Fall Like Snow

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I've messed with MCR's ages, relationship statuses, and possibly personalities to suit my needs. No disrespect intended.

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"And if you're on the roads in southern Minnesota tonight, I'd advise putting up at a hotel for the evening. Better safe than sorry. Here's Jim with more on the developing storm. Jim?"

The screen flashed to a graphic of a rapidly moving bank of clouds converging menacingly over the lower half of the state, shedding snowflakes as it went. A paunchy man in a grey bowtie repeated what he'd been saying for the past hour on the "blizzard of the decade" and the fascinating structuring of its layered formations. Logan muted the television and turned to where the others were unconcernedly playing poker.

"I'm telling you, we should stop now before it hits."

"Ehh, Kelly would stop the bus if it were that bad," Kendall said, waving a hand over his shoulder. He laid down his hand with a flourish. "Three nines, boys."

"Kelly is with Gustavo flying ahead to Detroit to set up the venue," Logan reminded him, fully aware it would make no difference. "All we have is Martin the sound tech and Natalie from makeup."

"Don't forget Billy the bus driver!" Carlos put in, distracted from pushing their sad little pot of twelve cents, a button, and a condom over to Kendall.

"Or Freight Train in security," put in James, already shuffling the cards again.

"The point is," said Logan, talking over them, "we're driving into the "blizzard of the decade" and I don't want to have to snuggle with you guys in one bed to produce body heat when the bus breaks down and snow covers us to the roof and we're not found til the spring thaw!" He waved the remote for emphasis, attempting to convey the horrors of being trapped in a bus with nothing but each other.

"Snuggle, Logan?" Kendall asked, raising one of his thick eyebrows.

"Duuude," Carlos groaned. James laughed, dealing the cards.

Logan glared at them. "I'm serious! We need to get to a hotel." He dialed Billy the bus driver's number on his cell for the third time that night. Billy answered on the first ring.

"No, Logan, we ain't gonna stop. I gotta get y'all to Detroit 'fore mornin and there ain't nothin you can do about it." He hung up. Logan sighed and collapsed on the couch.

The tourbus wasn't large, but it was big enough. There was the kitchen/breakfast room/sitting area/tv lounge up front by the door, which wasn't connected on the inside to the driver's cockpit, where Billy and Freight Train sat. A long hallway beyond the tv had bunkbeds on either side and a tiny bathroom with a shower set into the back of the bus. They couldn't walk down the hallway two abreast, but they all loved the bus. It made them feel like real rockstars, no matter how many weeks they'd been on it.

Logan contemplated being stuck on the bus for however many days it would take the snowplows to reach them. He found himself loving the bus significantly less.

"I believe, gentlemen, that they call this a straight," James said in a bad British accent as he slapped his cards down.

"Fuck!" Kendall dropped his cards and shoved the pot to James.

"What kind of poker are you even playing?" Logan asked.

"Winner takes all, even from past wins," Carlos explained. He seemed in awe of James' hand.

James pushed the cards at Carlos to deal and held the condom up to the light. "Trojan. How plebian. Still, I bet I could make use of it." Kendall snorted, but James caught Logan's eye. He winked, and Logan felt a flash of heat run through him.

Poker ended with James holding onto the pot for three consecutive hands. Logan worried at the hem of his jersey as Barbara the news anchor and Jim the weatherman gave increasingly dire reports. Snow fell thickly outside the windows until it got too dark to tell and the other three made Logan give up his weather vigil for channel 46's Spartacus marathon.

James squashed next to Logan on the couch while Carlos and Kendall lolled on the floor. Logan might have preferred a good documentary on gladiators to the historical inaccuracies that littered Spartacus, but he wasn't immune to the pull of blood, guts, and drama. He looked down halfway through the third episode to where he'd felt something sharp poking at his wrist and found the foil of the condom wrapper shining from the light of the tv where it was half-palmed in James' hand. James scraped it along the back of his hand like a promise, though his eyes never left the screen. Logan ran the pad of a finger over James' thumb in reply. He tried to focus on the onscreen slave sex, but his mind was on a different sort of debauchery.

Carlos was just talking about turning in for the night when the bus stopped moving.

They felt it immediately, long accustomed to the feel of it rumbling and vibrating under their feet. They looked at each other and Kendall opened his mouth to say something, but Logan's phone rang and cut him off. "Billy?" Logan said by way of greeting.

