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Ashes of Dreams	By : ElleU Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Sum 41 Views: 1126 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Sum 41. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter 2

They arrived at the venue at around four in the afternoon and were ushered in through a side-door, right under the noses of the unsuspecting fans, who were already lined up in front of the doors to get the best spots as close to the stage as possible.
“Hello,” some official looking guy said. “Welcome to Warfield. Let me show you to the backstage area.”
They were led down the halls of the huge San Fran venue when Deryck stopped short, hearing the roaring sounds of heavily distorted electric guitars kicking in somewhere in the background, bass patterns easily audible and perfectly following the rhythm of the drums.
“What’s that?” he asked slowly, stopping the suit guy.
“Oh, that’s AoD doing their sound check. Don’t let it bother you.”
“No, no bother,” he quickly said. “I’d just like to hear them is all.”
The guy looked a bit confused, then looked at the rest of the band. “Do you all want to hear them?”
“Yeah, sure,” Dave said as the other two nodded in general agreement.
“Okay, then,” the man said, shrugging his shoulders. He made a left and led them in the new direction. They entered the huge room from one of the balconies just as another song started. A simple, but catchy bass line repeated itself twice before the drums kicked in and the riff was repeated with the whole band this time. The volume was lowered slightly as the girl Deryck recognized as D-Sept brought her head to the mic, singing the first lines of a seemingly slower song, screwing up her face against the metallic device in front of her as her hands kept changing the notes on her instrument. There really was something to her, something he recognised from somewhere. He just had no clue where. As they went through the riff once more, all three of the standing girls jumped in sync, something only a few bands would do at rehearsals. It was a good sign. It meant you did what you did for yourself and because it was fun, and then for the fans.
“Stop,” she suddenly said, taking off the bass. She looked around searchingly for a moment before she eyed the suit guy, who was standing with Sum 41. “Hey you, up there! Mr. Dude can I have your tie?” Deryck now noticed she was desperately holding her too large non-descript brown pants up with both hands.
The Mr. Dude just looked weird. A mixture between hostile and confused.
“Come on, dude,” Cone said, having gotten the situation as well and recognising it as nearing what happened during one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. “She needs it more than you do.”
The guy finally sighed and took his 100 dollar tie off and tossed it down annoyedly.
“Thanks, Mr. Dude,” D-Sept said into the mic. “My belt broke,” she explained, throwing the studded belt to the side before tying the tie around her slim middle. She grinned. “Haven’t used a tie for this since school.”
“And you only did it in school because it bugged the shit out of the teachers that you were wearing your uniform wrong but they couldn’t bust you for it,” CC grinned.
“Long live uncreative private school rules!” D-Sept screamed, strapping her bass back on. “Sorry Mr. Other Dude,” she said to the guy behind the mixer.
“From the chorus,” Jo said into her own mic. “One, two, one, two, three, four.”
And with that they started playing again, the lyrics highly political Deryck noted. When he and the guys were nineteen, twenty and twenty-one like these girls were now they hadn’t really cared. This band seemed to have matured earlier. Or perhaps it was because they had been in music since their pre-teen years. He looked around the huge room with the beautiful decorations on walls and ceiling. These big, old theatres were often the most intimidating places to play because of the old atmosphere and the immense tradition they held. And Warfield definitely was something. Elvis Costello had played here. The Clash had played here. Everybody big had played here. And now they were playing here. Not head-lining, but they were still playing and for now that was good. Generally this was their head-lining tour, but being in San Francisco MEST would head-line. Somehow they’d gathered a huge following here. He suddenly realised the girls had stopped playing, done it seemed.
“Your sound check is in five,” the now tie-less official informed them.
Deryck nodded and headed downstairs, taking off his hoodie as he went. Even though there was no crowd yet it was still going to be hot.
