The next morning, Jack and I had woken up entangled with each other, our minimal clothes all still on the floor. I wasn’t sure who woke who up, but it was impossible not to move without waking the other. Not very surprisingly, we probably had managed to accidentally wake each other up, if that makes any sense. It most likely doesn’t, but I definitely did feel like I had caused Jack to move because of my own movement or something.

“Let’s just stay in bed naked all day,” Jack suggested with a groan, pulling me close despite the fact that we had literally just moved apart.

I turned around so that instead of my back touching his chest, I was facing him, our noses nearly touching. “I would totally say yes to that. I am so up for it, but I’m actually hungry so it isn’t really an option.”

“We could just bring breakfast up here,” he whispered and ran his hand through my still-short hair.

“Agreed,” I nodded as much as I could with how little space was left between us, “but we’ll still have to make it. So, at least one of us has to go downstairs.”

“Stop killing my dreams, Isle,” he mumbled and closed the distance between us to show that he wasn’t as annoyed as he sounded.

While it could have stayed at an innocent reassuring kiss, it totally didn’t. Even I made sure that he couldn’t get away by deepening the kiss as soon as he started pulling back a little. With this small gesture, hit took it upon himself to push himself up on one arm and hover over me. I let my right hand travel up the back of his neck until I reached his hair and tangled my fingers in it. However, just as things really started getting interesting, I remembered my empty stomach.

I lowered my hand and broke apart the kiss by putting my head back down on the pillow fully. “As much as I was enjoying that, I think we should keep it for later. I need breakfast.”

“I mean… can’t you wait a little longer…?” Jack licked his lips and started closing in on me again.

However, before he could reach my lips, my stomach grumbled loudly. He pulled away a little, looked down at where the sound came from, back up at me, and burst out in laughter. I couldn’t help but laugh loudly along with him. It was a very ironic and coincidental moment. If me telling Jack to stop didn’t kill the mood at all, then this definitely did. Not in a bad way, but in some sort of other way, in a way that allowed us to joke about it.

“Ok, maybe it is best if we do have breakfast,” Jack finally agreed and got back on his side of the bed. “Although I still really just want to stay in bed the entire day.”

I sat up and reluctantly pulled the covers off me. However, before I actually got up, I smirked and asked, “is anybody coming over today?”

“Not that I invited…”

“Good.”

My smirk increased in size as I stood up and went straight to the door, stepping over all the clothes on the floor. I opened it fully and acted like it was just any other day. It practically was a normal day except for the fact that I was walking through the hallway and down the stairs fully naked. I never just walked around naked like this, it just seemed very impractical to me, but I was going to make an exception this time.

As soon as I started taking a bowl, milk, cereal, and a spoon out of the cupboards and drawers, I heard Jack come downstairs as well. Although it might have taken him a while to come downstairs compared to me, I was assuming he had a good reason not to follow me straight away. He only came a minute or so later than me.

“What’re we having?” Jack asked and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, putting his chin on my shoulder, as I was pouring some cereal into the bowl.

“Well, I’m super lazy today and don’t feel like accidentally burning myself while naked, so we’re having cereal unless you craft something for yourself,” I replied while filling the bowl until it was halfway full.

“I’ll have what you’re having.” He kissed my neck. “And maybe we can take this upstairs?”

I shook my head after I was finished pouring in the milk until the bowl was almost full. “And risk spilling milk all over the sheets? I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t exactly talking about the cereal,” he chuckled and let me go.

I rolled my eyes and looked around for a place to sit. Everything looked like a horrible idea. “You see, this is why I don’t like just walking around naked in the house. There literally isn’t a surface you can’t sit on without sticking to it. And there’s no way in hell I’m sitting on the couch naked. That just doesn’t seem sanitary to me.”

“Hmm…” Jack scanned the counters and grabbed the towel hanging from the oven handle before placing it just to the right from where I was standing. “Now you can sit.”

I thanked him and hopped onto the counter and started eating my cereal. Jack opened the drawer holding the cutlery and grabbed another spoon. Instead of making his own breakfast, he stood between my legs and started scooping up cereal from my bowl. He literally was having what I was having. But with my bowl so full, I didn’t mind him eating along.

Once we were done and the dishes were put in the sink for the time being, Jack was about to drag me right back up the stairs again. However, before we went up there again, there was one last thing I wanted to do.

“Wait, before we go back to hanging out in bed all day, there’s something I got us,” I stopped him and ran off to a cardboard box somewhere in the living room.

I came back with the contents in my hand and put it on a different counter than the one I was sitting on. Jack took a few steps closer and took a curious look before confusion spread across his face.

“Why are you so excited about a calendar?” he questioned, not understanding why this would interrupt us.

“Well, one, it’s all pictures of Taco,” I clarified excitedly, “I actually had some time to craft it all together, so there’re a few pictures of her for every month. I first wanted to do pictures of us, but I thought we didn’t have enough pictures of Taco in the house--”

“Awesome, but why do we need one?”

