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FIC: AI - Time After Time: Four Months & Counting - David C/David A - PG-13
You should read Time After Time or you’re going to be really confused.
I don’t need to warn for time travel, do I?
Four months goes by fast. It should be crawling along because apart from that one night they don’t actually get to see each other that much.
TITLE: Time After Time: Four Months & Counting
FANDOM: American Idol
PAIRING: David A/David C
RATING: PG13 (for language)
WARNINGS: Language, Time-travel
DISCLAIMER: Hit the back button if you recognize your own name, also I don’t own anybody, and this never happened.
Time After Time: Four Months & Counting
Four months goes by fast. It should be crawling along because apart from that one night they don’t actually get to see each other that much.
At least not that anyone else knows about.
Michael makes rude comments about long distance relationships and phone sex that David tunes out.
He and Archie have other ways of seeing each other, it takes him a while to figure out how to come back around the same time (he thinks he only really managed it because he freaked Archie completely out by coming back four days after him and Archie had been quiet and pale and scared for a week after) but once it clicks…
They spend a lot of time just hanging out, it’s not like getting a hotel but Archie takes him to a cabin that evidently he and Abraham had stayed in on their way to the castle. It’s stocked with food and supplies and they live there.
They use the opportunity that most people aren’t afforded to get to know each other without the prying eyes of the media and their friends and family, without Archie constantly looking over his shoulder waiting for the Disney people to jump him for behavior unbecoming a Mouseketeer.
The Disney people keep Archie; keep all of those that aren’t re-signing on short leashes.
Zac and Vanessa have a ‘not as messy as the magazines make it out to be’ breakup two months into the four months until David can kiss Archie in public without Archie spontaneously combusting. The gossips all make it out to be much worse then it actually is, David reads article after article about how they’ve been at each others throats for months, how Zac had almost hit her with his car, how Vanessa had attacked him with a shovel.
He laughs hysterically and scrapbooks them for Zac to keep, Zac helps by sending him some of the more obscure ones and printing out the ones that are only available on-line, Archie just sighs at them.
Because none of them are true, Zac tells Archie everything, and Archie (with the major exception of the name of Zac’s boyfriend) tells David everything. Zac would have mentioned murder attempts and David would have demanded that Archie stay away from him because clearly Zac and Vanessa were coming unhinged and it was only two steps until Archie was caught in the cross-fire. Archie would have ignored him, but David still would have demanded it.
It probably confuses everyone and their brother that now that they’re broken up Zac and Vanessa spend even more time together and they actually look happier then they had the entire time that David has known any of them.
Though they don’t go to events anymore, instead the Disney people send Archie along with him.
“Are they trying to get the public ready for you guys to come out?” David asks.
Zac and Archie have been photographed at six separate events, all the pictures show them shoulder to shoulder (or would if Archie was taller, its more like shoulder to the middle of Archie’s head), heads bent together, smiling, happy, sometimes a bit more friendly then David would like.
If Zac keeps touching the back of Archie’s head like that David might have to punch him at some point.
David has stopped answering his phone when he knows its Michael calling because he’s getting tired of Michael’s attempt at consolation because he thinks that Archie is cheating on him with Zac.
It’s not true, but the pictures are all rife with speculation and David avoids going to the official Mouseketeer boards because there are now whole threads with pictures showing a time line of Archie and Zac’s purported ‘romance’.
Some of them are pretty convincing. If he’d been an outsider looking in he might think there was something more then just friendship going on between them as well. Might think that there’d been something going on for a while.
“It’s a compromise,” Archie sighs. He sounds as tired as David knows he looks. The Disney group is keeping them running, it’s like they’re bound and determined to get every little last drop of blood out of the kids before they don’t have any more opportunities to do so.
“Compromise?”
“Zac wanted to start taking his boyfriend to things and management said over their dead bodies, they wanted him to make up with Vanessa until the contracts are up and he said over his dead body, he was tired of playacting the perfect boyfriend. So…”
“So they sicced you on him.”
“I sicced me on him, he’s my best friend and he was getting ready to break his contract, he’d lose a lot of money, he said he didn’t care, but in five months he might.”
“So you’re trying to be the good friend.”
“He’d do the same thing for me.”
And he would, David knew that. If Archie had been a seconds away from breaking his contract Zac would have yanked him in tight and protected him to the best of his ability, regardless of what it looked like to the outside world.
******************************************************************************
David figures out who Zac’s boyfriend is on accident. Archie doesn’t tell him, Zac doesn’t tell him. He just happens to be in the right place at the right time and he thinks the boyfriend is probably as tired of all of this waiting around as David is.