"Logan, we're stuck."

"Stuck?" Logan yelped, and the other three made suitably appropriate gestures of horror.

"Run into an avalanche and the tires are iced to hell. We ain't goin any further tonight. I'm real sorry, kid."

"Okay, okay, okay," Logan muttered, trying not to freak out. His brain wasn't helping, feeding him pictures of being forced to eat Freight Train after they ran out of food. "How much fuel do we have left? Can we spare the heat? Are we on a main highway?"

"We've got about a quarter tank, a little more in reserve, and it'd be best if we could turn the bus off. We're on a detour off of 90."

"We can get through this. No heat, no electricity, but we'll manage. Okay. We're fine." Logan was aware he was rambling, but powerless to stop it.

"Uh, Logan?"

"What, Kendall?" Logan snapped.

Kendall held out his iphone. "There's a hotel, like, a mile from here."

Carlos whooped. "All hail GPS!"

"Real beds tonight! Real showers! Real mirrors! Thank you, storm!" said James, perfectly serious.

Logan rolled his eyes, but secretly he almost wanted to thank some sort of nonexistent higher power. He relayed the information to Billy while Kendall called to book three rooms. They set about shoving clothes and toothbrushes into bags for their unexpected hotel stay, tossing coats and hats around to bundle up for the cold.

Freight Train opened the doors a few minutes later and they stumped out into the freezing air. They huddled together for warmth and met up with Martin the sound tech and Natalie from makeup, who were following the bus in Natalie's car.

"Are you sure it'll be okay to leave it like that?" Logan asked Natalie while Carlos packed a snowball to lob at James.

"Sure. There's no chance of anyone getting up here for awhile," Natalie replied. "I'm not sure my little car could have gone much farther in this anyway." She gestured to the falling snow.

"Weather report said it would turn blizzard in about an hour," Martin put in. "We were listening to it on the radio."

They surveyed the tall bank of snow about a hundred feet in front of the bus, clearly rolled down from the rock faces on either side of the highway.

"No gettin through that," Billy said, lighting a cigarette. Logan privately agreed. Snow on the ground had banked at least a foot deep already, and with the expected blizzard, it was probably for the best that they were stopping now.

"Alright!" Natalie said, clapping her mittened hands. "I'll ferry the boys over first, then come back for you three. Kendall, you'll have to direct me."

They piled into Natalie's sedan, Logan, Carlos, and James in the back and Kendall up front to navigate. The hotel turned out to be just off the last exit they had passed; they could probably have walked to it, had they needed to.

Natalie dropped them off in front of the main lobby, promising to be back soon. They were about to push inside the double doors when Carlos squeaked and clapped his hands to his face.

"What?" Kendall asked, sounding like he was fast growing tired of the night's adventures.

"Isn't that…isn't that…My Chemical Romance's tourbus?" Carlos yelped, pointing a shaking finger at the bus parked alongside the building. They all turned to stare, and sure enough, the band's logo, name, and the promo pics from their new Killjoys shtick were plastered across the side. Logan felt his stomach erupt in excited butterflies. MCR was a guilty pleasure of his, and apparently of Carlos as well. What was the probability they were staying in the same hotel? Would he be able to meet Gerard Way?

Kendall and James seemed less than impressed when he and Carlos turned to them with saucer eyes, babbling about MCR and do you even understand how famous they are? Grabbing their shoulders, James steered them both inside so Kendall could check them in.

Logan and Carlos peered around the lobby as if expecting the other band to be hiding behind the fake ferns while Kendall dealt with the tired desk clerk. Logan was glad to have someone to fanboy with; he doubted he'd have emerged from this experience with his dignity intact otherwise.

"Remember, if we meet them, act cool," Carlos whispered to him.

"Can't scare them off," Logan replied, nodding.

"You're both idiots," James said, coming up behind them. They ignored him, peeking into the dark dining room, just in case. It was empty.

Logan's cell rang. It was Natalie, telling them the car wouldn't start, but not to worry because Martin was apparently as good with engines as he was with mixing software. In any case, they wouldn't get to the hotel for awhile, and just sit tight.

Kendall, having finished checking in, walked over with three room keys fanned in his hand. "We're all good for the night. One room for us, one for Natalie, and one for the dudes."

"What, you couldn't have gotten us another room? So we didn't have to share beds?" Carlos asked, making a face.

