- Hole, Celebrity Skin -

Being on a big tour changed our lives.
Suddenly 'Story of Us' and 'Dark Days' were both selling all over the world. People knew who we were and we even had the occasional Paparazzi on our heels.

Much of it thanks to being on tour with the greatest rock band in the world.
We didn't exactly get to hang out with them as such but we had enough time with them to pick up on their good advice and to see what made them great. Basically they were a chilled out bunch who partied occasionally but not every day... or even every week.
We went with them a couple of times to small pubs and clubs where they had these incognito gigs and were occasionally asked to join them at restaurants or trips to the cinema.
And they were really cool and down to earth.

Dave Grohl found it hilarious to enter a celebrity look-a-like contest in Berlin and I went with him to see the delighted smile on his face when he won the third price behind a really awful Elvis and a girl who vaguely resembled Gwen Stefani.

"The trick is, Izzy. Never forget where you came from and who you are," he told me when he spotted my disbelief at his third place for not looking enough like himself for a first.

I got it though.
All of the guys in Foo Fighters were down to earth, likeable guys without any star ideas or inflated egos. They were in it for the music, not the fame. Which is what we wanted to do.

"I know you guys have been told how to do stuff a certain way by your publicity people. Just ignore that. Focus on the music and have fun. Don't worry about the fucking press," he said and gave a friendly wave to a paparazzi as we were walking back to the hotel after his look-a-like contest.

The guy would get taxis but a lot of the time he chose to walk like a normal person. Sometimes people would look at him as if trying to figure out if it was him, and sometimes people would stop him for a photo and a chat. He didn't seem that fazed by it tho. He'd give a friendly smile and pose for photos before walking on.

"You just waved to the pap?!?" I asked, throwing a look over my shoulder at the photographer on the other side of the street.

"Yeah. Gets annoying if there are too many of them, but most of the time, they are just doing their job. Besides... it doesn't hurt to look friendly in photos," he chuckled and stopped to chat with another fan.

"Makes sense," I mused and made sure I gave Dave's fan a friendly smile as he decided to take a selfie with me as well.

"Anyway. Thanks for going with me. This one is yours," he grinned and gave me his price from the look-a-like contest. It was a small teddy bear wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the mall and something in German about looking famous.

"Will you sign it?" I asked and got a hearty chuckle and a nod back.

"Sure. I'll sign the bear. But you'll have to get me a signed Obstruction CD for my kids," He laughed.

Oddball got hold of the Foo Fighters raider one day and we ended up comparing it to our own and making alterations.

"They have hardly any alcohol, considering the amount of people backstage with them," Simon commented.

"I like our raider, tho," I said. We had food, local beer, fruit and water as our staples.

Sometimes we would ask for souvenirs to take home, but most of the time we were happy with the food. I usually asked for a stack of stamped postcards to send home to my mum and Ellen. Oddball wanted local snacks and usually ate most of them. Ethan and Simon stuck with the local beer.

"How about you put what you want on your raider instead of trying to copy the Foo's?" Selma asked.

"I'm with Selma. We don't need to ask for stuff we don't need," I agreed.

"Anything you want?" Simon asked looking up from the raider to focus on Selma.

For a second I thought I saw the flash of a sly smirk on her face towards Simon before she regained a neutral expression. She caught my quiet giggle and shrugged at me.

"Go for it!" I laughed.

"Nope," She said with a shake of her head.

"Nohing?" Simon asked, looking mystified.

I had to look away to avoid laughing.

"I get the stuff I want, Simon. Don't worry," Selma chuckled.

"I'm sure you will," I muttered under my breath and got a whack from Selma.

"Might as well put it on the list... You're part of this too," Simon said again trying to work out what I was giggling about.

"Fine. Put a local brand of softdrink on there. Local flavour kinda stuff," Selma said trying to not send me a pointed glare.

"Wuss-out," I muttered under my breath and received another whack.

