Reliving the Nightmare

♡BRIAN'S POV♡

We trailed through the airport towards the gate our flight was departing from.

I had never felt more lost.

It was like a piece of me had detached and was floating round the airport, still searching for Lola. The hollow emptiness in my stomach was sucking any energy I had left and after a minute of walking, I found myself stumbling blindly into people. My hands tried to reach out and claw through the solid misery blocking my way, but they hadn't been able to find purchase. I gave in to the devastating pain and sunk to my knees right in the middle of the airport, burying my face in my shaking hands.

It hadn't taken Zacky long to realise that I was no longer trudging beside him, but instead hunched up on the ground, unmoving. I heard him sigh, then he reached down and wrapped his arm round my chest to pull me up.

"Don't do it, Brian. She isn't worth this," Zacky's pleading voice hit deaf ears, but I reluctantly let him lift me to my feet.

As we resumed walking, this time with Zacky supporting my unresponsive legs by keeping his arm firmly round my torso, I grasped the true meaning if his words. Zacky was referring to my mechanism for coping with grief. When pain sliced at me and exposed me to the world, I tended to hide away and shut down. The exact same had happened during the time of Jimmy's death; I hadn't confided in or spoken to anyone, especially not my band members. I had forgotten my name, my pain and myself in a good stiff drink and some heavenly powder.

And I planned on reacting exactly the same to this situation. I could practically feel the cold, smooth surface of the glass of Scottish whisky in my hand and I swore I could taste the bitterly blissful scent of it on my parched tongue. I could deal with anything as long as I had alcohol in my life. It was my numbing agent and my best friend; girls and friends would always come and go, but at the end of every day, a bottle of alcohol would always be waiting for me.

Spurred on by the tempting thought of numbing ignorance, I picked up the pace and pushed Zacky off of me. I needed my drink on the plane, and I needed it right fucking now.

Zacky squinted his green eyes suspiciously at my sudden vigour, and I knew those all seeing orbs weren't missing anything. He was scanning me; his eyes were flitting over my trembling hands, my drawn face and my shady expression, all of which were the signs that I was craving. Fucking best friends; they could bloody read me like a book.

"Just calm down, Gates. She's fine and so are you, so just take a fucking breath and relax," he tried to make me feel better, but the only things that could were Lola and drink, and only one of those things was available to me right now.

I nodded dismissively at his attempts and nearly cried out with relief when I saw the sign for our gate. Thank fucking god. I was one step closer to my salvation.

Unfortunately, who was right beside the gate, but Satan herself. El lounged on a seat, filing her nails beside Arin who was talking animatedly to her. My face contorted at the sight of her and my body filled with an indescribable rage. Luckily for me, nothing was stopping me from telling Arin about her cheating ways, and I was ready to take full advantage of that.

I steadily walked towards the both of them, feeling the restrictive cage that had been holding the lies inside of me for the past while, slowly lift away. The truth was more than ready to be revealed.

"Fucking go," I stated at El as I reached her, and she lifted her head in surprise before her face twisted into a scowl when she saw it was me.

Arin had seemingly learned that his girl knew how to stick up for herself, because he kept silent at my rudeness, his only sign of annoyance being a slight purse of his lips.

"Excuse me?" El narrowed her eyes at me, although she made her voice rise an octave or two to appear all girly and helpless in front of Arin. Fucking hell, I hated this chick.

"You're not fucking coming with us," I enunciated the words as clearly as I could so the dumb bitch would understand. "And while we're talking, why don't you share with Arin what you've been up to recently, hm?"

Her lip curled at me as her eyes flashed with rage. She was pissed. Arin turned in confusion to her, wondering what I was going on about. She patted him on the arm like he was a dog then lifted her intense gaze to meet mine.

"Are you sure, Syn?" She softly asked me in a creepily seductive voice, raising one perfect eyebrow as she mockingly used my nickname. "Because I'm sure Lola would like to know a couple of things about you, and not all of them are good."

"Oh I don't need to worry about Lola," I smiled confidently at the smug witch in front of me.

"I think you do," she practically purred at me, so ready she was to expose my weaknesses to her best friend.

"No I don't. Because she fucked off and left you and I alone. She's not here so I have nothing to hide," the covering of angry bitterness perfectly disguised the thin layer of pure grief beneath it in my voice. "So you need to fucking leave before I make you leave."

The reaction I had expected from her would have been something along the lines of her beginning to panic as she realised that she was fucked and had to leave. What I had definitely not expected her to do was to stare at me with a blank expression, then lean forward and burst into laughter.

My mouth dropped open as she let out a loud cackle, slapping the seat with uncontained hilarity. I looked in confusion at her unexpected reaction and tried to work what I had said that was funny.

"Oh my god. Oh my, Synyster Gates has finally fucking lost it," she sang as she clapped her hands in joy, ignoring Arin's quiet questions regarding what was going on. "I mean seriously though, what the hell are you talking about? Lola's right over there."

I numbly followed the direction that her finger was pointing in. My eyes were met with the unbelievable sight of Lola sitting in a corner, talking quietly to Matt. He was leaning in closely to her face as she spoke, and he appeared to be murmuring reassurances to her as she was visibly upset.

