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Rip Hunter stood in front of the tour bus and coughed in a rather mild attempt to gather the attention of those on board. No one played him any mind, each of them all content with doing their own thing from Mick snoring loudly with his face smashed against the window, Leonard trying to teach Jax the subtle art of cheating cards, Martin muttering under his breath as he scribbled over lined sheets of paper, to Ray texting on his phone, a dopey smile on his face. Rip sighed, crossed his arms and leaned against the dashboard. It was sheer amazement that he managed to get these idiots to perform (he wasn’t even going to think about the hell that was rehearsal).
In the driver’s seat, watching Rip with amusement, Sara snorted, “You are going to have to do better than that, Captain.” Without waiting for a reply, Sara laid on the horn, watching as Rip winced at the sudden loudness.
Just like that, Ray’s phone went flying ahead of him from his jump and landing somewhere near the front of the bus, Jax dropped his cards onto the floor, and Martin was hastily trying to erase a line he had drew across his papers in his panic. Leonard stared ahead at Rip and Sara unamused, tension gathered in his shoulders from the abrupt honk. The only one unaffected was Mick, still passed out in a deep sleep beside Leonard.
“I take it you want our attention?” Leonard drawled, leaning back and gentle nudging Mick in the ribs. Mick growled at Leonard, but he slowly waking at the touch.
“Rip has an announcement,” Sara smirked, standing up to bypass Rip and take a seat beside Ray. They were still pulled over at the rest stop and as far as Sara was concerned, it was Rip’s turn to drive the Waverider- the fan-official name of their tour bus.
“Thank you, Miss Lance,” Rip muttered, clearly not entirely pleased with her methods but he will admit they were effective. “Right, it has come to my attention that we need to discuss a rather substantial elephant in the room.” This was met with confused silence and Rip elaborated. “A certain relationship needs to be addressed.”
Immediately all eyes were on Mick and Leonard. Mick seemed unimpressed and looked half-ready to pass out. Leonard just cocked his eyebrow.
“Man, did you two break up again?” Jax whined, sinking into his seat. “Seriously? You guys couldn’t wait until after touring? Do you do it on twitter again? I swear to God if you two go into another passive-aggressive twitter war-”
Leonard narrowed his eyes. “Mick and I are fine.”
“You say that all the time,” Ray pointed out. “Even that time, Mick tried to burn the bus down.”
“Couple’s dispute,” Leonard waved off.
“Four of us were still on the bus!” Jax exclaimed. “Including you.”
“Fine line between love and hate, kid,” Mick muttered.
Jax threw his hands up in the air in dismay. “I can’t even believe you two.”
“Mick and I are fine, as in we are still together,” Leonard rolled his eyes, leaning against his longtime partner as if that covered his point.
“And as happy as we are about that,” Rip stepped in before someone else could get a word in, “that is not the relationship I wanted to discuss-”
“Is this about you and Miss Lance?” Martin asked in bored and dull tone. “Or Miss Lance and her female acquaintances.”
“Acquaintances?” Sara shot back amused. “Really, Stein?”
“I wouldn’t call them friends,” Martin replied, “but they are certainly not strangers to you.”
“This has nothing to do with Miss Lance,” Rip hissed, face reddening at the implication of him and his teammate and while there was something there that was also not the discussion he had planned to bring up
Everyone fell silent and Rip hoped he would finally have the chance to address his actual concern but just as he was about to speak, Mr. Rory had to put his two cents in. “Is this about you and the country singer from Tennessee?” Mick groaned.
“Again with Hex?” Leonard rolled his eyes.
“We are heading to Nashville in a few weeks,” Sara winked deviously.
“No!” Rip huffed, face beat red. “This is about Mr. Palmer.”
Everyone’s gaze turned to Ray who looked just as surprised as everyone else. “Me?”
“Haircut?” Mick chuckled. “Yeah right, not after the bird twins screwed him over.”
Leonard smirked. “Didn’t even know he got screwed in that arrangement.”
“Kendra and I had something-”
“But she had more with Carter,” Jax cut him off. “And you three nearly tore the band apart.”
Ray’s mouth dropped. “I nearly tore the band apart? Not Mick who left in the middle of last year’s tour because he and Leonard got in another fight?”
“Hunter said this was about you,” Mick grumbled, his hand finding its way to Leonard’s back as a reassurance that the two of them were still good.