"I suppose you can add stuff for yourself. You're sending this info to the bookers anyway," Simon huffed, still looking confused before he stood up and joined the other two guys in a different corner of our backstage area. I completely cracked up the moment he turned his back.

"That was just hilarious!" I gasped for breath.

"Was not!" Selma shot back.

"Was too! You soooo want him!" I chuckled.

"I do not!" she whispered.

"If you say so," I giggled and stood up to get my voice warmed up and my make up on before going on stage.

Selma was sat with a tight, reluctant smile on her face, trying to not look at me or Simon. I decided to leave her to it. I might be reading too much into it, and Simon was walking around in his own little world anyway.

When we got as far as to Africa on the tour, when our fame shifted up a notch.

We had ended up in Kenya, on a national TV-show where we were interviewed and had politely answered the usual questions.

"As a thank you for coming, We have a present for each of you," the host said and we were given a masai drum each.

They were the djembe style ones that taper so you support them between your thighs while playing.
Each had a carry strap to put around our necks. Oddball's face lit up and he slipped the strap around his neck immediately trying it on.

"How do you play this?" he asked the host.

I handed my drum to our host, who showed us the correct positioning before giving it back to me. The drums were in different sizes with different patterns.

"They are beautiful!" I said running my hand over the handpainted beaded pattern of my drum.

As I looked up I saw all three boys had their drums in a playing position and Oddball started beating it lightly to get a feel of it.

"Live TV, guys," I reminded them.

"And?" Simon grinned beating a rhythm on his.
Ethan had already worked out that there was a way to get different notes from the drums and before I knew quite what was going on, they were actually beating a threeway rhythm on their drums that I recognised as the instrumental to "Dark Days".
I shook my head with a giggle and joined in beating my smaller drum to complete the sound before I started singing the lyrics.

The host was happily nodding his head to our impromptu performance and something about our tour manager' grin told me we had done a good thing.

Later that evening we were getting ready to go on stage when Oddball and Ethan came carrying the drums.

"This was so much fun, we've decided to try it on stage," Ethan grinned.

I took my drum from his hand and shook my head at his boyish enthusiasm.

"It will be fun... And show them we liked their gift," He smiled.

"You just like new musical toys," I smiled back.

"Yep. And I like you," He replied and gave me one of those addictive kisses.

We had kept going for almost a year and I still felt weightless when he looked at me with that crooked little smile and those swirling golden flecks in his eyes.

"I love you," I murmured.

"Don't you love me?" Oddball asked behind me with a giggle.

He was still taking credit for us being a couple.

"I love my Oddball. I just happen to love Ethan just that little bit more," I grinned.

"Good! Coz he's a mess when you're not around," Oddball laughed, thumbing to Ethan.

"I'm just addicted," Ethan grinned and kissed me again as if he hadn't seen me for a week.

"Argh.. my eyes. Shield me from the pink fluff!" Simon laughed as he entered.

Ethan and I drew apart and turned to look at him.

"I found a dude who knows how this works," Simon said and nodded to a hired stagehand with tribal beads on a necklace.

"My tribe make drums like these," he shrugged.

"So. Joe said he'll teach us the basics," Simon said.

The guy spent the next half hour teaching us the traditional way of playing the drums before he helped us work out a choreographed little dance we could do.

"If you're done goofing around, the audience are waiting for you," Selma told us from the doorway to the stage area.

"Thank you, Joe!" Simon said and patted the man's back.

"Simon! You can't just dismiss him like that!" I laughed and went to our stash of stuff.

I picked out a couple of pre signed CD's which I handed to our helper.

"Don't know if you're a fan, but this is what we have," I said.

"I didn't know who you were, but if you're this friendly to everyone, I am a fan from now," Joe chuckled and took the CD's before returning to his job in the lighting rig.

