WILL SNOW AND ME

#lightsout #lightsoutfic #willsnow #willsnowxoc #pov #enemiestolovers #slowburn #y/n

CHAPTER ONE

The moment the lights go up, I feel like I can’t breathe.

I know they’re called “Lights Out,” but really, I think “Lights On” would be more accurate. It’s not just that they’re onstage, illuminated by the brightest lights I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s that everything about them is magnetic. I can hardly take my eyes off them as they come onstage, Ken and Derrick bounding forward while Jon and Will walk at a more sedate pace. They’re like four lone streetlamps in the night, lighting up the way home. I want to hate them, but they are utterly, completely captivating. And the most captivating of all is Will. Will Snow, who I always thought I hated the most out of any of them.

If they’re the light, then I’m the dark. I’m invisible to them. How could I be? I’m just an average girl, wearing average leggings and an average flannel shirt, hair in an average messy bun. There are pretty girls all around me, pretty girls who love Lights Out. I don’t love them. Of course I don’t! I don’t even know why I’m here.

But as the opening notes to “Gemini Girl” kick in, and Ken opens his mouth to sing the first verse, I notice that Will is still hovering at the edge of the stage, even when his bandmates have congregated in the center of the stage. He doesn’t even look at them. Instead, his icy blue gaze is on the audience. In my direction, no less.

His lips curls, and those beautiful blue eyes glint with something wickedly tempting.

He’s looking at me.

June 2014

The opening words of Gina’s fanfic drifted across Rosie’s mind as she walked through the open doors of Madison Square Garden.

Rosie had been thinking about Gina a lot that day. She didn’t usually think about Gina—at least, not like this. Usually Gina was there, and they could actually talk instead of just thinking about each other. Gina should’ve been there. Why wasn’t she there?

Rosie had to remind herself that she was the one who had told Gina not to come. Rosie knew that if it were her in Gina’s place, she would have just refused and showed up anyway. But Gina wasn’t a fighter. She was respectful almost to a fault; if Rosie told her not to come, Gina would not come.

Maybe they weren’t destined to be best friends forever after all.

Rosie had just barely managed to resell Gina’s ticket in time. It had been a stressful experience; she’d scoured the internet for hours, looking for tutorials on how to resell Madison Square Garden concert tickets at the very last minute, all while blinking away tears. Her glasses— narrow little purple-framed things that dated back to sixth grade and certainly were never intended to bear this kind of emotional labor—had kept fogging up. In the end, she’d been fortunate enough to make a small profit; because the ticket was for the pit, and hence very close to the stage, there were fans out there desperate enough to sell their souls for such an opportunity. Rosie herself would’ve done that, had she not been fortunate enough to score these tickets early on.

She ought to be proud of the sale. She’d made lemonade out of lemons. Wasn’t that something to be proud of? But she wasn’t proud of at all. The money she’d earned was tainted by Gina’s absence. It only made the fight they’d had last night feel more real.

Rosie tried to push Gina from her mind. It was, in Rosie’s humble opinion, the most important night of her life—more important than graduation, than her eighteenth birthday, than the approaching first day of college. Gina had not even bothered to grace Madison Square Garden with her presence. She wasn’t here, at the Lights Out concert, and therefore she was irrelevant.

None of these thoughts made Rosie feel better—in fact, it made her soft heart and softer conscience squirm even more—but nevertheless she carried on. That was certainly the advice of her phone lock screen, which read, “KEEP CALM and LOVE LIGHTS OUT.” Behind these encouraging words was the Union Jack, as if she needed to be reminded that Lights Out was a British band. She loved British people. Gina loved them too.

Red and blue flashed in Rosie’s eyes as she checked the time on her phone. It was only 7:30 PM. She’d been waiting outside the venue since before noon. She’d thought she was super early, but there were already a handful of fans camping out on the street when she got there. Now, as she passed through security, her feet were incredibly sore, and she needed to pee (even after lightly dehydrating herself all day so that this precise problem would not come up), but she knew the fun was only just beginning. She still had to wait for the opener, and after the opener, she still had to wait for the headliner. She considered dashing to the bathroom, but she’d gotten here early for a reason, and she was going to stick to the plan. She went straight to the floor and wedged herself into one of the last remaining open spots on the barricade.

She looked about. The entirety of Madison Square Garden was about her—mostly empty now, but not for long. The relatively small, general admission floor area was already filling up, mostly with teenage girls. She was startled to realize that, true to the words of Gina’s fanfic, a lot of the girls here were really pretty. Actually, it wasn’t just that they were pretty. Pretty would’ve been okay; Rosie was of the opinion that most girls were pretty. But these girls were skinny and white. And they were dressed just like her, in flannels (it was June, but that couldn’t stop them) and leggings and artfully messy buns, but they made it look so much more elegant. Rosie tried to shrink where she stood, but she was standing in the middle of Madison Square Garden by the stage, and it was impossible.

She suddenly felt very silly. So many of these girls were younger than her, maybe thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. A few might even have been eleven or twelve. She pondered with a little bit of vitriolic resentment that they had probably not been fans since their debut single in 2010, the way she had. But they were younger. Freer. They had girlish charm, although, that being said, they’d probably all shaved their entire bodies in preparation for this concert—which, admittedly, Rosie had done as well. For what reason, she couldn’t really say, but it had felt like an obvious thing to do. She hadn’t even told Gina, which was a sure sign that it was probably a ridiculous whim. In the last couple of years, she’d grown into the habit of not letting Gina know the extent of her obsession with Lights Out, for fear of what Gina would think. It was a strange shift in their relationship, one that Rosie certainly did not welcome.