Four months has come and gone. They’re now two weeks past and Archie is still wearing his ears to three more events besides the one that he’s really bored at right now.
Archie is dragging him along to parties now, he has the safety net of being the Idol winner so he doesn’t look horribly out of place and it doesn’t look as suspicious as it would if he wasn’t.
They do stuff together and everyone calls them BFF’s and speculates that he’s replacing Zac in that role while Zac is settling into the secret everyone knows, but doesn’t know boyfriend role.
So he goes to these events and he smiles and doesn’t say much because it’s really not his scene.
The only problem is that once they get inside Archie typically gets shanghaied by Zac and the two of them spend the night joined at the hip with David grinding his teeth and faking a smile.
The difference between the night that David figures out who Zac’s boyfriend is and any other night, is that night someone actually disregards the fact that he looks like a prospective mass murderer and approaches him.
“You look like you’re getting ready to kill somebody,” someone says in an amused voice beside him, he pastes the fake smile back on but tries to make it softer, less like he wanted to kill people or more in the realm of a justified maiming.
Zac has an arm over Archie’s shoulder, and seconds before had been touching the back of his head again… it would be completely justified.
David’s warned him after all.
One of Zac’s High School Musical costars is standing next to him. The one who had been very obviously gay in the movies (David had been surprised that Disney let them go there with as intent as they’ve been on keeping Zac from outing himself before they’re done with him) and wore all the hats.
“Lucas,” the kid says, he holds out his hand and David shakes it.
“David,” he says. Lucas laughs.
“Disney shanghai you into doing press or something?” David asks, he’d thought Lucas was one of the kids that wasn’t bound by blood to Disney but he could be wrong.
“Zac was getting ready to declare mutiny and Archie was tired of getting harassing phone calls,” Lucas says, his voice is still amused.
It takes a second for it to click, for things to sort themselves into the correct line.
“Oh,” he says, he probably looks silly, Lucas is smirking at him.
When he looks over at Archie and Zac, Archie is smiling softly and Zac is watching with an expression that indicates that if David lays a hand on Lucas he might find himself with one less limb.
“I told Michael to quit that,” he says after a second.
“He’s protecting his friend, it’s an admirable quality,” Lucas says, David knows that he’s not just talking about Michael. He’s also talking about the lengths that Archie has gone to protect Zac, sometimes from himself, definitely from Disney.
David looks over and sees that Lucas is watching Zac and Archie. The two have their heads bent together; every so often Zac will look over and smile.
He knows that the two of them have been friends since they both landed on MMC; he knows that they’re close enough that you can’t have one without the other. He’ll figure out how to deal with that, eventually.
“Yeah, it is.”
******************************************************************************
Now that David knows Archie arranges a double date. Dinner at the restaurant that Zac had told Archie to take him to and a movie that no one in any of their immediate circles is in.
The movie part of the night is only notable by the fact that even though they aren’t touching and it certainly doesn’t look like a date, they still end up in four magazines with taglines similar to ‘Date Night with MMC and Idol’ as a result.
Disney has a conniption fit and Idol just sighs and rolls their eyes.
The dinner on the other hand is relaxing, Zac looks calm and happy and his face glows when he looks at Lucas. Much in the same way that Archie’s glows when he looks at David… except without the blush.
David isn’t sure how long they’ve been together but it’s been a while obviously. They finish each other’s sentences, Lucas orders their drinks and Zac orders their meals and they share a dessert that Lucas had said he didn’t want but then finished more then half of.
Archie watches them with a fond expression and looks really shy when he glances over at David. Like he wants that but doesn’t know to either ask for it or get it. David wants to tell him that he already has it.
David pulls him into a hug when they’re getting ready to go, just reaches out an arm and tugs him into his side and Archie just holds on.
“Love you,” he mutters into Archie’s head, Archie clings that much tighter. They’ve not really said it out loud, Archie always blushes and stammers and can’t quite get the words out, and David hadn’t ever been really sure what he was feeling.
He knew it was love though, he just wasn’t sure if it was love or love.
David’s wearing his ring, has been for going on two weeks (the net is going nuts, and he’s been asked about 50 times what’s up with it, only ten of those times were Michael), Archie’s is still on the chain around his neck.
He’s told his parents, his mother had been confused and mad (just like he knew she would be) that she hadn’t been there and she’s demanding that there be something that she can plan. He has to remind her on an almost daily basis that Disney isn’t done with Archie yet and she can’t make reservations or call Archie’s parents until they are.
Archie hasn’t told his yet, David thinks he’s afraid of his dad. David thinks that Archie is hoping to not have to tell his father and he wants to tell him that letting his family find out from People or US Weekly is probably not the way to go.
There’s one more event and he’s hoping they’re free.