Looking around them, the band realised the techs had already brought up their equipment and was setting the drum kit up where the one belonging to Ashes of Dreams had been a minute earlier. Deryck, feeling like somebody was watching them, turned around and met the eyes of Dev, the drummer. Her hair was blue today, he noted. “What’s up?” he asked, grinning at the girl.
“Nothing much,” she said, shrugging.” I just like seeing how other people’s techs put up stuff.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Weird pastime interest,” he said.
“Yeah, I know, but it is interesting. The techs at Brit Awards were awful, but then so is everything that has to do with Brit Pop.”
“Aren’t you considered Brit Pop?” Steve asked, coming to stand with them.
“Hell no. We hate Brit Pop and now that there’s that silly rumour that Dee and Daniel Beddingfield had something going and she broke very meanly up with him, Brit Pop hates us too. Natasha completely dissed us in an interview a couple of weeks ago, so now every western European prep there is totally hates our guts,” the female drummer told, wiggling her bare feet.
“So you had something going on with Beddingfield?” Deryck asked the shorter girl who’d also reappeared.
“Fuck no, that’d be gross and completely breaking all genre boundaries. I got wasted one night; lap danced on him, tied him to his chair, relieved him of his pants and wallet and left him there. I reckon that’s what people think is the break-up, but I’d never really met him before so that’s virtually impossible although… I was kind of drunk.”
“Anyways,” Dev continued, “the poor guy was too embarrassed to report the theft or ask to get it back so we’ve still got in on the bus.”
“I’m going to keep a souvenir from every celebrity I humiliate,” D-Sept said, laughing. “I’ll probably end up doing Punk’d with the Ashton Kutcher guy.”
“Steve, Biz we have to get started!” Dave yelled.
“Gotta go,” Steve said, looking nearly apologetic.
“Never mind that,” Dev answered. “We all have months to get acquainted.”
“And we gotta go too if we want time to get changed and smoke before the show,” D-Sept said with a smile.
“How about we crash in during MEST’s sound check?” Deryck asked, feeling a sudden urge to get to know this band better.
“Sure,” Dev said. “The more the merrier.”
“Could you please have some ice cream ready?” Steve asked suddenly.
“Why?” the two girls asked at the same time.
“Cone has cravings,” came the answer from Steve as Deryck started to make his way back to his guitar to start the sound check.
“Pregnant women have cravings,” D-Sept said, looking slightly confused.
“I understand that, you need to explain it to Cone.” He started towards his drum kit too.
“What kind?” the small singer yelled at his back, deciding to be nice.
“Vanilla,” came the answer as Steve sat down, taking the sticks into his hands.

Steve stretched out his hand and knocked on the door to the girls’ changing rooms, the rest of the band behind him.
“Come in!” a girl’s voice yelled from the inside.
The guys pushed through the door and was greeted by the girls in different attires than before, three of them in the middle of pizza and beer, coke for CC, and the fourth sitting cross-legged on the floor, pouring a whole bottle of vodka into what looked more like a weird-shaped blue vase than anything else. She added the top to the pipe and quickly stuffed tobacco into the clay head of the pipe, closing with foil and making the holes with trained fingers. Just as she put the head on the pipe, Jo put the red-hot piece of charcoal on top of it. The guys hadn’t even realised she was lighting it.
“Hey,” CC said to the stupefied boys. “Make yourself at home.” She gestured to the already half-trashed dressing room.
Dave grinned, walked across the floor and helped himself to a large piece of pizza.
“The beer’s in the fridge,” D-Sept said, not looking up from the pipe she was starting. “As is the ice cream,” she added, bending sideward to avoid being hit by Cone as he rushed by.
A quarter of an hour later everybody was situated nicely in the room, mostly in a circle around the pipe, which was now giving off a nice amount of smoke as it passed from hand to hand.
“Damn, this stuff is good. I’m so fucking high,” Steve said, passing the hose on to Jo, who was leaning against him with a far-off look on her face.
“Good stuff, huh?” D-Sept asked from the other side of Jo. She alone, although she had smoked the most, appeared completely unaffected by the smoke as she took a sip of her Bailey’s.
