Chapter Text
It was almost routine at this point. Zach decides lying on his hotel bed and staring at the ceiling is not a productive way to curb his boredom and ends up snapping Ruben low-effort selfie taken from above, messy hair, dark circles, squinted expression, and all. He captions it “bored af pls be up”.
Ruben does the weird thing where he types, erases, stops, types, and erases, like six different times. For whatever reason, Zach's noticed Ruben only does this any time he sends a low effort, “I'm bored, please come entertain me,” snap (which he'd tell you is hilarious if you asked for his completely unbiased opinion). It’s especially odd when, at least with Zach, he hardly ever second-guesses a joke, jab, or comment. It’s been happening a lot more since they started this tour, too, but Zach’s mostly brushed it off as just being them spending too much time together.
Zach jumped when mildly aggressive knocking came from the door. “Open up, loser, the party’s here.” Zach rolled his eyes and got up to open the door. Apparently, Ruben couldn’t come up with an actual response and just settled for knocking.
“First off,” Zach says as he opens the door. “I’m not a loser.”
Ruben eyes him skeptically as he walks in and heads towards the bed. “Well, we’re probably one of the biggest pop acts right now, playing an almost completely sold-out world tour while being teenagers with minimal supervision, and still,” he sits down, puts his hands together, and points at Zach. “You’ve invited me to come hang out cause you were bored nearly every day since we started, like three months ago. How is that not loser behavior?”
Zach sits down next to him, facing in a way that he can rest his back on the headboard. “Well, I could say the same to you. Seeing as every time I’ve asked you to hang out, you’ve been so not busy that you’re here within two minutes,” Zach continues before Ruben can say anything else. “And by that logic, the biggest loser here is Jon. He’s been not just in bed but completely conked out by ten-thirty at the very latest, even on days that we don’t have to be up before the sun is.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Ruben says as he lies down.
They sit in comfortable silence for a moment.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” Zach asks as he sits up straighter, pulling his knees to his chest.
“Well, you just did,” Ruben grins at his own joke, “But sure.”
Zach hesitates for a moment, finding a loose thread on the hem of his shirt extremely interesting. “Are we like good?”
Ruben instantly sits up, looking at him, a mix of confusion, panic, and a touch of hurt dancing across his face. “What do you mean?”
“Like, I dunno, you’ve just been weird lately. It sort of feels like there's something you’re not telling me.” Silence hangs as Zach starts overthinking what he just said. “Not that you have to tell me everything,” He looks up from the thread he was messing with. “I just feel like we’ve never really kept big secrets from each other, so it just feels weird and like… yeah, I guess.” He cringes at how he ended the sentence, but doesn’t try to come up with anything to make it feel less awkward-sounding.
Ruben sits with Zach’s concerns for a bit, processing, as Zach starts panicking internally. Ruben gives him a look that says, ‘Stop thinking,’ before he says, “I promise we’re good. I think we’re just around each other 24/7 at this point, and we just don’t have as much to talk about.”
The reassurance is enough to put Zach’s mind at rest, and the comfortable silence falls again.
Ruben’s eyes land on Zach’s guitar, abandoned on the floor, with a notebook and pen sitting next to it. “You writing anything good?” he asks as he resumes lying across Zach’s bed, taking up most of it.
Zach shrugs and gets up to grab the notebook off the floor. “Not really. I’ve got some little melody fragments, a line or two, and like the concept of a chord progression.”
Ruben gives him a look, and Zach sarcastically groans as he leans down again to pick up his guitar. “There literally just isn’t anything to show you.” He sets the notebook on Ruben’s stomach. The lines lost in reality, all that’s left are pictures of memories, and hey, won’t you save me? are scrawled across the page. The lines are bracketed with a note that says 'chours???' in Zach’s scribly handwriting.
“A bit depressing, don’t you think?” Ruben asks.