One more event and he can put that ring on Archie’s finger and it won’t come back off.
******************************************************************************
I don’t need to warn for time travel, do I?
Four months goes by fast. It should be crawling along because apart from that one night they don’t actually get to see each other that much.
TITLE: Time After Time: Four Months & Counting
FANDOM: American Idol
PAIRING: David A/David C
RATING: PG13 (for language)
WARNINGS: Language, Time-travel
DISCLAIMER: Hit the back button if you recognize your own name, also I don’t own anybody, and this never happened.
Time After Time: Four Months & Counting
Four months goes by fast. It should be crawling along because apart from that one night they don’t actually get to see each other that much.
At least not that anyone else knows about.
Michael makes rude comments about long distance relationships and phone sex that David tunes out.
He and Archie have other ways of seeing each other, it takes him a while to figure out how to come back around the same time (he thinks he only really managed it because he freaked Archie completely out by coming back four days after him and Archie had been quiet and pale and scared for a week after) but once it clicks…
They spend a lot of time just hanging out, it’s not like getting a hotel but Archie takes him to a cabin that evidently he and Abraham had stayed in on their way to the castle. It’s stocked with food and supplies and they live there.
They use the opportunity that most people aren’t afforded to get to know each other without the prying eyes of the media and their friends and family, without Archie constantly looking over his shoulder waiting for the Disney people to jump him for behavior unbecoming a Mouseketeer.
The Disney people keep Archie; keep all of those that aren’t re-signing on short leashes.
Zac and Vanessa have a ‘not as messy as the magazines make it out to be’ breakup two months into the four months until David can kiss Archie in public without Archie spontaneously combusting. The gossips all make it out to be much worse then it actually is, David reads article after article about how they’ve been at each others throats for months, how Zac had almost hit her with his car, how Vanessa had attacked him with a shovel.
He laughs hysterically and scrapbooks them for Zac to keep, Zac helps by sending him some of the more obscure ones and printing out the ones that are only available on-line, Archie just sighs at them.
Because none of them are true, Zac tells Archie everything, and Archie (with the major exception of the name of Zac’s boyfriend) tells David everything. Zac would have mentioned murder attempts and David would have demanded that Archie stay away from him because clearly Zac and Vanessa were coming unhinged and it was only two steps until Archie was caught in the cross-fire. Archie would have ignored him, but David still would have demanded it.
It probably confuses everyone and their brother that now that they’re broken up Zac and Vanessa spend even more time together and they actually look happier then they had the entire time that David has known any of them.
Though they don’t go to events anymore, instead the Disney people send Archie along with him.
“Are they trying to get the public ready for you guys to come out?” David asks.
Zac and Archie have been photographed at six separate events, all the pictures show them shoulder to shoulder (or would if Archie was taller, its more like shoulder to the middle of Archie’s head), heads bent together, smiling, happy, sometimes a bit more friendly then David would like.
If Zac keeps touching the back of Archie’s head like that David might have to punch him at some point.
David has stopped answering his phone when he knows its Michael calling because he’s getting tired of Michael’s attempt at consolation because he thinks that Archie is cheating on him with Zac.
It’s not true, but the pictures are all rife with speculation and David avoids going to the official Mouseketeer boards because there are now whole threads with pictures showing a time line of Archie and Zac’s purported ‘romance’.
Some of them are pretty convincing. If he’d been an outsider looking in he might think there was something more then just friendship going on between them as well. Might think that there’d been something going on for a while.
“It’s a compromise,” Archie sighs. He sounds as tired as David knows he looks. The Disney group is keeping them running, it’s like they’re bound and determined to get every little last drop of blood out of the kids before they don’t have any more opportunities to do so.
“Compromise?”
“Zac wanted to start taking his boyfriend to things and management said over their dead bodies, they wanted him to make up with Vanessa until the contracts are up and he said over his dead body, he was tired of playacting the perfect boyfriend. So…”
“So they sicced you on him.”
“I sicced me on him, he’s my best friend and he was getting ready to break his contract, he’d lose a lot of money, he said he didn’t care, but in five months he might.”
“So you’re trying to be the good friend.”
“He’d do the same thing for me.”
And he would, David knew that. If Archie had been a seconds away from breaking his contract Zac would have yanked him in tight and protected him to the best of his ability, regardless of what it looked like to the outside world.
David figures out who Zac’s boyfriend is on accident. Archie doesn’t tell him, Zac doesn’t tell him. He just happens to be in the right place at the right time and he thinks the boyfriend is probably as tired of all of this waiting around as David is.
Four months has come and gone. They’re now two weeks past and Archie is still wearing his ears to three more events besides the one that he’s really bored at right now.
