Long Live the Kids (an All Time Low fan fiction)

Breathe Today

It turns out that none of us were able to go anywhere other than home that night. Leave it to the oh-so-wonderful and unpredictable Western New York weather. Ben decided to not tell me what was so important that he had to miss dinner, and it didn't matter because he was there anyway. We didn't have a lot in our fridge. I'm going to use the Ben excuse and say that we didn't have a need for an extensive home pantry for the next couple weeks because we're going on tour. We pulled out a box of leftover pizza and were all about to take a piece when the doorbell rang.

I opened the door to see Nate, bundled up and covered in snow. "You drove all the way out here- going against most driving bans- for what reason?" I asked him. Sara, on the other hand, was happy to grab the Chinese food and warm drink carrier from his hands.

"Are you going to yell at me or invite me inside before I literally freeze to death?" he pushed, his voice muffled through his coat.

I ushered him in, taking his coat. "Thanks for the food. Is that really the only reason you came all the way out here, though?"

He rubbed his hands together, attempting to work some warmth back into them. "I also brought you a birthday present," he told me. "Plus, I didn't think that we should let this awful weather ruin your birthday."

"I see no present," Alan said from behind us. "Give it up, Newt." Those two got along the worst between all of my friends, and it got worse after Nate and I broke up. Alan likes to play the protective big brother role and pretend he doesn't remember Nate's name. Overall, it's quite annoying.

"Much to your dismay, there is no ulterior motive. And I do come bearing a gift. It was with the food."

"I figure that that's what this is?" Kyle said, walking out of the kitchen holding a gift bag in one hand and a plate of food in the other. "I was just hoping that Tin Tin took their service to another level." He smiled at me. "You're gonna love it."

"It's not very fair that you all get to know what I got before I do," I pouted, following Nate to the kitchen to grab a plate.

"You'll find out soon enough," Ben assured me, pulling a duffle bag out from next to the China cabinet. "After you eat, of course." This morning, when they'd been setting up my room, they'd left me little boxes with chocolate truffles and hard candies tucked inside with cute little cards. They'd also taken some spoken word poetry from a few of my favorite poets and put their poems on a CD. That's one of the things they've been giving me every year since my sixteenth birthday. One year, they threw in a bottle of hair dye. On Sara's birthday every year, we tie together tons of different shoelaces, and wrap those around a few bottles of spray paint. For Alan, we go to every thrift store in town and pick up all of the vintage movie posters in mid to good condition we can find. He loves those. Ben always loves getting his vinyls that we pick up at the record stores a couple towns over. Kyle gets a new mug and the weirdest flavored coffee beans we can find, and I'll admit that I use these quite often. Dale is, without admit doubt, the most difficult one to find something that he'll always want, but we landed on old glass pop bottles from way back when. He has shelves up in his room now, with them lined up in order of when he got them.

Obviously, we still get each other actual presents, but those are our annual birthday traditions. Well, we used to get kind of drunk, too, but we can't do that anymore. Actually, only Alan and I can't do that anymore. The rest of our group is free to get however drunk they want to when they're of the legal drinking age.

"You can open mine now," Nate said in my ear. I wasn't going to turn that down, so I grabbed the bag out of Kyle's hand. I took the tissue paper out and found two of the most wonderful things I'd ever seen. There was a Barnes & Noble collector's edition of Alice in Wonderland with silver pages and a beautifully illustrated cover. There was also a collectors edition of Wicked with a black leather cover and golden - edged pages.