"Kyle. Pst...Kyle, wake up."
I groaned and pulled the sheets that had fallen off of our bodies back over us. "What is it, Dan? It's so early. Can't whatever it is wait until the morning?"
Dan sat up and yanked the sheets off of me, frowning. He was starting to make it very clear that whatever he wanted to talk about was important and couldn't wait until later. "We need to talk. First of all, never let me drink that much again. My head is killing me and I've already taken all the headache medicine I can. Second of all, we're not going to record that video."
I raised my eyebrows at him questionably. "What do you mean? We have to record the video, they made their point pretty clear last night. They 'own us', remember?"
"We're going to run away," Dan whispered as his eyes twinkled in excitement. "It's two in the morning and everyone's asleep. The bus is parked and if we're quiet, we can sneak off of it. We can run away and finally be together. We wouldn't be missing any of the days of the tour also if we didn't stay away that long. Even if we did, we could reschedule them."
"You want to run away?" I practically shouted in response but quickly quieted down once he winced in pain due to his headache and shushed me. "Dan, this could kill your...our career," I whispered. "Please don't give up on your dreams just for me. We'll get through this, I promise."
"No! Don't you see what they're doing to us? They're planting thoughts in our heads without us realizing it to get us to turn on one another." Dan sighed. "I need a break from all of this, Kyle. Not the fans or the music but our management. I need a break that just involves you and I snuggling up by a campfire on a beach far, far away or something. Please, Ky. They're already trying to ruin our career."
"Dan, that sounds lovely and I would absolutely love to run away with you but-"
"Kyle Jonathan Simmons, I am not making a video that says I don't love you in that way." He suddenly paused for a minute and a mischievous smile came across his lips. "What if when we ran away, we eloped? They wouldn't be able to break us up if we're married plus, if we both wore rings, the fans would know."
"When I picture marrying you," I smiled for a moment at the word then pressed on. "I picture a big wedding, one that's over the top. All of our friends would be there and hell, maybe even To Kill A King could perform so we would have live music. I'm not going to give up those dreams just because a couple men in suits think what we have is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I would love to elope with you but you deserve so much better than that, trust me."
"But eloping could be our one chance at telling them we don't care what they think. They wouldn't be able to-"
"Dan," I said softly while taking ahold of his hands. I brushed one of my fingers against the ring on his hand then looked up at him. "I made a promise to you, one that's going to last us until we exchange vows on our wedding day. Eloping isn't going to solve anything, it's only going to make things worse. Someday we'll get married, I promise. Just not today. I'm in this for the long run, alright?"
"I've already told Woody and Will," Dan blurted out once the bus went silent again. "I told them about wanting to run away...with you."
"And what did they say? There's no way that they agreed to-"
"They're okay with it," Dan said with as much excitement as he had when he first mentioned the idea. "We wouldn't be gone for long, just a couple of days. Maybe that'll teach management a lesson also. We could stay at a hotel in whatever city you'd like then come back once we're ready to tour again."
"And what exactly are we going to tell everyone when we get back?" I asked. "What's our excuse?"
"We can just say we had to go because of a family emergency or something...or we could just tell them the truth. Please Kyle, I need this. We need this." He looked me in the eyes and I couldn't help but smile at how adorable he looked. His quiff was all over the place and his eyes looked so innocent and child-like. He looked just like a child asking their parent for candy while they're at a grocery store.
Running away with him couldn't be that bad, could it? It's not like they would find us while we were gone if we were careful about things. Maybe this would be good for us. It seemed like everytime we got yelled at, it just put another wedge in between the two of us. It would be nice to have a weekend with him and only him to strengthen our relationship. We had a couple days off anyway and were free to go any other place except for having to do the show tonight. If we were to tell management where we were going for our couple day break, they would be on our asses the entire time. "Fine, let's do it. Let's run away together."
Dan grinned excitedly and grabbed ahold of my hand to pull me off of the bunk as he got off. "I'm so glad you said yes, I've already sort of packed up a bunch of your clothes for you and I've also packed up my stuff also. I was just really excited and I wanted to leave right away."
I couldn't help but laugh, of course he'd do that. I grabbed the bag that was mine and he grabbed the bag that was his. "So where do you want to go? There's so many cities we could visit. We're not too far from Chicago, are we? We could catch a cab then stay there."
Dan nodded and took my hand to lead me off of the bus, being as quiet as could be. He slowly shut the door once we had gotten off then took off running, leaving me with no choice but to keep up. He stopped once we were about a block away and turned around to face the bus again for a split second. "Sorry about that, I didn't want them to see us or hear us for that matter. Chicago sounds lovely though." He stopped talking for a minute and stared at the tour bus again. "But, Kyle? Are you sure you want to do this? I just realized I put a lot of pressure on you back there. I just really want us to work out and they're-"
I cut him off with a soft, yet passionate kiss. "I'm sure I want to do this."