Archie is dragging him along to parties now, he has the safety net of being the Idol winner so he doesn’t look horribly out of place and it doesn’t look as suspicious as it would if he wasn’t.
They do stuff together and everyone calls them BFF’s and speculates that he’s replacing Zac in that role while Zac is settling into the secret everyone knows, but doesn’t know boyfriend role.
So he goes to these events and he smiles and doesn’t say much because it’s really not his scene.
The only problem is that once they get inside Archie typically gets shanghaied by Zac and the two of them spend the night joined at the hip with David grinding his teeth and faking a smile.
The difference between the night that David figures out who Zac’s boyfriend is and any other night, is that night someone actually disregards the fact that he looks like a prospective mass murderer and approaches him.
“You look like you’re getting ready to kill somebody,” someone says in an amused voice beside him, he pastes the fake smile back on but tries to make it softer, less like he wanted to kill people or more in the realm of a justified maiming.
Zac has an arm over Archie’s shoulder, and seconds before had been touching the back of his head again… it would be completely justified.
David’s warned him after all.
One of Zac’s High School Musical costars is standing next to him. The one who had been very obviously gay in the movies (David had been surprised that Disney let them go there with as intent as they’ve been on keeping Zac from outing himself before they’re done with him) and wore all the hats.
“Lucas,” the kid says, he holds out his hand and David shakes it.
“David,” he says. Lucas laughs.
“Disney shanghai you into doing press or something?” David asks, he’d thought Lucas was one of the kids that wasn’t bound by blood to Disney but he could be wrong.
“Zac was getting ready to declare mutiny and Archie was tired of getting harassing phone calls,” Lucas says, his voice is still amused.
It takes a second for it to click, for things to sort themselves into the correct line.
“Oh,” he says, he probably looks silly, Lucas is smirking at him.
When he looks over at Archie and Zac, Archie is smiling softly and Zac is watching with an expression that indicates that if David lays a hand on Lucas he might find himself with one less limb.
“I told Michael to quit that,” he says after a second.
“He’s protecting his friend, it’s an admirable quality,” Lucas says, David knows that he’s not just talking about Michael. He’s also talking about the lengths that Archie has gone to protect Zac, sometimes from himself, definitely from Disney.
David looks over and sees that Lucas is watching Zac and Archie. The two have their heads bent together; every so often Zac will look over and smile.
He knows that the two of them have been friends since they both landed on MMC; he knows that they’re close enough that you can’t have one without the other. He’ll figure out how to deal with that, eventually.
“Yeah, it is.”
Now that David knows Archie arranges a double date. Dinner at the restaurant that Zac had told Archie to take him to and a movie that no one in any of their immediate circles is in.
The movie part of the night is only notable by the fact that even though they aren’t touching and it certainly doesn’t look like a date, they still end up in four magazines with taglines similar to ‘Date Night with MMC and Idol’ as a result.
Disney has a conniption fit and Idol just sighs and rolls their eyes.
The dinner on the other hand is relaxing, Zac looks calm and happy and his face glows when he looks at Lucas. Much in the same way that Archie’s glows when he looks at David… except without the blush.
David isn’t sure how long they’ve been together but it’s been a while obviously. They finish each other’s sentences, Lucas orders their drinks and Zac orders their meals and they share a dessert that Lucas had said he didn’t want but then finished more then half of.
Archie watches them with a fond expression and looks really shy when he glances over at David. Like he wants that but doesn’t know to either ask for it or get it. David wants to tell him that he already has it.
David pulls him into a hug when they’re getting ready to go, just reaches out an arm and tugs him into his side and Archie just holds on.
“Love you,” he mutters into Archie’s head, Archie clings that much tighter. They’ve not really said it out loud, Archie always blushes and stammers and can’t quite get the words out, and David hadn’t ever been really sure what he was feeling.
He knew it was love though, he just wasn’t sure if it was love or love.
David’s wearing his ring, has been for going on two weeks (the net is going nuts, and he’s been asked about 50 times what’s up with it, only ten of those times were Michael), Archie’s is still on the chain around his neck.
He’s told his parents, his mother had been confused and mad (just like he knew she would be) that she hadn’t been there and she’s demanding that there be something that she can plan. He has to remind her on an almost daily basis that Disney isn’t done with Archie yet and she can’t make reservations or call Archie’s parents until they are.
Archie hasn’t told his yet, David thinks he’s afraid of his dad. David thinks that Archie is hoping to not have to tell his father and he wants to tell him that letting his family find out from People or US Weekly is probably not the way to go.
There’s one more event and he’s hoping they’re free.
One more event and he can put that ring on Archie’s finger and it won’t come back off.