"It's called being economic," Kendall said archly.

"Aww, afraid of snuggling?" James teased. Carlos laughed in Logan's face and Logan stuck an irritated tongue out at him. "Well, I'm not. I'd love to snuggle with Logan." James tossed an arm around Logan's shoulders and planted a mocking kiss on the side of his head. Logan pretended to be annoyed and was in the process of shoving him off when the elevator dinged.

They turned to look as two grungy-looking men shuffled out and over to the hotel's "gift shop" in the corner. One was thin and dirty blonde; the other more stockily-built with fire engine red hair with at least an inch of roots showing. They loaded some of the cheap snacks into their arms and walked over to the main desk to buy them. Carlos yanked on Logan's sleeve insistently.

"I know," Logan breathed.

"It's them it's them it's them," Carlos chanted under his breath.

"It's who?" Kendall asked. "That's not My Chemical Romance, is it?"

"Yes," Carlos and Logan hissed simultaneously.

"It's Gerard and Mikey Way," Logan said, for the benefit of those that perhaps didn't frequent MCR chat rooms in their spare time. "We have to go talk to them," he said to Carlos.

Carlos grabbed his arm. "I'm afraid."

"We can do this."

"Let's go."

They both stood there motionless as the two men paid for their snacks and turned to head back to the elevator. Kendall sighed and grabbed their arms, dragging them over to cut them off. Gerard and Mikey stopped, looking very tired and like they had very little patience for whatever was about to come out of the teenager's mouths.

"Hi," Kendall began. "We're Big Time Rush. This is Carlos and Logan. They're apparently big fans."

"Hi," Logan said quietly. Carlos squeaked.

"It's always great to meet fans," Mikey said. It sounded rehearsed. "Would you like an autograph? Sorry, but it's been a long day. Our bus got stuck in the ice on the way to Detroit. We had to be towed here."

"Ours too! We're heading there to play a gig," Logan said, finding his voice while digging for a scrap of paper to be autographed.

"You're a band?" Gerard said, and if he were feigning interest, he was doing it well.

"Only the best out of LA," said James, coming up to them at last. Gerard and James looked each other up and down.

"First tour?" Gerard asked, quirking a smile.

"Second," James shot back. Gerard grinned at him, flashing his teeth.

"How old are you boys?" Mikey asked, scrawling his name across the back of a receipt Logan had found in a pocket.

"Seventeen. Well, James is eighteen," Carlos said, still looking ridiculously starstruck.

"Is he now," Gerard said, almost too quietly to be heard. Something pinged in Logan's brain, but he ignored it.

"And on your second tour, too. Impressive stuff," Mikey said, passing the receipt and Sharpie to Gerard. They exchanged glances and almost identical impish grins.

"So," Gerard began as he whipped out a signature and handed the paper to Logan again, "who's sleeping with who?"

Whom, Logan's brain corrected rather than process the more alarming meaning of the words.

"Excuse me?" Kendall said, narrowing his eyes.

"You heard," Mikey said, laughter in his voice. There were laugh lines around his mouth; they distracted from the bags under his eyes.

Carlos looked confused. Logan very carefully did not look at James. "Uh, no one's sleeping with anyone. We're guys," Kendall said, looking like he knew there was a joke somewhere in this situation and he was determined not to be the butt of it.

"Ahh, my friends, you surely wouldn't piss on the long, noble traditions of bands on the road? Confidences between brothers—not you, Mikey, of course—and helping out your friends? A little hot 'n heavy to wile away the miles?"

"No?" Carlos said, sounding unsure.

"Is that really a thing?" James asked with what appeared to be genuine interest.

"Sure," Mikey said easily, though his eyes were dancing. "No time for groupies when you're traveling every night."

"You're living in each other's back pockets anyway," put in Gerard. "What's the harm?"

"Um," said Carlos eloquently.

"We're straight," Kendall said, as if that settled the matter.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Gerard said, laughing at him. "Anyway, all the cool bands are doing it."

"All those nasty, nasty rumors about Panic at the Disco," Mikey said.

"And Fall Out Boy," Gerard added.

"And those German boys, what were they called? Ehh," Mikey said, dismissing the thought with a wave of his hand. "What about you, short stuff? What are your thoughts on the matter?"

Logan startled. "Me? Um. I don't really have any, uh, thoughts. About it."