So we opened our Kenyan show with all four of us stood at the front of the stage, with drums between our legs stomping our feet in sync, drumming out the short choreographed thing we had decided on back stage.
I was slightly worried about mucking about too much with their culture and traditions, but the crowd loved it and when we had set the drums aside and played a few songs, the chant of "drums, drums, drums" started.

I looked around at the rest of Obstruction before turning back to the microphone.

"We loved our masai drums," I said into the microphone and was rewarded with a loud cheer.

"And! Thank you Joe, for teaching us how to use them," I said as I spotted our helper climbing up the side of the rig. I gave him a little wave and got a thumbs up back.

We ended up getting the drums out front and doing a few of our tunes with Oddball playing them at the front of the stage instead of staying behind his usual drumset. He stayed there for a few songs, before finishing our show on normal instruments.

As we exited the stage, I spotted a very amused Dave Grohl over by the light rig.

"Now you've done it! I hope you're prepared!" He winked and returned to his dressing room.

I stared after him and wondered what he meant.

We found out a few days later.

Mr. Summers phoned my hotelroom directly.

"Your drum stunt is viral!" He screamed through the phone.

Ethan's messy hair lifted up from the pillow next to me in the bed with a confused look.

"Turn on MTV! Or E-news! It's there!" Mr. Summers shouted exitedly.

Absent mindedly Ethan turned our hotelroom tv on and zapped untill he found a news channel on a segment of entertainment. And there we were. On stage, with drums. And the text rolling across the screen reading "Obstuction removes cultural obstructions!"

"Oh my god!" I whispered into the phone.

"We couldn't have planned this! you've done it! My little fucking geniuses!" Mr. Summers was shouting down the phone.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"It means, Izzy... That this is publicity gold and you are rock stars!" Mr. Summers laughed.

Ethan and I stared at each other, before we stared at the screen.

"Right... I've got to phone the other three," Mr. Summers said.

"Errm.. Ethan is kinda here," I said.

"Of course he is," Mr. Summers laughed on the other end and hung up.

"What the hell was that?" Ethan asked, still looking dazed from sleep but adorably cute as always.

"It means that we're famous," I said with a grin.

"Huh... I thought touring with Foo Fighters kinda made us famous already," He asked.

"But this makes us famous for us, not via them," I grinned.

We looked back on screen where a journalist was gushing about how we were cultural ambassadors and on a mission to unite the world. I groaned.

"You know what this means, don''t you?" I asked.

"More fun instruments at every gig?" Ethan grinned.

"Yeah. And an expectation to have a cross cultural happening at every show," I said.

"We can do that!" Ethan grinned before turning back to the screen where it read "Rock sensation Obstruction makes cultural connections!"

Slowly he turned back to me with a big grin.

"Rock sensation, huh?" He smirked.

"You already rock my sensations," I grinned back and was rewarded with an arm around me pulling me to him. He held me just close enough to look straight at me. His eyes were full of mischief.

"But now you can have your sensations rocked by a rock sensation!" Ethan grinned before kissing me.

My hands found his hair and stroked along his skin almost on their own while his hands roamed my body. His lips on mine were demanding, hungry and I didn't have to ask to know where he wanted this kiss to end up.

He lifted his face slowly again while looking at me with a clever smile.

"What date is it?" He asked.

"June... 27th?" I asked.

"Happy anniversary, Izzy," he whispered softly.

"The best year of my life," I replied.

"The first of a lifetime," Ethan murmured into my neck before we got into a very pleasant celebration of our first year together.

A week later, 'Story of us' hit the top of the charts across Europe, Africa and Asia, while crawling up along the american lists.

Simon looked at the host of the current talkshow with a surprised look on his face.

"We're number one?" He asked.

"According to today's listings you are number one in 30 countries," the host grinned and presented us with an award for reaching gold in salesnumbers.

We looked at each other in awe.

"We've made it, guys!" I almost whispered.

"Now we just need to keep going!" Simon said.