“You and that reporter from the SteelWarrior,” Rip clarified.
There was a gap of silence as everyone mulled over that information. Ray was looking nervous as all hell but Jax voiced the opinion of most of the other members. “The SteelWarrior? You mean Amaya Jiwe and Nate Heywood?”
“I believe they are those music critics,” Martin chimed in. “Mr. Heywood consistently gives us fairly decent reviews. Miss Jiwe was the one that accurately pointed out Jefferson’s unnecessary drumstick flare-”
“Oh, you had to bring that up, Grey?” Jax glared over the isle. “Really? It’s called having a unique style. Not everyone wants to keep the sound of the fifties alive forever.”
“Wait,” Sara reached out between Martin and Jax before they could trail off onto another tangent. She turned to Ray. “You and Amaya? You guys met what? Four times?”
“Sara-” Leonard gave her his best deadpanned expression “-you know better than anyone that a few meetings are enough or are we forgetting Gwen or Lindsey or-”
“We get it, Mr. Snart,” Rip cut off.
“Haircut and Amaya?” Mick grunted in the same disbelief as Sara.
“I have to agree with Mr. Rory,” Martin said frowning. “It was under my impression that Miss Jiwe and Mr. Heywood were together.”
Ray was opening and shutting his mouth like a fish, unable to get a word in and really just unsure what to say.
“Not Miss Jiwe,” Rip sighed. “I was talking about Mr. Palmer and Mr. Heywood.”
“Nate?” Sara blinked, looking at Ray in total shock. “But he’s a geek.”
“And Raymond’s a nerd,” Leonard threw in. “Are we that surprised?”
“They’re both idiots,” Mick mumbled in agreement with Leonard.
“Nice!” Jax held out a hand for a high-five for Ray.
Before Ray could even think about moving, Rip made an ungodly sound. “No, not ‘nice’! This is anything but ‘nice’!” Rip looked at everyone to see all of them staring at him with confused looks. “Do none of you get the implications of what could happen?”
“If you’re worried about Heywood giving us a bad name because of Mr. Palmer, I’d say you’re putting your worries in the wrong basket…Miss West, on the other hand, quite a bit more fierce with her criticisms,” Martin expressed thoughtfully. “Miss Park as well. Those two make quite the team.”
“Let the nerds be,” Mick sighed tiredly. “What’s the harm?”
Ray put his hand over his heart. “Thanks, Mick.”
“Just shut this babble up,” Mick snarled, eyes shutting.
“Well, congrats, Ray!” Jax and Ray exchanged a successful high-five at this, Ray still a little unsure about the whole thing. Martin turned away from the conversation completely to continue working on his compositions, the conversation over and done with for him. At this point, Leonard was back to shuffling the cards and Rip may as well have lost the entire purpose of the discussion, taking what felt like hours to get to it but only spending a few seconds with none else concerned.
Rip stalked back up to the front, turned on Gideon, the Waverider’s every faithful GPS. Fine, Rip thought bitterly, if they don’t care that Ray could potentially screw up relationships between the band and the music critics with one mishap than Rip wasn’t going to care either.
“It’s not that bad,” Sara remarked from Rip’s shoulder. “I think we’d be more concerned if it was Leonard or Mick, but it is Ray…and Nate had only ever given glowing reviews. No harm there. Now if it was Amaya, that’d be a different story. Nate, I’m not worried.”
“You do realize that one bad review has the potential to destroy what we’ve built here?”
Sara snorted. “Seriously? Do I need to go over all the fuck-ups we’ve done over the past two years to make you realize that we are still standing and fine? We lost Carter within two weeks of breaking ground, Mick abandoned the band after having his meltdown with Leonard, Carter came back, Leonard disappeared to who the fuck knows where, Martin discovered his daughter, you had that scandal with the-”
“You have proven your point, Miss Lance.”
Sara hummed happily, patting Rip on the head as he started the bus. She turned and sat down next to Jax and across from Leonard. “I call next game.”
“Luck to you, Blondie,” Mick murmured, already halfway back to sleep, an arm secured around Leonard’s waist although no one dared to point it out. “Lenny will have you emptying your pockets in no time.”
Jax made a noise protest and soon the game commenced.
It was only Martin who noticed Ray reach toward the ground to his fallen phone and began texting again, presumably to his new boyfriend. Martin barely paid it any mind as he went back to his composition of another sure to be hit.