second second second chances [ot9 one direction x 5sos a.u.]

chapter 5: second second second chances

They stood silent in the bathroom and tried to listen to music coming from the stage.

Did it work?

What song was playing before we left?

"Hey you can't be in here!" a janitor with a sanitary cart walked into the restroom.

"Sorry!" they both yelped, making their way out of the bathroom and back into the busy venue.

Valerie patted herself down to find her phone, "the time the time the time the ti--we did it!" she held up the brightly lit screen to show Alex that they were indeed 15 minutes back into the past.

Alex's knees almost went to jello and she leant on a nearby column for a moment, "I can't believe we just...the rules of time travel are wack."

On the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, Valerie couldn't care less about how she was feeling bacsue as of this moment she was a time-traveling genius. She--she manipulated time with her own idea, and with a 5sos song no less. The b-sides are always the best, she thought.

"Okay, we gotta go now!" Valerie pulled Alex from the podium and carried themselves to the stadium once again. If she was right about being able to travel within the past, her hunch about waiting too long to fix their mistake being bad is most likely true too.

If we wait too long to fix our mistake, we probably won't get another opportunity to do so again, she thought.

The arena was just as they had left it, busy and chaotic. There were fans still weaving in and around the place trying to find their friends while dozens of parents saved their seats and checked facebook. The most chaotic part of the place, however, was the pit. Where they needed to sneak in.

Knowing that they had more than one shot at this, Alex and Valerie tried running past the guard with more confidence, but they failed again. On their third try, Valarie tried distracting the security guard by having a conversation with him in french, but his attention was too sharp for him not to notice Alex sneak past either. The fourth try was just as miserable they when they tried to get in through another side of the pit and security had dragged both of them out of the area before either of their feet could land on the other side of the velvet rope. They were about to head out of the bathroom for their fifth attempt but Valarie opened her eyes she saw Alex with a bloody nose. She must've had one too because Alex's face went white and she could feel the sensation of something running down her nose as if she had a cold.

"No, no, no, no--" she turned her head to the nearest mirror and confirmed her suspicion. What did we do? She thought

"Shit this isn't good...'' Alex was looking at her own face, pinching her nose to see if it had stopped bleeding.

She knows this isn't good, she doesn't have to be reminded of it. Valerie ran to a stall and grabbed wads of toilet paper to clean up the mess, trying her best not to panic. "We can't afford to make any more mistakes, we're messing with time too much."

"Ok well we gotta come up with a new plan!"

"We don't have time Alex! We only have 15 minu--"

"--Not here, at home!" they didn't waste a second throwing their bodies tissues say and instead went home. They were having conversations on either ends of the dorm.

Alex went in the kitchen to make themselves ice packs and Valerie went to the bathroom to splash her face in cold water. Even from underneath the faucet and crushing of ice, Valerie could still hear Alex talk. "Think! People do this all the time so why can't we!" assuming she was talking about sneaking into the general admission section of the concert and not time traveling, they were on the same page with this dilemma. She was trying to think but nothing seemed like a better plan than what they've already attempted. Under the cold water, she thought of every scenario she could think of and played them out in her head: all end in failure.