“That was number two.” I placed two highlighters, one yellow and one blue, and a fineliner on the counter next. “Since we can’t constantly keep up with our own and each other’s schedules, I thought it would be cool to have a calendar in which we can record whenever we’ll be gone, whether that be for tour or promotion or recording or anything of the like. It will be more visual and we can see what time we actually do have together, cause right now we literally do only have two more days before you leave again and we also need to look at when I leave.”

“Seems like a good plan,” Jack easily accepted my idea. “I’m happy to try it out and see if we can keep it up.”

We proceeded to plan in everything all the way until the end of December as far as we knew. Jack obviously had more things to plan in that weren’t even announced yet, but that was mainly because I didn’t have anything planned for after Warped yet. However, the next couple of months looked like a disaster. Since I had to go off and record, I was now leaving a day before Jack went off to England for like a day or two. Warped Tour did align quite well with Jack’s US tour, only I left earlier and came back a day later. But then again, like a week later he was going to be gone to Asia again. And this didn’t even include some more random things such as the promotion he had as soon as the album was released. Things did seem to calm down after he came back from Asia again, though. So I was excited for that time. I just hoped my schedule wouldn’t change too much.

As promised, right after that was done, we retreated back to our bed. You can probably guess what we did while there. We were there for quite a few hours, trying to forget about the busy weeks to come. For the first time in awhile, I felt like there wasn’t some pressure on me despite the fact that I was already leaving for New York the next afternoon.

“I feel super sweaty, so I’m breaking this staying in bed all day thing and going to go take a shower,” I said as I pushed myself up, the duvet already long found its place on the floor.

“I could join you…” Jack suggested slyly and let his fingers walk up the upper half of my leg.

“I think I’ll be fine by myself,” I laughed and got off the bed. I knew that if I would say yes, Jack wouldn’t hold back. With me now taking birth control, he was up for anything. The only thing was, though, that I considered it more like an 'and' situation not an 'or' situation. So, no, I wasn’t cool with just having unprotected sex now. “Plus, I don’t think I can take anymore.”

As I was walking to the bathroom, I could feel a slight pain. I didn’t think it was all too bad and didn’t believe I walked any differently. It felt more like I had overdone myself, not like a sharp pain; like the pain after a good workout but not horrible muscle aches.

“Oh, shit,” Jack raised himself to look at me by pushing himself up on both his elbows, “did I hurt you?”

“I’ll be fine,” I shrugged it off. “And it was totally worth it.”

I showered with the door still open. Although Jack could have come in at any time and still led to us having shower sex for the first time, he was a ‘gentleman’ and waited back in the bedroom. He would never force me or trick me into to doing something I didn’t want to. When I was done, he told me to keep the water on so he could hop in straight after.

I broke another one of our rules that day and put on some clothes. Although, in my defense, I was only wearing a hoodie and some pajama shorts since I didn’t feel like dressing properly. Compared to how quickly I put on clothes, Jack took ages in the shower. So, I just sat on the bed and pulled up my phone, seeing that it was only one in the afternoon. As the water kept running in the bathroom, I decided to check my social media. There wasn’t much going on until I reached twitter and checked my mentions.

The first tweet I saw just made me think it was either a coincidence or a sick joke, but all the tweets from the day before were the same. They all had the same video, some shorter and some longer. I could already recognize the scene just from the still frame images. The worst part was when I stayed just a little too long staring at a tweet and the clip started playing. I didn’t even need to read the captions to remember how dark it was and all the bright lights surrounding me. I was just staring at my screen as tweet after tweet showed exactly the same. I didn’t even notice the shower turning off.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jack asked with a frown, stood in the bathroom and having a clear view of me. He was using the towel to dry his hair.

But I couldn’t look away from the videos as much as I wanted to. It was like I was in a trance seeing this random video of my brother's car crash, or at least the whole crowd around it. I didn’t even need the sound on to remember the horrible cluster of noise. I was too busy making sure I didn’t let myself slip that I didn’t even let myself feel any emotion.

“Isle?” Jack questioned again as he came closer, this time his towel wrapped around his waist.

I looked up at him as he carefully took my phone out of my hand. He didn’t immediately understand what the videos were from. First, he scrolled a little until he realized they were all the same, then he took a few seconds to watch one. He probably didn’t recognize it until the car was in slight for a short frame.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath.

I could feel the pressure on my chest build up as I continued to look at him for answers. “Where did they--” I swallowed to try and get rid of the constricting feeling in my throat. “--get this from?”

“I really don’t understand people,” he grumbled out of frustration. “Number one, why the hell would somebody think it’s ok to post this, and number two why in the world do people think it’s a good idea to repost and retweet this. This is obviously not cool. I fucking--”

He switched off my phone, went to his bedside table and grabbed his phone, which he only turned off completely. He didn’t leave it at that, he stomped out of the room and down the stairs. A little while later, he came back with my laptop and pulled out his own from his backpack. He went straight to the closet next with his pile of electronics and just stuffed them in a drawer. Before explaining anything to me, he pulled on his own clothes and hung up the towel.