“Definitely,” Cone said, struggling to make his hand lead the spoon with what ice cream there still was left to his mouth rather than somewhere else. As it connected with his nose, splashing the contents all over his lower face, D-Sept, who was next to him, took pity on him, put down the bottle, took the spoon away from him, and with a sigh she started feeding it to him.
“Can I have some of that?” Deryck asked, pointing at the abandoned bottle.
“You don’t want to do that,” Dev slurred.
“Why?” he asked curiously, lifting his eyebrows.
“If you aren’t used to it, you’ll get really sick,” the female singer informed him, stuffing the last of the ice cream into the mouth of Cone, who was now practically lying with his head in her lap. “And you don’t look like you need that with the rest of your band already being completely shit-faced.”
Deryck held his hand out, still not feeling quite as affected as the rest of his band looked like they were.
“That’s really fucking dumb,” Dev said. “So don’t say you weren’t warned.”
“I won’t,” he replied, taking the bottle D-Sept handed him.

It was five minutes before they had to get on stage and Deryck was feeling terrible. He had just come back from emptying his stomach in the toilet and he still felt high. The others were more or less back to normal, and he’d already gotten more than one comment on heeding other people’s advice. At the same time it bugged the shit out of him that D-Sept had just been able to take the last fifteen minutes of smoking on her own after the others were too high to take anymore, drink half the bottle of Bailey’s, the first half of what was partially to blame for his current state, and go straight out and play an awesome show. At least what he’d heard had been awesome. He and the band had gone to the immediate backstage area to watch when the girls went to play, but it hadn’t been long before he’d had to retreat to the toilet. That was where he’d spent the bigger part of the last hour.
“Where are the girls?” he asked, looking around for something alcohol-free to drink so that he could get rid of the horrible taste in his mouth.
“Ended with a stage-dive. I think they stayed in the pit to watch the rest of the show,” Dave answered. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit. You guys have a coke or something?”
“No,” Cone said. “But this is supposed to be the best venue in the bay-area, so they must have something somewhere.”
He didn’t get his coke, but as soon as they got on stage he went for the bottled water the venues always had ready, took a huge gulp before throwing the bottle out on the audience, making around ten girls dive into the pit to get it. He strapped the guitar on and introduced the song, effectively starting their part of the gig.

D-Sept threw herself down on the empty couch of the tour bus, wincing as her bruised back hit the battered fabric.
“That was so fucking great!” Jo exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Dev agreed. “You almost couldn’t tell they were high.”
CC just laughed and tossed the singer a beer.
“Thanks, Cee,” the target said, grinning. “Just what I needed.” She opened it, careful not to get foam all over her and started drinking.
“No,” Jo said. “I really mean it. Both bands were great. I’m almost embarrassed to be playing with them.”
“As long as we’re the opening act we can suck as bad as we want,” D-Sept said.
“Which we didn’t,” CC pointed out. “We did great as well and Dee you really got the audience started. It was awesome.” She leaned back into her beanbag chair with a smile on her face. “This tour is going to be hugely great.” She lifted her eyebrows. “But perhaps you shouldn’t have gotten Sum 41 high on the first night. You may have scared them off.”
“Fuck no,” Dev said. “These guys are known throughout the world as drunk, man-whoring pranksters. If we can take this shit, so can they,” she laughed, lighting a smoke. “And if they can’t they suck.”
“Will someone please get me something stronger?” D-Sept whined. “My fucking back is killing me.”
“You may as well learn that you’re too small to mosh the hard way,” Jo said, grinning evilly.
“Fuck you! I handle the pit way better than you do, now give me a bottle of something,” the short girl continued.
“Hey! If it weren’t for me you’d’ve been killed at that Iron Maiden show in ’99!” the red-head argued.
“You got me my asthma medicine. That hardly counts!”
“You got an attack because you couldn’t handle the pit.”