And that's when the mayhem started. We were getting fan mail, people were creating websites about us and we were surrounded by fans everywhere.
It was coming up for August again and we were in Japan for a series of concerts. Ethan's heritage was creating total chaos and his two sentences in Japanese were repeated endlessly in all interviews.
They loved that one of them was a rock star.
I had been in Obstruction for almost two years and our album was at number one in large parts of the world.
There was even talk about a nomination for best newcomer at the next MTV-awards and negotiations about supplying a song for an upcoming Hollywood movie.

On my bedside table I had a copy of a guitar magazine with Simon and Ethan on the cover holding a bass and a guitar respectively. The magazine had an interview with them as a main feature focusing on how their style of balancing each other out was changing the sound of rock.

"I don't get it. We just arrange our songs so they sound good," Simon said when he'd seen the finished article.

In the magazine there also was a series of pictures of girls playing guitars and to my astonishment a picture of me had been included. It showed me mid-gig, biting my lip in concentration while playing Ethan's blue Ibanez.

Another music magazine had a photo of me and Oddball standing either side of a huge bongo drum and an interview about how we were learning from each other.

Somehow, Ethan had agreed to do a Cosmopolitan interview, and suddenly there were a whole load of pictures of him in a wet t-shirt and an interview about what kind of girls he preferred. Despite his insistence that he had mentioned me several times, my name didn't make it into the article at all, but I didn't greatly care. I knew where I had him.

Ethan, Simon and I were trying to write new songs in my hotel room when Odd stood from the chair in the corner and came over to sit on my bed with the rest of us.

"Have you been on Wattpad lately?" He asked.

"No?" I said.

"Evan text me a link. Apparently Obstruction fanfic is appearing!" Oddball laughed and tossed me his phone.

"All I did was search for Obstruction and fanfic and there's literally over a hundres stories... about us!" Oddball chuckled.

I looked through the stories and was amazed at our faces on a load of covers.

"And we're being cast in original stories too," Oddball smiled.

"Oh... That's not half of it!" Selma laughed.

"What do you mean? " I asked.

Selma grinned and left the room. Two minutes later she returned with a messenger bag which she upended on the hotel bed. Most of it landed on my legs.
We rifled through the piles of paper and I realised a lot of it was artwork. I picked up a portrait of Ethan and me kissing.

"This is a bit weird," I muttered.

"It gets worse... fold it out," Selma grinned and pointed out that the drawing was folded and I was looking at just the top third.
I carefully folded it out and quickly folded it back up with a shocked squeak.
Ethan leaned over and picked up the drawing.

"That's hilarious!" He laughed, studying the impossible anatomy of the drawing.
Simon leaned over to see and shook his head.

"Need an extra leg in those jeans there, mate?" Simon asked with a laugh.

I threw the drawing to the side and picked up the next one. I gave it one look and started laughing.
It showed Simon and Ethan in a very intense eye contact moment with their hands on each other's naked bodies.

"Oh yeah. Sithan - or Ethmon if you prefer - is an actual thing with your fans," Selma grinned.

"Why?" Simon asked sounding really worried.

Ethan looked at the drawing with a shrug.

"Not a bad portrait tho," he laughed.

"That's one of the nicer ones. Trust me, brother..." Selma chuckled.

Oddball was laughing to himself, reading some of the letters.

"This is priceless. This kid wants me to impregnate Izzy to make sure there will always be a solid drummer in the the world," Oddball laughed.

"At least he has a good reason," I replied.

"Unlike this one," Simon said and showed us a fanfic on his phone, entitled "Obstruction Orgy" which outlined a series of events involving all four of us.

"These people are delusional!" I laughed.

"This is just the stuff about just you. Wait until you get to the first person narratives," Selma grinned.

All four of us looked at her sceptically.

"Let's just say I will never have the need to read smut ever again. Your fans are disgusting," she shrugged before giving Simon a pointed smirk.

"And your twelve inches must be very well hidden," she grinned.

"Twelve? They underestimate the power of Simon," he grinned back.