He’s not wrong. It kind of is. It’s a small part of why he invited Ruben over in the first place. He’s had too much time in his own head to reflect and be sad. Zach takes his spot on the bed back, the guitar forcing him to have nicer posture. “That’s the fun bit. I’m putting it in E major cause it’s such a bright key and I think that's funny.” Zach strums through four chords. “And that’s the concept of a progression. I don’t have a rhythm for it yet, though.”
Ruben watches as Zach fiddles with the chords a couple of times. For whatever reason, Zach starts to feel figeity under Ruben’s gaze. He makes a more solid choice on what the chord progression should be to distract himself and starts humming a little melody as the idea for it comes to him.
“I like that,” Ruben says. “Go through the chords again, but like slowly, I think I have a bit of an idea.”
“Thank god at least one of us does,” Zach says, laughing as he runs through the progression again.
As he strums, Ruben sings the melody Zach had hummed. “Lost in reality. Something something something dark when I fall asleep.” A slightly panicked look takes over Ruben’s face as he tries to find the line in Zach’s notebook. “Whatever you wrote about pictures of memories, and things that you said to me. Hey baby, won't you save me?” Ruben looks over at Zach as he finishes. “Thoughts?”
Zach knows exactly what look he has on his face right now, especially with the nervous energy pouring out of Ruben. It’s the one his mom said he’s had since he was a toddler and gets whenever he’s thinking hard about something. Angel’s always called it his “thinking bitch face” since it’s always made it hard to tell if Zach actually liked whatever he’s thinking about or if he’s trying to figure out what the nicest way to tell you it sucked was.
Ruben laughs awkwardly. “I said I had an idea, but I never said it’d be a good one. This is your thing for a reason.”
Zach snaps out of his thoughts. “No, no, no, it was good, I just…” Instead of coming up with a better response, he starts strumming through the chords again. “Lost in reality, I can see you in the dark when I fall asleep. All that’s in my head are pictures and memories, words that you said to me. Hey baby, won’t you save me?”
“Ooh, yeah, that’s good, I like that a lot,” Ruben says as he passes Zach the notebook and watches as he scribbles down the lyrics. Zach tries and fails to just focus on writing when Ruben starts mumbling the lyrics to himself. He sits up as he asks, “What if it was like ‘hey, hey, baby’ instead of just holding out the one hey?”
Zach doesn’t look up from the notebook where he’s now writing out the chords. “I like ‘hey, hey,’ and it was my first thought, but I don’t like how ‘hey, hey, baby’ flows. I think it’d have to be another H sound, and I couldn’t come up with anything. Y’know. Alliteration and shit.” He double-checks a chord on his guitar before writing ‘G# min’ above the space between ‘me’ and ‘hey’, and then writes ‘A’ above ‘hey’. “I got hung up and stuck on it earlier and gave up. Then I stared at the ceiling for like five minutes and then decided to text you, and now we’re here.”
Ruben hums in acknowledgement at Zach’s recap. “You could use a name,” he says. Zach glances up and sees him on his phone. Apparently, he was googling names because he says, “What about Hailey? ‘hey, hey, Hailey, won't you save me?’ has a ring to it, don't you think? And it’s got the extra H sound for ‘alliteration and shit’.” He puts it in air quotes while doing an offensively bad impression of Zach.
“Okay, I don’t sound like that, asshole,” Zach says as he crosses out ‘hey baby, won't you save me?’ and writes 'hey, hey, Hailey, won't you save me?’ underneath it. He grabs the tube of chapstick he left on the nightstand and throws it at Ruben, snickering at the offended scoff it earns him. “But yeah, that works. I like it. I’ve always wondered how they decide what random names go in songs, but I guess this makes sense.”
“Don’t forget to credit thebump.com’s list of names that start with h in the writing credits,” Ruben jokes as he puts his phone away.
Zach snorts and says, “Obviously, we can’t forget to do that.” He stares at the chorus written out before putting down the pen and notebook to pick the guitar back up.
He sings through the chorus again, but continues this time. “La la la something something. I can’t escape you anywhere, even in my dreams….” He stops playing and laughs. “Okay, I lost it, but.”