“I got an attack because of my allergy. I still don’t know who the fuck would be dumb enough to bring a bunch of cats to a concert site.”
“Obviously somebody was stupid enough. And I saved you.”
“Stop it, stop it,” Dev said. “This conversation already started to suck in 2000. Please come off it”
“No!” the girls in question said at the same time before arguing till the point where physical fighting was about to start.
Dev sighed. “You guys suck.”
“Let’s give them a minute,” CC said, counting down slowly. “Okay chicas! If you don’t get off each other now the booze is going out the window.”
The fighters quickly flew away from each others’ throat. D-Sept got up, went and retrieved a bottle of some weird stuff that tasted like Sprite, but contained around 35 percent alcohol. “I’ll never get used to American booze,” she stated, opening the bottle to start drinking.
Jo came back with a bottle of something slightly less weird-looking, lied down on the other couch and also started gulping away. “I’m annoyed with the lack of an after party,” she stated. “It was the first night of the tour and they just herded us straight to the buses.” She sighed. “That was so no fun.”
Dev nodded in agreement. “It totally blows,” she stated.
“We have to play in Portland tomorrow. Even though it’s only one state away, we’ll only get there sometime tomorrow afternoon. There wasn’t time for an after party, you dorks,” CC said slowly, an almost resigned tone in her voice.
“Is there gonna be time tomorrow?” D-Sept asked, now reaching into her pocket for her own pack of cigarettes.
“Yes. After Portland we fly to DC, but that won’t be until sometime around noon.” CC studied the happy faces for a moment. “If my memory’s alright we have to get up and do a radio interview at 6, though.” She smiled viciously as the other band-members’ faces visibly fell.
“What happens after DC?” Dev asked, now putting out the rest of her cigarette.
“We fly back and meet up with the buses in Phoenix, play there and then we drive to Santa Fe, NM, play there and so on and so forth. I don’t know the entire tour plan by heart, okay.”
“Thanks Cee,” Dev said, putting a smile on.
“Well…” CC started. “I think I’m going to call it a day, okay guys? And don’t wake me up if we stop for food. Just get me a doughnut or some shit for tomorrow morning.”
“Sure, Cee,” D-Sept said. “G’night.”
“Sleep tight,” Jo said, her voice starting to slur a little now.
“And don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Dev finished, moving a bit to turn on the TV.

“Why are we watching Doctor Phil again?” D-Sept asked an hour later, fighting to focus her eyesight properly on the TV. One Phil was enough; she needn’t see him in double. She tossed the empty bottle in the general direction of the trash can and lit another smoke.
“Because the bus doesn’t have a cable,” Dev explained. “Perhaps you’d find it interesting enough if you were sober enough to hear a deeper meaning.”
“Doctor Phil has a deeper meaning?” the singer persisted, reaching over to grab the nearly empty bottle Jo had abandoned on the small table before she’d tumbled to the ground in drunken sleep ten minutes earlier.
“Not when you’re wasted,” the other girl said, shrugging. “Now be careful or you’ll put something on fire,” she added, nodding at the cigarette.
“That happened once!” D-Sept complained, pouting so visibly that the hoop in her lower lip nearly touched her nose. “And it was a crappy bus anyway,” she added, leaning back and drinking the remnants of the booze in Jo’s bottle.
“Hey girls!” the driver yelled over the intercom. “We’re stopping for food.”
Dev tried to shake Jo awake, but had to give up. She then retrieved hers and D-Sept’s jackets, stuck her feet into a pair of flip-flops before she threw jacket and chucks at the very drunk singer. They were ready to get out just when the bus came to a halt in a parking lot.
“Oh,” D-Sept blurted, looking around after she’d stepped out of the bus. “A McDonald’s.” She giggled. “Fucking… fucking McD… sucks.”
“It’s okay, Dee,” Dev cooed. “This is one of those in-the-middle-of-nowhere-McDonalds. They’re the good McDonalds.”
