Author's Note: Remember me? I'm that loser who hasn't updated for nine weeks! D: Sorrrrry. I have way too much going on right now. I'm trying really hard though. The last chapter of Beyond Words is really close to finished. Meanwhile, this idea has been bugging me since forever, and I had to get it down... you know how it is. Hope you enjoy. Oh, and if you listen to this song, listen to the acoustic, okay? It works so much better for the story ;) It's a pretty dark story. You have been warned. :o

Disclaimer: I don't own Sonny With a Chance or Stay Awake (Dreams Only Last for a Night) by All Time Low.

Stay Awake (Dreams Only Last for a Night)

Caught in a cold sweat
Stuck splitting hairs
I'm drinking too much I'm on my
Way to striking out

Bottles, piling up on the floor. Vacant eyes search the room, heartbeats loud enough that each one resonates in his ears like a drum. He reaches up, brushes his golden locks out of his eyes; they are glued to his forehead with sweat, dripping, cold sweat of fear and sorrow and everything else that isn't right in the world. He can feel his fragile grip on his life breaking, his knuckles collapsing, everything slipping away, but he can't do a damn thing about it. Everything's a mess. He glances at the papers, the ones with his name in the headlines. Something about how great or how terrible Chad Dylan Cooper is, it really doesn't matter anymore what the tabloids say. Let them say it. He dips his head back and almost chokes on a mouthful of wine.

Go to sleep with the pressure of everyone
Watching and waiting
They're yours for the taking
But I still have my doubts

On a hardwood floor, he's shaking. Can't bring himself to sit up and drink anymore, because as much as drinking is supposed to help, it's not, not really; he feels scared to death. He feels trapped, like there's no getting out. The world is watching him, waiting for him to mess up. Waiting for a juicy story to put out there and humiliate him. He could control them, if he wanted. But he just can't. He can put up an act when he needs to, but not here. Not now. It takes too much out of him. Drinking is supposed to make you forget; instead, it intensifies his fear. It surrounds him, chokes him, and leaves him sleeping, sleeping on a hardwood floor.

Before you ask which way to go
Remember where you've been

He needs help and he knows it. But Chad Dylan Cooper doesn't just ask for help. Chad Dylan Cooper helps himself. It hurts so much to be alone, but he can do this. He's Chad Dylan Cooper, everyone loves him, he's amazing. He can do anything. He's done it all before.

Stay awake
Get a grip and get out you're safe
From the weight of the world just take
A second to set things straight

On the other side of the city, a sobbing girl turns the wheel, driving away from her apartment. She takes deep, shuddering breaths, pulling herself together. She tells herself that everything's fine, that it's all okay, while her deep brown hair is still soaked with tears and her beautiful chocolate eye is marred by a nasty bruise that she's sure the makeup crew will have a field day covering up. It's okay, she's fine though. Everything's all right.

I'll be fine
Even though I'm not always right
I can count on the sun to shine
Dedication takes a lifetime
But dreams only last for a night

She was stupid to stay and she knows it. But there was nowhere she could go. So she usually put up with it. But not tonight. Tonight her instinct to leave got the better of her and she's determined to get the heck out of there. With her eye bruised and every ounce of optimism taken away by her greasy-haired, abusive felon for a father, she's done with hiding everything away. The current Sonny Munroe, carefully constructed by her father to be an almost broken survivor, is hitting the streets with nowhere to go. She's dead tired but she won't fall asleep.

Daddy might come after her.

Figure it out boy you're tripping
So pull yourself together or you'll
Wash up like the rest

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that the road he's going down isn't going to be any good for him. If everything's a mess right now then what he's doing is only going to make it worse. Even in his drunken state the word 'rehab' sends a shiver down his spine, making his muscles twitch against the floor. He's seen what happens to celebrities who go to rehab, who have problems like this; and it sure as hell isn't good. But that won't happen to Chad Dylan Cooper; no, he can hide his empty house and heart. He can hide (and has hidden) that… accident at 14, barely a man and certainly not famous yet, with his girlfriend and that… that baby… his son. Who died at birth. Whose mother died with him. They left behind a broken father with his promise always to be there for them dying on his lips. The press has never and will never learn that.

It's not that he's worried about his reputation with this one, no. It's just that it's the most secret part of him, the most sacred, and it's all his. They can never have it. If the memory of his love and son don't belong to him, then everything is lost.

This ship is sinking I'm thinking
I'm done for
I watch as the sails disappear underwater
'Cause I'm no captain yet

He promised he would never fall in love again. It would be too much for his broken heart; it would snap like a twig before it could ever be whole again. He tried to steer his life in the right direction, as a heartbreaker. He got the girls but could never bring himself to care and, no matter what the tabloids said, never went farther than making out. He could never bring himself to… he could never risk it… risk another little boy, another son of his that he could never hold. No, there was no room for love in the broken shell of Chad Dylan Cooper.

Then he met… her… and all his resolves crumbled beneath him; he was pitched head over heels with no way out of this black abyss he was falling into.

And no matter how many drinks he swallows, how many nights he lies on the floor swallowed up in darkness, he can never escape the fact that he is in love with Sonny Munroe.

The ghosts of his lover and son follow him when he is wasted.

I said before you ask which way to go
Remember where you've been

A father once, a loving boyfriend once, he thought he was out of love.

But it too easily came again.

Stay awake
Get a grip and get out you're safe
From the weight of the world just take
A second to set things straight

She brakes in a parking lot somewhere with her gas tank near empty and she cries, she cries her eyes out. It's nighttime. She remembers so easily what happened every night… sometimes beatings. Sometimes worse. He stole every last bit of her innocence. She's completely an adult now and she can't get away from what happened. But she can stop it from happening again.

