning. A car service picked them up, and after Ben buttered them up a little, they gave us an approximate drop off location. They wouldn't give up an exact address without a court order. But the real payoff came from the party guest list. We have their names and the name of their modeling agency."

Leah made a "gimme" gesture, and Ang continued. "New Faces. It's on Wilshire," she said, handing Leah a scrap of paper.

"Call Maggie at my office. Get the name of their talent manager at New Faces. Somebody I can call and scare the living daylights out of. These girls will either forget they ever crossed paths with you guys or live to regret it as they pack their bags and go back to Nowheresville with their tails between their legs."

"What about the drug tests?" Jake asked.

"I can get you to a doctor who'll be discreet—" Leah started answering.

"We don't doubt that, Leah." I stopped her when I saw she was about to steamroll both of them. "What I think Jake and Paul want to know is, do you need a drug test to dangle your threats over those girls' heads, or …?"

The unsaid part was, of course, that she could just bluff her way through it. She had enough chutzpah to pull it off—especially if she escalated this shit to the modeling agency. The girls would be labeled as troublemakers. Some agencies had also started having stricter rules on drug use and had a zero-tolerance policy. Allegations of date rape drug use could be a career-ender, particularly if the victims happened to be high-profile individuals.

She heaved a deep sigh, then her expression turned concerned but more compassionate. "I don't necessarily need an actual test result to neutralize these ladies. But—there's a but—you may want to have one done for your own peace of mind. If it comes back positive, you may have another decision to make—whether to file charges or not. But then again … if there were criminal charges, keeping this quiet would be next to impossible. Some gossip rags have a direct line to the courthouse. And I'm not even going into how the press would treat it if they got wind of it. It's all up to you. Whatever you feel comfortable doing, is what we'll do. But we need to head this off at the pass and fast. It doesn't take rocket science to propel those lewd pictures onto TMZ."

"Look, we've been stupid about the whole thing," Jake began. "We shouldn't have let them get drinks up in the room. They had too many chances to spike them. We should have called you earlier instead of waiting until we arrived here. But … I'm speaking for myself … I need to know what happened to me. I'll take the damn test."

Leah nodded and fired off another message on her phone. "Fair enough. Ang, I sent you the doctor's details. They're already under an NDA with our firm. Paul? What's your take?"

He shrugged. Turned to Jake. Turned to Jamie. Then turned to me. "What should I do, Edward?"

"I'm not going to tell you what to do, man. We'll support you whatever you decide."

"Book me for the test. I'd rather know than not."

Leah and Angela exchanged a meaningful look, then Ang beckoned them both out of the room.

As he made it to the door, Jake turned toward me.

"Edward?"

"Yeah?"

"It wasn't fucking worth it, man."

Nope. Appears it wasn't. At all.


No hidden quotes this week.

Fame has an ugly underbelly, and our rockers are starting to see what it's like. Next week we'll see if/what lasting impact this incident will have on our boys and girl. In short, their attitude to the music business is a mix of Dan Reynolds's (from Imagine Dragons) and Taylor Hawkins, who once on a documentary famously said, "It's a job. You have a lot of fun, but it's a job." As a band, Avalanche know music is their job, and that fame is a fickle bitch. But there are contingencies you can't always plan for.

Teasers post to FB mid-week (Thursdays), and updates are on Saturdays from here on out. See you all next week!