“Oh,” the other girl said, putting on a smile. “Okay.”
Dev merely rolled her eyes. If only the singer was always this easy to manipulate.

They entered the restaurant to find the other bands and crewmembers already there. Nick and Jere seemed to be missing as well as Dave and a few of the crewmembers. Dev kept her eyes firmly on D-Sept though, guiding her by the arm. “Please God,” she muttered. “Make her not start a fight.” Despite her humble size it wasn’t pretty when the black-haired girl got in a drunken fight. She did have the black belt in karate and she tended not to care if people got hurt. The fighting had probably cost EMI more insurance money than the hotel room trashing, which they’d also been doing a lot of. And EMI had, on AoD’s behalf, promised Island, the band’s American label, that they wouldn’t have to pay too much maintenance of that kind. At least nobody’d had to be bailed out of jail yet.
But it seemed their luck was running out as the short girl picked out a victim and walked up to him, swinging her hips sweetly.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Dev muttered, reaching out to hold her band-mate back, but had to give up. She wasn’t quick enough.
“Hi, big guy,” D-Sept said, smiling cutely at a guy who was nearly as short as herself and a lot thinner.
The guy already wore a hurt/provoked look, but there was no visible deception in the sweet, blue eyes looking up at him. She smiled wider, showing off her cute, deep dimples. The little singer could be absolutely adorable at times. Especially when she was drunk and about to pull some sort of a prank. Dev couldn’t see what that’d be, though. She doubted her friend had enough brain capacity left for the night to have come up with something good.
“Hey, pretty,” the guy answered, the corners of his mouth finally tucking up in a hopeful smile. Dev almost felt sorry for him.
“You’re really cute,” D-Sept said, wasting no time in winning the guy’s heart. “In that ‘I sit in my truck all day and now I can’t get a girl and I have a not-so-sweet ass’ way.” Her voice was so slurred and she spoke so fast that the equally drunk guy didn’t catch the meaning of the words, but simply nodded and smiled.
“Thank you, honey,” he answered, now looking down-right goofy.
Dev bit her lip to keep from laughing.
D-Sept went closer to the guy, almost rubbing herself against him. She looked up again and smiled sweetly. “How much do you cost?”
“What?” the guy asked, looking genuinely confused.
“I said: how much do you cost?” she repeated, looking as slutty as she possibly could to emphasize the contradiction and at the same time motioning weirdly with her hands, trying to explain what she meant. “One or two bucks?”
“Fuck you!” the guy yelled, finally getting the point. In his drunken state he didn’t care that it was a girl in front of him, or that she was smaller than him. He waved a fist, trying to hit her. She grabbed his hand, did a quick movement with her body and had him lying on her shoulders. Holding him still with both hands, she went towards the line of ‘thank you’ trash cans, obviously intending to try stuffing him through the small opening of one of them.
No matter how funny it would’ve been if the singer had managed to complete her task, Dev decided that enough was enough and that Island wouldn’t like the bill of a lawsuit, so she quickly ran to her friend, trying to talk her into allowing the small truck driver to go away. Some of the others seemed to catch on to the situation too, and in the end Deryck gripped her roughly, looking straight into her eyes.
D-Sept looked into a familiar pair of eyes, shock coursing through her. “Daddy?” she whispered, sub-consciously letting go of the guy on her shoulders. Her back was already killing her anyway. She put her arms around the man in front of her, all of a sudden a little girl again. She thought she heard somebody saying something about water and sobering someone up, but perhaps it was just something she imagined. It didn’t matter though, only the arm tightening around her and the hand stroking her hair did.
Deryck didn’t bother worrying about the weird comment; he had just instinctively put his arms around her, noting how fragile she seemed all of a sudden. He was struck by how natural it seemed to have the girl there, how protective he suddenly felt.
“Let go, Biz,” Cone suddenly said, and Deryck quickly struggled a step away, only to see the girl getting soaked in what looked like a couple buckets of water.