She's not home with her dad. She's safe. She's fine. She's perfect.

If she falls asleep she might die, though.

I'll be fine
Even though I'm not always right
I can count on the sun to shine
Dedication takes a lifetime
But dreams only last for a night

Tomorrow is daylight, tomorrow is sunshine. Tomorrow everything will look better. She might make it to the studio, she might not. It'll be the first day she's missed since the day after the night her dad came home… since he killed her mother… since…

If she thinks about it she'll be too weak, too broken, too weepy and scared to go on, so she doesn't. She shrieked and sobbed when he killed her mother; she locked herself in the bathroom and was about to call 911 with her cell phone when he shot off the door hinges and sent a bullet into her phone (he had perfect aim). She thought he was going to kill her too…

But no. She was to be his toy, from then on out, every night after she got home from her show.

Tonight she ran away. Tonight she shot him in the foot with his gun as he advanced on her and she made a run for it, down the stairs (afraid that maybe, just maybe, if she stopped running, he would be able to catch up to her) and out under the stars, into his pizza-smelling pickup truck and away onto the highways of Hollywood. If that's even where she is. She's been driving for two hours now and she doesn't have a clue as to her location. She's too scared to sleep but she can't just keep driving. She thinks she'd wreck.

She got another phone a long time ago, without him knowing. But whenever he attacked, she was always too paralyzed to call 911, sure that he would kill her if she even tried.

Sometimes she thinks that maybe it would be better if he had killed her, one of those nights.

Believe you me
I'll give them everything
I'd tell them anything
To show them everything

His drunkenness slips away from him - just like everything else, in the cold lonesome of this night. Forgetfulness, just another something he can't have. Now he can think, now he can remember, now he can sit up and clutch his stomach and glance at the digital clock across the hall.

Three a.m., it speaks in angry red letters.

Without knowing he's doing it, without even really thinking about it, he gropes for his cell phone, somewhere beside him on the hardwood floor. His fingers hold down the 1 key, the speed dial for Sonny's cell phone. He's pressing it up to his ear before he's even conscious of what he's doing, but he won't hang up. He can't.

He has to tell her - tell her everything, because he can't keep spending his nights on his freezing kitchen floor, shattered bottles and long gone spirits all around him.

It rings three times, and then she answers.

"Chad?" she croaks, sounding exhausted but also on the brink of hysteria.

"Sonny, I have a problem -"

"Me too," she chokes out, and he can hear her sobbing through the phone. "Me too. Maybe can I… come over?"

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah."

Believe you me
I'll give them everything
I'd tell them anything
To show them everything

So she plugs in her GPS and finds the nearest gas station. After spending most of her money on gas, she drives an hour to Chad's house, and she doesn't even need the address to know it's his; he's turned all the lights on for her, something the neighbors surely detest, because it's a huge house, the biggest she's ever seen. She's not quite sure where the door is, but Chad leans his head out and shouts her name. She runs over, trips once, and falls into his arms crying.

He holds her, smelling of wine and tears, and they stay like that for the longest time until she finally steps back. He leads her inside and she stares at all the broken glass on the kitchen floor, as well as the blood trails. She notices for the first time that Chad's feet are red, and her hand flies up to her mouth. "Oh my God, Chad, what happened -"

"Sonny," he stops her. "What's wrong?"

"You first -"

"No, you first -"

"I asked first!"

"Well, I asked second!"

She giggles a bit and he laughs a little, but then their problems crash down on them again and they're both left gasping for air, tears leaking from Sonny's eyes as Chad tries fruitlessly to keep them out of his. "Fine, I'll go," Sonny concedes.

She tells him about her father, how he killed her mother, how he beat her… she tells him that she was raped more times than she can count even though she struggles on the words, and she watches his jaw clench and his hands roll up into fists. Then she's finished and hardly able to keep from weeping as she mutters, "Your turn."

He explains everything to her - the death of his girlfriend and son, how hard it is to be on his own, how he gets drunk every night to forget them but it only makes him remember them more. Then, finally, it's confession time and fear threatens to overwhelm him.

"I promised myself I would never fall in love again -" he says. She stares earnestly up at him, waiting for him to finish. "But I did."

Her face sort of falls, and he tries to tell himself it's any reason but the one he's secretly hoping it is. "With who?" she asks. Then she puts her hand over her mouth. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry - that's really personal - I shouldn't have asked -"

"You," he interrupts her.

Blood fills her cheeks. "What?"

"I fell in love with you."

'Cause you ain't the only ones who wanna live it up
You ain't the only ones

And before he knows it they're both crying and he's hugging her and she's saying something into his chest. He holds her back a little. "What?"

"I love you, too," she says, smiling, not as big as the old Sonny used to but bigger than she has since the old Sonny went away.

You ain't the only ones who wanna live it up
You ain't the only ones

Then he kisses her, and it feels exactly right.

You ain't the only ones who wanna live it up
You ain't the only ones

They're sobbing again, both of them, but this time it's not because things are going wrong; it's because finally, finally, things are going right.

You ain't the only ones who wanna live it up
You ain't the only ones

They hold each other for a while, and then they go upstairs. It's five in the morning and they're both exhausted. They fall asleep beside each other in his king-sized bed, because neither one of them can stand to be alone any longer.

Stay awake
Get a grip and get out you're safe
From the weight of the world just take
A second to set things straight
I'll be fine
Even though I'm not always right
I can count on the sun to shine
Dedication takes a lifetime
But dreams only last for a night