- Imagine waiting backstage during every show in the early days, (think Woodstock,) waiting for the band to come back just so you can patch up whatever injuries Trent's given himself during this particular show. Everyone else gives him hell for it as you mess around with your first aid kit, dabbing antiseptic onto even the smallest scrapes, ("infections are a real bitch," you tell everyone.) The guys teasingly accuse Trent of going soft, to which he responds with a quite eloquent raise of his middle finger. If his friends want to be asses, that's fine, he doesn't care; he loves how insistent you are on taking care of him. He lets you know just how much he appreciates it by kissing you hard afterwards, at which point everyone else stops laughing at him and end up feeling just a bit jealous. 

(Besides, you're the one who ends up wrapping Chris's sore wrists and stitching up Robin's busted finger. You smile when you finish with the latter, watching as he looks at the perfect stitch with an expression of bewilderment. "There," you say. "That's more rock 'n roll than a hospital bill, isn't it, Finck?")

- You're prone to stealing some of Trent's clothes: his T-shirts, advertising whatever artist he was particularly fond of at some point in time, sweatshirts that are too big for him anyway, that green jacket that he loves so much. As much as he likes seeing you in them, you still choose to mess with him, telling him that you won't wear anything else of his in fear that you'd look better in it. ("How 'bout those fishnets?" you ask.)

- The two of you have made mixtapes for one another since you met back in high school. You still give him a collection of songs that remind you of him every time he hits the road. He thanks you for them sweetly when you first give them to him, but often ends up calling you later on to criticize certain tracks. ("You see, the problem with this one is...")

You roll your eyes and accuse him of looking a gift horse in the mouth, though you know full well that you put certain ones on there just to hear him rant about them. 

- Trent has a habit of leaving to-do notes for himself scattered around the house, some of them seeming rather self-depreciating on the surface. (i.e. 'remember to re-do track ten today, dumbass.') Though you know that this is just the way he is, you still go around vandalizing his Post-Its when he isn't looking, replacing every jab at himself with 'beautiful' and the like. He always rolls his eyes upon discovering this, shooting you a look of annoyance. Every time, you grin back at him like a Cheshire cat. 

- You're the one who keeps him grounded when it comes to working. You've known forever that the man is both a perfectionist and a workaholic, and, though this has yielded some true art, you know exactly when he needs to be stopped and actually forced to relax, at which point you deploy your expert methods of distraction. You've made an artform of it; you simply annoy the hell out of him by hovering around his workspace, paying him compliments and asking him an endless amount of inane questions. By the time that you crawl into his office chair with him and press a soft kiss to his lips, he's completely resigned, allowing you to lead him wherever it is you think he should be rather than in his studio. 

- You've tried to teach him how to bake countless times. Though you're nowhere near a world-class chef or anything, you're still better at it than he is. Everything tends to go surprisingly well as you walk him through exact measurements and pouring batter neatly into pans, but then the two of you get distracted, doing something ridiculously adorable like slow-dancing or lazily kissing with one of you pressed against the countertops. Then you smell something burning and panic, scrambling to get whatever it is out of the oven before the fire alarm goes off, which often results in you cursing at your burned hand. Realizing that you aren't going to burn the house down today, Trent takes this time to offer to kiss it better.

- If Trent's work ethic is much too strong, yours is practically useless; there are some mornings when you wake up with absolutely no motivation to go to work, and the love of your life is next to you, which he isn't always, so why waste an opportunity? So you wake him up by kissing him, which the two of you don't stop doing for a good minute or so. When you pull away, you request that he be a dear and call in sick for you, which he obviously can't say no to, after that. So he calls to inform your boss that you have suddenly fallen terribly ill, with you pretending to hack up a lung in the background to achieve the full effect. You eventually make a habit of this, and your boss knows full well that you aren't always sick, but, considering that you do a decent job when you do come to work, you're let off the hook. 

- You have "Closer" set as his personal ringtone. You proudly announce to anyone and everyone who gives you a startled look upon hearing it in public that it's your boyfriend calling before answering with a chipper "hey, babe," as you walk away, never letting them know that you're the one person in the world who can appropriately set that song as their significant other's ringtone without shame. Thought Trent finds these stories quite amusing when you tell them upon returning home, he also makes it a point not to call you when you lose each other in the grocery store. 

- After all the years you've spent together, all the things you've seen each other through, he eventually works up enough courage to propose to you. He doesn't want to make a spectacle of the two of you by doing it in public, (he hates that,) and everything that is suggested to him is heinous, (Chris says he should put the ring in the bottom of your drink, or randomly slip it on your finger and wait until you notice it, or just have him to do it for him by proxy, which is how they used to break up with one another's girlfriends back in the day.) Finally, he decides you can do without all the bells and whistles and drives you to the shore late one Sunday evening, long after everyone else has already gone back home. The two of you enjoy the view in silence before he turns to you, his lovely face illuminated by moonlight. 

"You know you saved my life here, right?" he asks. 

You shake your head. "Don't make me cry."

And yet that's exactly what you do when he takes that little box out of his pocket. 

"Well, after that," he continues nonchalantly, and you hate the fact that he can keep a straight face like that so much. "I'm pretty sure you deserve to be in my life forever. Don't you agree?"

(A/N One of the reccomendations below this chapter was something called 'The Smirking Jerk' and I think that's oddly fitting.)