James laughed and ruffled his hair. Gerard winked at him, a horrible, horrible recognition in his eyes. He looked like he might say something, too, but at that moment the rest of their party blessedly walked through the door, saving him.

"Looks like we've gotta go," Kendall said, sounding not at all sorry.

"It was nice meeting you!" Carlos said, apparently relieved to be back on familiar ground.

"Yeah, you boys too. Remember the advice, kids," Gerard said over his shoulder as he and Mikey headed for the elevator. Logan waved, feeling exposed.

The four crew members headed their way. James touched Logan's elbow reassuringly and went to meet them.

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Up in their hotel room, Carlos flicked through channels while Kendall remained visibly squicked by the whole encounter. James lounged on one of the big queen-sized beds and Logan tried to coax a wireless signal out of the air for his laptop.

"I mean, clearly they were lying. Having us on." Kendall frowned at his reflection in the mirror mounted on the wall.

"Pulling our leg," added Carlos.

Kendall nodded. "Messing with us. There's no way bands actually do that. Hell, I bet they don't actually do that."

"Aw, who cares either way," James said casually from the bed. "It's not like it matters."

Kendall shook himself, as if he'd walked through a cold draft. "It's just weird. That they'd even suggest it, y'know? They're brothers, right?"

"The Way brothers. Gerard is older," Carlos answered. "You shoulda seen Gerard back when he had that white hair. It was awesome."

"What, so you're gay now too?" Kendall joked.

"No way!" squealed Carlos, but Kendall tackled him on the bed. They rolled around, trading light punches and shouts of "gay!" Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw James' lips twitch into a scowl before they smoothed into their former impassive expression.

"Hey. Hey!" Logan yelled over his bandmates' noise. "It's almost three AM. Can we get some sleep? Please?"

"Yeah, yeah, Logan," Kendall grumbled as he rolled off the bed to shuck his jeans and jacket. James just rolled over and dragged the blanket at the foot of the bed on top of himself. Carlos and Logan changed into the pajama bottoms they had brought and Kendall hit the lights. Logan slid under the covers beside James in the ensuing darkness. He reached out a hand to touch James' shoulder, and while James didn't respond, he didn't pull away, either. Logan listened to Kendall and Carlos whisper and shove for a few minutes, but his body quickly remembered what time it was and sent him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He awoke the next morning to the sound of Carlos' excited chatter. Half-asleep, he fumbled his way out of bed and to the window, where the others were gathered, talking much too fast and way too loud. Then he stopped, rubbed his eyes, and stared.

"That has to be…at least five feet of snow," he said weakly.

"And it's still snowing!" Carlos yelled, jumping up into the air and pumping his fist.

"Ah, Kendall, how far away from a town did you say we were?" Logan was trying to remain calm, but all he could think of was Gustavo's face when he discovered they'd be missing their sold-out Detroit concert.

Kendall whipped out his iphone and pulled up Google Maps. "It looks like…two hours, in prime road conditions."

"Would this be through the pass with the avalanche?"

"Yes. Oh, but I don't think Little Lakes, Minnesota—that's the town—is big enough to have a snowplow anyway. Population two hundred."

"So what you're saying," Logan began, staring out at the plains of untouched snow that had effectively buried everything from shrubs to whatever cars had been in the lot outside the window, "is that this hotel is nothing more than an out-of-the-way rest stop for truckers and that it might take days for the roads to be cleared for travel?"

"If we run out of food, I'll be eating Kendall," James announced, heading for the shower.

"Can we go out and play in it?" Carlos begged, and Logan was distracted from his worrying to remember that even if it was keeping them from the eighth stop on their tour, it was still five feet of snow, which meant the most epic igloos ever constructed.

He had both his boots on when a bone-chilling thought struck him. "Hey, uh, guys? Did anyone call Gustavo last night to tell him we were delayed? Maybe one of the staff?"

"No…" Kendall replied, the cold reality of what they must do dawning on him.

"I vote Logan does it!" Carlos said, dashing out the door before Logan could protest.

"Sorry buddy. Nice knowing you!" Kendall raced out after Carlos like he had a gunman on his tail, and Logan sighed in defeat and sank into the just-this-side-of-moldy armchair in the corner, dialing Gustavo's number.

Ten minutes of conversation later, most of which was spent with the phone held a good two feet from his ear, Gustavo hung up with threats of sending them all packing back to Minnesota to die in the snow like the stray dogs they were. Logan didn't want to take to risk of pointing out that they were already in Minnesota, and that was more or less the problem.