A river of warm relief flowed through my veins, thawing any remaining anger I had about El. My arms fell loosely at my sides and I gazed in wonder at the girl that had caused me so much stress over the past two hours. Her plump lips were parted slightly and I knew she was lost somewhere in her head, overthinking something, because she forgot to close her mouth when she was concentrating hard. Her hands absentmindedly fiddled with the hem of her top and she tapped her foot nervously on the ground. Matt's mouth was moving steadily as he spoke softly to her, and it did seem to ease her worry a bit, although I could still spot the tension lining her petite shoulders.

I jolted forward and staggered across the floor to her. Happiness and sheer relief coursed through me, giving me the sensation of being drunk as it kind of stopped my body working to its usual abilities, but I still managed to reach her.

When I was mere yards away from her, she tilted her head up and caught sight of me. A flash of regret streaked through her face before it broke out into a tearfully happy smile. She stood up and launched herself at me, catapulting into my arms. I clutched her as tight as possible to me, squeezing her small body to make sure she was really here and I wasn't just imagining it. But her soft curves yielded to my firm touch, proving to me that she hadn't left me. I still had my Lola.

"I'm so sorry Brian, I just panicked when I saw you were gone but then Matt found me and-"

"Shh. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're here now," I whispered heavily in her ear, rubbing circles on her back and relishing her small body once again being in my arms.

She lifted her head from where it was resting on my shoulder, and brushed it against the side of my face until her lips found mine in a desperate kiss. The taste of her salty tears mixed in our mouths and we roughly grabbed onto any part of each other's bodies, needing to be close to one another. It was messy and sloppy, but it was real. And it showed me that I wasn't alone anymore; I had my girl.

When we finally broke apart after the speakers had announced that our plane was boarding, we stood still, staring into each other's eyes. We communicated our feelings: our niggling fears, our full blown terrors and our all consuming relief without speaking. As we shared the same breath and held onto each other's waists, we silently forgave each other for not believing in us.

We eventually began walking to rejoin the others, who were all smiling at us, except from El who looked like she wanted to bludgeon me with a hammer. I didn't let go of Lola, I simply snaked an arm round her slender waist and held her hand with my other free one. This way we were as close as possible but we could walk as well. There was no way I was letting this runaway out of my sight again.

The boys cheered as we made it to the desk where we could go and board the plane. Matt followed behind Lola and I, tracing her footsteps like a shadow. Normally, his weird behaviour would pike my curiosity but I was too high on happiness to care what the idiot was up to. We handed over our passports and I mentally thanked El's Mother for sending Lola's passport on such short notice. She had managed to get it off of Lola's parents after I had threatened to pay them a visit if they didn't give it to her. El's Mother sounded like a lovely woman (complete opposite of El) but I really wish she had somehow lost El's passport. I glared at her as she confidently handed her passport over to the lady at the desk. It pissed me off how she thought she belonged with us. Nobody from our band really wanted her with us apart from Arin, so she should be acting fucking thankful that we were allowing her to come with us, not acting like it was her right.

I shook myself out and handed my passport over, wincing at my awful passport photo. It had been taken at the time when my hair had been down to my shoulders, and the night I had gone to get the photo, I had tied it up in the most fucking stupid ponytail ever. Plus I looked so shitfaced, it was actually embarrassing.

Once we were all through the doors and starting to board the plane, I snatched Lola's passport off of her and looked at the photo of her, chuckling at her weak attempts to stop me. She must have been about fifteen years old in the photo and her cheeky face portrayed her fun loving character perfectly. Her cheeks were a bit chubbier in the photo as well, not defined as they were now, and her blonde hair only reached just past her shoulders. She was awkwardly cute and I grinned at her childlike features. She had blossomed so beautifully now, no longer the child in this photo.

I turned and planted a quick kiss on her mouth to stop her protests, before slyly tucking my passport into my pocket so she didn't see it. Guaranteed if she saw that picture of me she would run screaming.

We slowly meandered our way into the plane and we found all of our seats easily as we had booked first class. I slid into my seat beside the window and looked out of the tiny glass rectangle to see all of the planes moving about on the runway. I felt Lola slip into the seat beside me so I reached for her hand whilst happily watching this one plane being towed backwards.

A thump beside Lola bought me back to inside the plane, and I turned to see Matt settling into the seat beside Lola. Shit, that could only mean one thing...

A gleeful laugh rang out from behind me as a foot started kicking the back of my chair in the most annoying way possible.

"Matt," I whined. "You know that if you don't sit behind me then Johnny-no-mates will! And he's fucking annoying," I complained to Matt as Johnny continued to kick the back of my seat.

"Johnny!" I swivelled in my seat and glared over it at him. "If you fucking kick this chair once more, I'm going to fucking kill you," I hissed at him, swinging my arm at his face to try and hurt him.

He dodged my swing and laughed to himself, pissing me off. I faced the front again and huffed, nearly snapping the arm of the chair off when Johnny resumed his kicking.

It got even worse after we took off, because Johnny ordered drinks which meant he was going to be twice as annoying, and El and Arin sneaked not so slyly off to the plane toilets.

But I could handle the shortshit and sex on an airplane when it wasn't me, as long as my hand was firmly wrapped around Lola's.

Notes

Yay a longer chapter!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!:):):)

Tell me people, what do you think of the situation right now?!?!?! Are you all relieved that Lola showed up or are you mad that El got away with it again?!?!?!? Comment all of your beautiful thoughts please!!!!!:):):)

Thanks for the comments so far and for continuing to read!!!!!!

L xxx