“New plan for today. We are going to be disconnected from the outside world for the rest of the day. No phones, no laptop, no internet, no TV. Not even any radio. The only thing we get to watch are movies we have on DVD. We don’t need any negativity right now,” he communicated his idea. “So, now let’s fucking go downstairs and watch Home Alone on repeat cause that’s the only movie I’m sure we have on DVD.”

He held out his hand for me, which I grabbed as I nodded. It was anything but a confident and reassuring nod. Quite the contrary, actually. A tear even managed to escape my eye, which I quickly wiped away with the sleeve of the hoodie I was wearing.

Together, we cuddled up on the couch and watched Home Alone together. It didn’t take long until Taco joined us as well. We just stayed there for another two movies, deciding to watch the last one twice since we didn’t feel like getting up and switching the DVD out. That was something we took for granted when watching Netflix. However, we had made a pact and were planning on keeping it.

About halfway through our second time watching the last movie, the doorbell rang. I was expecting Jack to get up an answer it, but he didn’t do so, not even after it rang a second time. So, I started getting up. However, he just pulled me back down toward him.

“The whole point of being disconnected is not having a connection to the outside world. Why would we want to talk to somebody who we didn’t even ask to come over?” he used as an excuse as he kissed my cheek.

However, even Jack couldn’t just wait around when it rang a third time. If somebody was so intent on getting the door answered, then it probably was important. So, he got up from behind me and started begrudgingly walking toward the front door. Just before he could reach it, the door opened by itself and Alex and Lisa walked in.

“I was just going to open it!” Jack protested with a groan as if he had been doing something important that caused him to come so late. “How the hell did you even get in? I made sure to lock the doors!”

“Spare key,” Alex shrugged, holding up the single key between his thumb and forefinger that we had hidden somewhere--no, not in a plant pot or under the doormat.

I just walked as Jack continued to whine. “Why would you just come in like that! We could be having a huge orgy in here.”

“Without me? No way.”

“Well, the reason why we are here,” Lisa interrupted before the jokes and insults would continue to be thrown back and forth, “is that Alex tried to call you, but you didn’t answer, so then I tried and no answer. Then we both tried Ireland and still no luck. So, Alex called John and asked him. He also couldn’t reach you, so we just wanted to check if you were okay. It’s been seven hours since we first tried.”

“Oh…” Jack’s jokes stopped and he scratched his head. “I didn’t really think about that…”

“About what?” Alex asked. He really did seem a little mad about us causing him to be so concerned, but then his eyes fell on me. There was most likely something off with my posture or the way I was looking, because his face fell and turned into a slight frown. “Wait, what happened?”

It was only then that I realized I was just aimlessly staring at the wall behind them. I could hear them, but I wasn’t directly looking at them. I couldn’t snap out of it. My eyes were just focused on this one spot and I felt like I was falling through space despite my body being stationary.

“We just decided to turn off our phones.” Jack shrugged, not seeing that Alex noticed something was off. “I even unplugged the what-cha-ma-call-it so we don’t have any internet or TV connection. If we had a landline, it wouldn’t even have worked.”

I finally managed to blink and shift my eyes a little. I was now staring down at Taco who was standing on the couch in front of my body. She was looking back at me as if I was the most interesting thing in the room. My chest started becoming heavy again and I knew that something was wrong. The only thing was that I did not know what exactly it was. I couldn’t hear what Alex, Lisa, and Jack were talking about anymore since there was a pounding in my head that sounded way louder. The only other thing I could hear was Taco who started meowing loudly at me, but it also could have just been my mind trying to fit a sound with her small mouth constantly opening.

I knew then that I had to leave before whatever was happening was going to take over. Practically pushing Taco off the couch, I rushed upstairs and into the bedroom. I sat down on the floor with my back against the bed and closed my eyes. The only thing I could do was try and focus on my breathing to get rid of the horrible feeling. It was like I was back in this weird line between two states of consciousness.

When I finally felt ok enough again, I opened my eyes to see Jack had suddenly appeared next to me. I nearly jumped when I saw him sitting there.

“Everything ok?” he carefully asked as if he had been talking to me for a longer time.

I nodded and looked around, still confused as to what happened. All I could remember was that I just wasn’t feeling well. “Yeah, it felt like I was going to get a seizure again, but it wasn’t the typical symptoms I used to get…”

“Alex said it looked like you were about to have a panic attack.”

“Hmm… maybe,” I agreed unsurely. But to be honest, I didn’t have enough experience with those to know what exactly happened every time. Of course, I knew I was having one that one time my mom and I were fighting at the café, but this was different. Maybe there were different types I could have, but then again it also felt a bit like an absence seizure. It was weird.

“How about we go downstairs, tell Alex and Lisa that you’re fine, make ourselves some dinner, and finish watching our movie?” he suggested next.

I nodded again and let him pull me up from the floor after he had given me a hand.

Notes

You guys still feel like they might be drifting apart?
Also, poor Ireland. It finally seemed to have calmed down a little, but she just can't get a break.