Ruben thinks for a moment. “I don’t know how to replace ‘la la la something something’, since that was straight bars,” Zach half-bows as well as he can while sitting down. “But what if you just did the ‘all that's in my head’ part again?”
Zach shrugs. “I mean, yeah, that works. Now, ‘la la la something something’ is bars, but I don’t think Geoff will like it.”
Ruben groans. “Fuck that guy. I do not understand how he thinks everything you write is bad.”
A part of Zach knows that, realistically, that’s probably the case, but if he starts to actually acknowledge it, then what's the point of still trying? “It’s not that he doesn’t like it, it's just not the direction for the band.” Ruben looks at him skeptically. “All I need is one in and I’m set. I’ll get there eventually if I keep trying.”
“Well,” Ruben says. “If you really think you’ll get him to come around, then keep working at it. Not that my opinion matters that much, but I’ve never not liked something you’ve written.”
“Thanks,” It’s genuine. Zach tries not to, but it's hard not to feel like everything he writes is shit when, over and over, it's just not good enough. This weird tension starts to take over. It’s been happening more recently, and Zach always changes the subject to avoid it. The weird part is that it only ever happens with Ruben. “Anyways, ‘la la la something something’.”
They think about it for a moment.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” Ruben says. He starts checking his phone as Zach strums through the chords idly, trying to come up with something.
He needs something to make the second half of the chorus different; otherwise, what’s the point of not ending it at the first ‘Hey, hey, Hailey’? Ruben’s humming the melody of ‘la la la something something’ on a loop. Zach wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. He feels like Ruben is almost always humming something. To be fair, if Zach had a voice as nice as Ruben’s, he wouldn’t think he’d ever stop humming either.
Zach gives up trying to come up with something on his own and flips to the back of the notebook, where he keeps a list of words and phrases he just likes. He starts trying to match one up with the melody. His eyes land on ‘bittersweet chemistry’ and runs it against Ruben’s humming. He decides it works and picks up the guitar again.
“Bittersweet chemistry. I can’t escape you anywhere, even in my dreams. All that’s in my head are pictures and memories, words that you said to me. Hey, hey, Hailey, won’t you save me?”
Ruben claps once. “Yes, that’s it. I like that.”
“And you think I’m weird for keeping a list of words and phrases. It comes in clutch. Stole that one off the list.”
Ruben rolls his eyes and stares at Zach, unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, we can’t all be as awesome and smart and talented as you are.”
Zach gives him a look that hopefully has that extra level of skepticism that Ruben always manages to pull off flawlessly. “Uh huh. Yeah, totally what I was going for.” He stares down at the notebook where a now complete chorus is written out and then groans, “Now it's verse time, and that's the hard part.”
“Well, we don’t have to right now. You can sit on it until later, and we can go back to loser activities.”
“Shit, yeah. I forgot that was an option. I do want to record this, though, or I’m gonna forget what it sounds like. Can you sing the melody? I have an idea for the harmony.”
Ruben sighs overdramatically. “Fine. If you really, really need me too,” He says facetiously. “All I’ve done since I got here is carry this song.”
Zach pushes him with his foot as he grabs his phone and opens up the voice recorder, and starts the recording. “You’re so dramatic, god. It’s almost like you’re a reformed theater kid.”
“Not reformed actually,” Ruben says, sitting up. “Just as theater kid as I was when we met. If you wanted me to, I could belt out Santa Fe right now and could start fully embodying the musical theater tenor stereotypes. Don’t tempt me.”
“Oh god,” Zach grimaces, thinking about some of their first interactions, and the quintessential middle schoolerness to them. “Yeah, we don’t need any more of that.”
“Okay, wait, how did it go again?” Ruben hums the first part of the chorus with a few of the notes and rhythms in the wrong spot as he scooches closer to Zach to look at the lyrics.
“No, it was like,” Zach hums the correct version and tries to ignore how the room gets weirdly warm with Ruben all up in his space. “We good?”