He tossed the phone at the table and flopped belly-down onto the unmade bed, too depressed to follow Kendall and Carlos out into the snow. Who knew what the consequences were of sending thousands of fans home disappointed when they didn't get to the concert? They'd have to rebrand themselves Big Time No-Show if they weren't in Detroit in—he glanced at the clock—ten hours. No one would want to come to a concert after that and, dreams crushed, they'd be sent right back to Minnesota. In fact, it would probably be better to just stay in Minnesota right now. Save themselves the humiliation.

"Are you trapped in your head again?" James asked, coming out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and water dripping from his hair.

"I wonder if we could still play birthday parties and weddings," Logan mused despairingly. James laughed and walked over to fasten the chain lock in the door. Logan looked at the clock again. 8:05 AM. Nine hours, fifty-five minutes until the end of their careers.

"Want a distraction?" James asked from the foot of the bed. Logan glanced back at him.

"Horny?"

"God, you have no idea," James said, taking his response for affirmation and crawling onto the bed, leaving his towel on the floor. "Thought we'd get to fuck last night."

Logan sat up and kicked off his boots, feeling James' fingers worm under the sides of his layers of sweaters to help peel them off. To tell the truth, he'd been looking forward to sex last night too, folded up in the miniscule bus bathroom, keeping as quiet as possible while the other two slept. It had been too long, and he'd welcome anything to get his mind off of their impending doom.

"Condom?" Logan asked as he stood to kick off his jeans and boxers.

James grimaced. "Left it on the bus."

"Do we have any more?"

"I don't think so. Fuck." He flopped back on the bed and rubbed his hands over his face. Logan crawled on top of him anyway.

"So no penetration," he said, ignoring the face James made at the clinical word, "but there are other ways to get off." He licked his hand and wrapped it around James' half-hard dick, stroking lightly. James sighed in pleasure stretched his arms over his head. Logan dipped his head and bit a nipple, starting to rub himself against James' thigh.

A light beep was all the warning they had before the door banged open a few inches, stopped with a jerk by the chain pulled taught.

"Shit!" Logan whispered, rolling off of James and the bed in one movement. "Shower! I'm in the shower." He raced into the bathroom and slammed the door just as Kendall's confused "guys?" echoed through the crack in the door.

With shaking hands, he locked the door and started the shower, listening to James—who had hopefully wrapped his towel around himself again—opening the door and grumbling at the others' annoyed accusations. Apparently Natalie had sent them packing back upstairs the second she'd caught them outside, worrying they'd catch colds or be lost in the snow. Logan stepped into the lukewarm water and jerked himself off roughly, thinking of nothing in particular and ticked at the others' impeccable timing. His orgasm was weak and unsatisfying, and while he washed his hair he entertained fantasies of pulling James into the bathroom and having James blow him against the door.

He supposed he should be satisfied with just his hand, but he wasn't. He hadn't been, ever since he and James had started fucking around about six months ago. There was no real commitment—or at least, Logan didn't think there was; they didn't exactly talk about it—but James had opened up a world Logan might never have had the guts to experience outside of surreptitiously-downloaded gay porn.

Logan needed labels like he needed breathing, like he needed to add up the world and put it into tiny boxes to poke at and analyze, so he called himself 'bisexual' and James 'pansexual' and what they were doing 'friends with benefits.' James didn't need labels. James experienced a breezy, undefined sort of existence where beauty and warmth reigned supreme and where the real world rarely interfered. Most people thought James was stupid. Logan didn't; Logan thought James just didn't care about the stuff most people did.

"Logan? I need to do my hair," James called through the door. Logan turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around his waist before opening the door and letting him in. "Sorry about that," James murmured once the door was firmly shut behind him.

"It's not your fault," Logan sighed. James pulled a fat bottle of some sort of Cuda product out of the bag by the sink and spritzed his hair. Logan leaned against the counter. "Later, I guess."

"Still worked up?" James asked with a devilish smirk in his voice.

"If I have to jerk off five times today, it'll be your fault."

James laughed. "Later, then."

Someone banged on the door. "Natalie wants us downstairs to discuss what we're going to do," Carlos called.

Logan made a face at James and started to leave. James slapped him on the ass as he squeezed by.