Sleeping at Last (In Her Arms)

Mercury Part I

Mercury I

"Rows of houses

Sound asleep

Only street lights

Notice me

I am desperate

If nothing else

In a holding pattern

To find myself

I talk in circles

I talk in circles

I watch for signals

For a clue"

Things don't always turn out the way you want them to. No matter how many hours you spent planning them. No matter if you went through your supposed speech word by word for God knows how long. No matter how many possible scenarios and contexts you have created and imagined in your head. No matter how many hypothesized outcomes you have come up with. Life has a way of making sure you are never prepared for something. Especially if it has to do with your heart and your feelings. 

Lauren had been walking in circles for hours. She had noticed it when she passed that freaking house again for the 6th time. It was late. What had once been a mild sunny day had turned into a chilly night in Texas. Lauren mentally laughed at the irony. It seemed like the universe was making a freaking metaphor of her emotional state. She didn't know how to cope. She didn't know she would have to cope, actually. She was looking for a sign that would change everything. Hoping even.

She had told her. She had finally told her after a whole year. And she didn't expect the reaction she got from her band mate. She didn't know what to make of it. She had expected yelling, crying. She had expected rejection; she had expected her to tell her she didn't feel the same way. It was confusing really. It was all so confusing in her head. So confusing. She should have followed her mind and stayed quiet, but her fucking heart had been louder than she could have imagined and the words left her mouth without her even noticing. She only realized what had been proclaimed when she saw her best friend's face, completely and literally drained of color. Well, pale white was a color.

She had taken one look at the other girl and immediately fled the tent.

--

You see, the girls had been taking two weeks off of their tight schedule to spend time with each other without the obligation and implications of belonging to Fifth Harmony. Their team had agreed that the girls deserved to find themselves again, to rediscover why they were in this. It had been suggested by some of their parents, after watching their daughters' faces filled with exhaustion after almost two insane years filled with concerts, interviews, meet and greets, photoshoots and more. The girls had agreed quite quickly, especially when they proposed that they should get time out to do a road trip across their hometowns to show each other parts of the city they grew up in.

They were bound to start in Texas, where Ally and Normani had lived before all of this adventure had started. Next stop would be Orange County, California where they would stay somewhere near Dinah's house. Finally, the girls would camp out around Miami Beach, so that Lauren and Camila could show their band mates the favorite parts of their town. Camila had jokingly insisted they also went to Cuba, seeing as it was only fair, but the girls did promise her that they would try to visit her home country someday.

They decided that they would be camping because only Dinah and Ally had done it previously with their families, so the rest of the girls thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try it out. Of course they still had their bodyguards around, but were allowed more privacy, although they still felt like low key President's daughters surrounded by the Secret Services like Camila had stated.