D-Sept shook the water out of her now flat black locks looking around her. Musicians, techies, drivers, all of them were gathered around her, looking at her with a mixture of amusement and concern. The good thing was that there was now only one of each person. She found Dev and took her hand with a smile. “Let’s get something to eat,” she said, voice straight and sober now as she went, soaking wet, to the counter.
Cone and Steve were ordering at the booth next to them, Deryck drifting slightly behind with a thoughtful look on his face.
“I want a sundae,” Cone said. “Only without topping and in a glass, not a cone. Just lots of ice cream in a cup.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Steve said behind him. “Who needs a cone?”
Cone turned around to send him a mock-hurt look before returning to his ordering.
“I now have bangs,” D-Sept stated as she received her order, flattening her wet hair down her forehead for Dev to inspect.
“Oh shit, no,” her friend said. “You fucking look like the Beatles.”
“Why, thank you,” the singer said, turning around. “I’m really wet. I’ll see you on the bus.”
Dev nodded, finishing her order and quickly remembering to include the doughnuts.
“It’s Dev, right?” she heard somebody ask behind her.
She turned to face the person talking. “Yeah, Deryck. What is it?”
“You know the whole vodka-pipe vs. booze thing, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I still feel like puking and I already have the worst hangover ever. I looked through our medicine stash, but we didn’t have anything I could use. Do you think…?”
“Yeah, you can come to our bus afterwards and get some of the pills we usually feed to Dee when she’s had too much.”
“She didn’t look like she could get too much.”
“You won’t understand until you’ve seen her after three stuffs of tobacco and a bottle of Bacardi.”
“Guess not,” he answered, shrugging. He didn’t understand why that thought bothered him so much.

D-Sept walked around in the parking lot, looking for the AoD bus, freezing cold. She took a bite of the Big Mac in her hand, trying to ignore the paper-like taste of McDonald’s food. “Screw it,” she muttered, throwing the burger on the ground, sipping her coke instead. She still couldn’t find the fucking bus.
“Deryck!” she heard somebody yell in the background. “Deryck, where the fuck are you? We have to get going!”
Damn. If Sum was about to drive on, so was AoD. And Dev thought she’d already gone to her bunk. Shitness! Suddenly she was picked off the ground and onto somebody’s shoulders.
“Cone I found him!” Steve yelled, managing not to feel her breasts practically pressing against his neck. She tried to say something, but the wind had completely been knocked out of her.
The taller man appeared in the dark, following them towards the bus.
“Damn, I had no idea we got you wet too,” Steve complained, putting her down after having stepped into the bus. The door closed and they were off.
“Steve,” Cone said, looking at her. “This isn’t Deryck.”
“Hah! Funny,” Steve replied, not even looking at her.
“Steve seriously. It’s D-Sept.”
“And she is now invading your bunk room,” D-Sept stated, walking towards the end of the bus.
“Fuck,” Steve said. “I was so sure, but then again it was dark and all.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cone answered. “But since we have the clone, where the fuck is Deryck?”

Deryck was sitting calmly in the AoD bus, already starting to feel better from D-Sept’s special mixture of pills. “So,” he said. “That was weird.”
“What was?” Dev asked.
“The whole McDonald’s incident.”
“Yeah. No matter how drunk she’s been I don’t think I’ve ever heard her call anybody ‘Daddy’ before.”
“Also what she did to the guy.”
“Oh.” The girl grinned. “Yeah, I guess you have to get used to that.”
“So she does that a lot?”
“Yeah. She tends to be a lot of fun when she’s drunk.”
“Yeah,” Deryck agreed, keeping his other thoughts to himself. He hadn’t been amused. He’d felt… humiliated? And mad. Both at D-Sept and that fucker she’d picked at. And why that weird protectiveness towards a girl he’d known for less than twelve hours and still didn’t know what to make off? He should’ve been amused, so why did he feel like he’d just found out his sister was turning tricks in Whore-Ville?
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Ashes of Dreams