Marshall really knew how to make him feel like shit. But he wasn’t going to fall for the act again. Ever since they were first put in the band, Marshall had been on management's side. He always made it seem like it was their fault when they were chewed out by the label.

They’d been kids. They were trying to have fun while they made music.

Marshall never understood back then and he didn’t understand right now. He would never understand because he wasn’t Jamie.

Jamie jumped off the stool and waltzed over to the fridge. There was nothing but pop. Grand.

He cracked a Cola open and chugged it down. Once it was empty, he chucked it into the sink. It slammed with a nice sharp sound. A smile pulled at his lips.

It wasn’t quite there yet.

“Did you bring a suit?”

Jamie jerked his head over to where Marshall was sitting. The shit had his hand on Jamie’s bag.

Before he could get the zipper down, Jamie ripped the bag from Marshall’s hands. He looked up in surprise, startled from Jamie’s outburst.

“Jeez, Marsh. Do you always go through people’s shit?”

There were boundaries between them now. It wasn’t like how it was on the tour bus when everything suddenly became everyone's.

But really, it was because he didn’t want Marshall to take his cigarettes and booze.

Which was exactly where Marshall’s thoughts went.

“What are you hiding?” Marshall stood up and slowly walked around the couch.

Jamie threw the bag over his shoulder. He wasn't much taller than Marshall, but the years hadn’t been good for either of them. As he sized him up, Jamie thought he could take him. When they were younger, they’d fought about a lot of things, over who got to use the toilet first or who got the last bag of chips. Jamie was always the winner.

“Jamie.” Marshall was using his motherly voice on him. He wasn’t going to give in so easily.

He tried to step around him. Marshall blocked his path.

“Marsh, back off.” He really wasn’t in the mood for a fight, but the drugs were egging him on. Really though, there was a small part of him that would have enjoyed smashing his fist in Marshall’s pretty face. He might have grown older and was trying to look more professional with his five o’clock shadow, but Jamie knew he looked the same when they met.

It was five years, not a decade.

Marshall was still giving him that disapproving face. He went to grab the bag again. Jamie pushed him away.

They struggled against each other to get to the bag. Marshall hit the back of the couch and Jamie went stumbling over the step into the kitchen. He yelled out a couple of curse words as he lost his footing.

Marshall took the chance and stoop down to take the bag.

The drugs were making everything fuzzy around him. He was too slow to yank the bag out of Marshall’s iron tight grip.

He’d zipped it open and rustled through its contents before Jamie made it to his feet.

Marshall pulled out the bottle of brandy. He gave Jamie a dark look. “No.”

“It’s mine,” Jamie insisted as he tried to swipe it from him. Marshall held it away.

“We had a deal.” He looked down in the bag against. He gave a sigh. “And these?”

The box of Lucky Strikes was smashed but was still good. Jamie had to fight back the cry as Marshall confiscated them.

He wasn’t going to get those back.

Jamie yanked the bag. Marshall let him. He already had what he wanted.

At least he still had the bag of Xanax. He needed those if these were the kind of days he would have to deal with.

He sneered down at the open bag, walking away to the one bedroom.

This was going to be the best fucking band reunion ever.

The bedroom was as lavish as the living room. The white bedding was the ultimate sneer in his face and the bathroom was even worse. There were so many mirrors and so many white surfaces that were begging to get stained up.

Once upon time, he would have been creaming his pants at the place. He’d never had a lot of money and when they made it big, these were the kinds of places they were staying at every night. A different city, a different bed, and a different show. It had been fun. Really fun. But after a while, the sickness and the sleep paralysis started to kick in. It was too long until he hated these rooms.

He fell back on the soft bed, sighing as he pulled out his phone.

There was no point in torturing himself. He was curious. It had been years since he saw what they were saying about him.

Instead, though, he searched up Live Warnings. Maybe that would lessen the blow some.

He could faintly hear Marshall out in the living room doing God-only-knows-what. He wished he would fuck off so that he could get some peace.

The page loaded. The first result was their Wikipedia page and then some yahoo questions people were asking. Under that though, there were some recent articles written about them. The one headline that caught his eye was “Live Warnings: Band getting back together? Sam Cassle and Marshall Hawkins spotted in LA”.

He scrolled through the rest. They were basically the same but with some word variations.

He raised a brow when he got to the end.

“The Greatest Boyband that Never Was” and “How Live Warnings went from Number 1 to Unknown”.

With a scoff, he closed out of the page. He had a bunch of missed calls, but he ignored them.

This would have been the time when he would break out a drink. Now, he had to suffer until Marshall got his fat out of the hotel.

He covered his face with the pillow.