There had once been a time when she and Rosie shared everything with each other. It was natural. It felt like breathing. Rosie had never had to think about it. Gina was the Watson to her Sherlock. The Spock to her Kirk. The Phil to her Dan. They fit together, like puzzle pieces that had somehow been separated from the rest of the picture yet nonetheless could fit with each other.

But now, here Rosie was, all alone and feeling as old and ugly as like a crone—she’d just turned eighteen, for God’s sake—and Gina was not with her.

Rosie was patient. Really, it was one of her greatest qualities. Patience was survival. For what seemed like she leaned lightly on the barricade, attempting to ease the soreness of her feet, waiting for her boys to come onstage. They’d meant the world to her for four years. This was her dream. Sometimes, she wondered if, tomorrow, it would even be worth living anymore. Surely, after tonight, she could die, and she wouldn’t miss out on anything. Screw college. Screw the future. Screw Gina.

She didn’t really mean that last part.

The opener came and went. She was a very cute, indie-pop kind of girl, who wore pink and bows but sang in a raspy voice about dark things like depression and drugs. Rosie didn’t think she related much to all that, but she appreciated it all the same. Gina, who loved Lana del Rey and Marina and the Diamonds, would love this girl, Rosie thought. If Rosie ever spoke to Gina again, she would make sure to tell her.

As the indie-pop girl finally clomped offstage in her pastel platform boots, the audience cheered, their voices strained by a strange mixture of relief and anticipation. They’d been cordial enough to the opener, but it was clear they were impatient for the band that they were there to see.

Rosie yawned, stretched, checked the time on her phone again and again. It was drawing near 9PM, which was technically when the headline show was supposed to begin. Rosie had to force herself to look away from her phone, because the battery of her battered old iPhone 4s was already running low and she wasn’t entirely sure if it would make it to the end of the show, especially considering how many videos she was about to take. But just as she slid it into her pocket, it buzzed, and she felt compelled to look, because what if it was Gina?

It was not Gina. It was her online friend, who ran an Instagram page under the name of “willsnowofficial.” The name was misleading. Rosie remembered the first time she’d ever received a DM from the account. It was last December, very shortly after Instagram had introduced their new direct message system. Rosie hadn’t been expecting to receive any DMs. She’d had internet friends before, people whom she chatted with in the tags on Tumblr or even went as far as to connect with on Facebook Messenger. But she didn’t know who they were or what they looked like, and they only messaged each other sporadically, anyway. Rosie might not have had a lot of friends in person, but she didn’t mind. She’d never thought she had a need for a friend who wasn’t Gina.

The first time “willsnowofficial” ever DM’d her, she was fooled by the name. For one blissful, adrenaline-filled moment, Rosie was convinced that the DM was from the Will Snow himself. It was like she’d slipped into the world of her dreams, a world in which her favorite member of Lights Out knew who she was. But the dreamworld was short-lived. The message turned out to be from one of those fan accounts that posts nothing except obviously screenshotted red-carpet photos of the chosen celebrity. Rosie could not help but feel a little scornful when she saw it—there was nothing creative about it, no art, no edits, no fics, no headcanons, nothing of that sort. It had more followers than her modest little fanart account, which irritated her a little.

But the DM was nice, at least. The user, whoever it was, just wanted to repost some of her art, with the watermark, of course. Rosie gave them her permission, expecting to leave it at that.

But that was only the beginning. Somehow, without even knowing how or why it happened, Rosie fell into conversation with the person and discovered that they were clever and charismatic—at least, as charismatic as a faceless entity on the internet could be. When Rosie asked them why they had christened their account with such a confusing name, the reply was, “to fuck with people, I guess?” That was just the kind of person they were—flippant, funny, nonchalant. And they used proper punctuation, in every single message. Nothing like Rosie at all, but Rosie liked that. She found it relaxing that the only thing they had in common was an intense love for British heartthrob and global superstar Will Snow. It was the exact opposite of her friendship with Gina. Rosie and Gina seemed to have everything in common except Lights Out. Gina usually liked the same things as Rosie, but she never understood what it was that made Lights Out so addictive to Rosie.

Soon Rosie was messaging back and forth with “willsnowofficial” every day. It was all innocent. They talked about their favorite fanfictions, the best fan artists, the Lights Out songs they enjoyed the most when they were sad. The only strange thing was that even though Rosie shared a lot about herself with this person, they never shared much information with her in return. Rosie knew at least a little about most of her other internet friends, as casual as they were. Usually they told her how old they were, or what country they lived in, or what pronouns they used. But the only thing she knew about “willsnowofficial” was that their name was Billie. Rosie often liked to imagine they looked exactly like Billie Piper from Doctor Who. It was a rather romantic image, considering that Rosie’s crush on Billie Piper was almost as big as her crush on David Tennant.

Rosie opened Instagram to see what Billie had sent her. It was a simple question.

Are you in yet?

Rosie had been messaging with Billie about the concert for weeks now. Ever since she’d bought the tickets, her life had seemed to revolve around little else. She wanted to express her joy and anticipation Gina, but she didn’t think Gina would understand. Gina was pretty deep into the internet fandom thing, but she’d never been into Lights Out. She liked them, but her feelings weren’t serious. Billie was a much better person to talk to about such things.

the opener just finished, Rosie typed back.

I bet you’re excited.

excited?? that’s an understatement. i am ELATED!!!! :D

Me too.

Rosie wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. She supposed it meant that Billie was excited to see Lights Out, too. They’d mentioned once or twice that they were planning to see them in concert at some point, but they hadn’t specified when or where.

But Rosie didn’t have any more time to consider it, because it was just then that the lights started to dim.