"Yeah.”
“Okay. Cool. One, two, three, four.” Zach strums the wrong chord. “I lied, hold on.”
“This says it starts on an E,” Ruben tells him.
Zach looks back and forth between the notebook and his hand. “Yeah, that explains it.” He adjusts his fingers to the right chord and counts them off again. This time, they make it through the chorus without any issues.
“I fuck with that harmony,” Ruben says as Zach ends the recording.
“Thanks,” Zach stands up to return his guitar and notebook to their rightful place on the floor, hoping the space would make him feel less warm. “Yknow, I’d be slightly more upset that I get stuck with the harmony as much as I do if it weren’t for the fact that it’s made coming up with one twenty-billion times easier.”
Ruben apparently sprawled out again in the thirty seconds it took Zach to set his things down, and he regrets his word choice a bit as he catches Ruben’s slight glare. “Oh, you get stuck with the harmony a lot?”
“Okay, we both know that I think it’s complete bullshit that the person with the most actual vocal training and the best range gets stuck with barely any solos and only the boring ones at that.”
Ruben’s face softens. “Yeah, I know I’m just giving you shit.”
Zach sits down again, somehow with even less room on his own bed than he had initially. He saves the recording and debates sending it to Jon.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Ruben asks, distracting him. “Or like what do you wanna do? ‘Cause it’s coming up really soon.” Zach starts to say he doesn’t really care like he normally does when Ruben stops him. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to do anything, cause that’s bullshit and we both know it. Besides, this will be pretty much the first time the four of us will actually be together on your birthday instead of being on FaceTime.”
It’s true. Zach’s birthday has pretty much always fallen in the breaks they’ve gotten, and he’s not going to ask or expect Ruben and Jon to come up to Portland from LA to celebrate. Angel has always required himself to go since he’s the closest and required Jon and Ruben to get on a FaceTime call.
Obviously, Zach was a little bummed to not be able to have his eighteenth birthday with his mom when he saw the tour dates, but part of him was excited to be able to spend it with the others. He’d thought about what he’d want to do for ages, but his brain was doing the thing where it doesn’t let him want things, making him struggle to find the words.
As always, Ruben sees right through him. “You are, in fact, allowed to want things on your birthday. You’re like especially allowed to want things on your birthday, actually. It’s sort of an expectation if you didn’t know.” He teases.
Zach rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Just mourning that I can’t use ‘I’m a minor’ as a joke anymore. It’s some of my best stuff.”
Ruben scoffs. “Truly tragic. Not being able to very loudly announce that you’re a minor, ‘cause I bumped into you, is going to be a sad day for comedy everywhere. Whatever shall we do without it?”
“Exactly, you get it.” Zach stretches out his legs, and since Ruben is currently starfished across the majority of the bed, his calves end up on Ruben’s stomach. “I think I don’t really want a party. Which is probably lame since like eighteen is the big one, but I think after this year, something more lowkey is the method.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
Zach debates whether he should mention what he actually wants or if it’s selfish to want it in the first place. He realises he’s probably taking too long to decide and just commits. “Is it asking for too much to want Angel to be sober and for Jon to not act like he needs to take care of everyone for like 2 hours?”
Ruben points at Zach. “There it is.”
“There, what is?”
“You always have like a secondary larger ask that’s what you actually want, but you always feel the need to like soften it by asking for something more ‘reasonable,’ first.” Ruben puts it in air quotes, “Even though I don’t think you’ve made a single unreasonable request in your entire life. Cause it’s really not asking for too much to want your friends not to be high and needing babysat or playing mom the whole time.”
Zach’s only slightly embarrassed at how Ruben clocked him. “Okay, I know for sure that you psychoanalyzing me is not on my birthday list.” Ruben laughs a little at that. “Just sober friends, acting like my friends, and probably take out. No, definitely take out.”
“I think that can be arranged,” Ruben says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
Zach smiles at him because somehow he knows that Ruben will make sure it is.