"Or maybe just a tad closer to a perfectly average six... seven on a good day," Oddball shrugged with a smirk.

"Damn those communal showers at the gym!" Simon laughed with an ironically disappointed hand gesture and a tut.

"What do you expect to do with twelve inches anyway? Pierce a girl's diaphragm?" Ethan mumbled.

"Good point," Simon chuckled before turning to Selma with a smirk.

"So... how many of these Wattpad stories are yours?" He asked.

"Why would I need to write Obstruction fanfic?" She asked.

"Bet yours would be better than all of these," Simon grinned.

"My stuff IS better than this!" Selma chuckled.

"What's your username?" Simon asked.

"SuperSelma, why?" She asked.

"Oh nothing," Simon grinned and sat back to start reading one of Selma's stories.

"Aaanyway..." Selma laughed.

I looked at her.

"You might also want to know that your unofficial status is not so unofficial," she grinned at Ethan and me.

She opened up a photo on her computer with the caption: "Is it too much to ask for a guy who looks at me the way Ethan looks at Izzy?"

The photo was from a gig and had Ethan and me looking at each other. His lips were pursed in a clever little smile and his eyes were locked on mine with a look of pure adoration. My eyes were on his with an equally worshipful smile.

Under the photo was a series of comments.
- ...and five minutes later their clothes were off.
- You know they are a legit thing right?
- That's not the only pic like that. He's constantly checking her out.
《photo of us from a different gig had me singing to Simon, but Ethan's eyes were on my ass.》
-they've been a thing for a long time. Look at this.
《the photo from the newspaper back in April the year before.》
- They are cute tho.
- I want an Ethan.
- me too.
- count me in.
- we need someone to invent cloning.
- I want to envy Izzy... but I can't.
- she's pretty hooked on him too.
《Paparazzi picture of me and Ethan out at a coffee shop. Me on tiptoes to give him a kiss while both of us were smiling.》
- awww. That's just adorable.
- cutest couple in Rock. I ❤ them.
- forget Ethan for a moment. I want to know how Simon plays that bass without getting his hair all tangled up in the strings?
《picture of Simon jumping around, hair flying free with his bass.》
- fuck. I wanna BE that bass.
- *worships Simon*
- hell yeah
- He should be forbidden to wear a shirt in photos... like ever. I swear that man is edible!
-this one?
《Picture of Simon on stage, wringing his sweaty shirt off after a gig》
- *hot flushes*
- pwhoarrr...
- Can we just thank God for Oddball while we're at it?
《Close up of Odd with his freckles and a cheeky, dimpled smile》
- I want Oddball's babies... just to have kids with dimples like that.
- Izzy struck gold!
- Fairly sure she's not in it for their looks...
- but still... looking at those three every day? Dream job!
- they get to look at her tho...
- she ain't all that...
- jealous bitch say what?
《Still of me from the 'Story of us'- video from my undressed bit with Simon》
- damn...

"Oh dear..." I laughed and abandoned the rest of the comments out of sheer embarassment.

"There are a million conversations like this... and this is a clean one!" Selma chuckled.

"Rock star life like you imagined?" I asked Simon. He was still reading.

"Groupies missing... but yeah! I get to make music with my best friends," he said with a nod.

We sat there for a minute looking at each other with growing smiles before I clutched Simon to me in a big mushy hug. Two seconds later the rest of them joined in.
I wasn't sure what I had imagined my life like, but as I found myself trapped under a pile of hugs, squished up against Selma and laughing from sheer happiness, I knew I would never want to trade these people for anything.
My eyes met a laughing grey pair and the world was perfect.

- the end -
????

(A/N:

Thank you for joining me on this little journey!
I have enjoyed writing this story and hope you have enjoyed reading it.

I am wanting to add a few epilogue chapters, just because I'm having a hard time letting these characters go!

What do you think?
Was this an okay end or do we want a different one?
I'm open to suggestions...)