Unwound
Annaleise Marie
Summary: Bella and Alice are lead singers for rival bands. After a catastrophe at their label, the two bands are forced to hide out...together. Pitted against each other since their debuts, could any good come of a situation like this? Written for the Battle of the Band Fics with Lupinista.
Warnings: Lemons, language, mild violence... All the usual that you get with my stories.
Chapter One: The Leak
AN: So this idea has actually been rattling around in my head for a few years, and after talking to Lupinista, I decided to go on with it. She's also writing a band-centric fic, and we decided to write ours at the same time. Cool beans, yeah? So after you read this, don't forget to check hers out!
I should mention that I have no talent for song writing. No copyright infringement intended, and credit where credit is due: The songs for Burnt Vermillion are the property of The Ting Tings, and the songs for Seattle Thorn are the property of Florence + the Machine. I wrote none of them, and I don't pretend to.
Also, I want to mention that though the main pairing in this story is B/E, all pairings will be fairly represented. :)
I also don't own Twilight. That should be pretty obvious since this is a fanfiction. But yeah, I'm not making any money. Which sucks. But alas, that's the law, and I follow it.
Hope you enjoy!
X
EmPOV
I hate flying. When flying consumes half of your life, it stops being such a novelty and becomes a chore. I could remember the first time I had ever been on a plane. I was barely eighteen. Burnt Vermillion had finally made it, and we were being flown across the country to record in New York. I was excited as shit, man, I'll tell you.
And now I lived most of my life out of a suitcase, hopping from venues to hotels to god-knows-what-else to - you guessed it - airports.
The excitement had sort of worn off.
But I was finally going home. We had just cut our last track for our new album, and while Jasper, Bella, and Leah were sticking around to check out the sights in New York, I was battling my way through JFK for a non-stop flight back to Arizona.
I had just reached the security checkpoint when my phone rang. I did a sort of double-take between my phone and the ATF officer. Were you allowed to answer the phone at a checkpoint?
The call rolled to voicemail as I considered it and I shrugged and tossed the phone in the bin. Before I could step through the metal detector, though, it rang again. The ATF officer raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. An over-insistent caller couldn't be grounds for suspicion of terrorism, could it?
After a moment he waved me through the detector. I passed through it without trouble. I was well-versed in airport security by this point. When I claimed my shoes, phone, and wallet from the other officer at the end of the conveyor belt, I realized I now had four missed calls. Two from Bella, one from Jasper, and one from Carlisle, our manager.
I decided to call Bella back first. Jasper had more patience so he would wait, and Carlisle was... Well... Carlisle was Carlisle. He's a difficult guy to explain. Plus, Bella was my little sister and she'd probably be pretty offended if I called anyone else back first.
"Emmett!" she answered on the first ring, sounding panicked.
"Whoa, Bells, you okay?" I stopped short, surprised by the urgency in her voice. Bella was usually a pretty calm person. Until something went really wrong. Then she was a fucking force of nature.
Someone smacked into me, not expecting my sudden halt in the middle of the crowded airport, and I turned to mutter an apology.
"It's fine." The girl blushed deeply. "I love your new album by the way."
I was momentarily distracted from the call. "Hold on, Bells." I dropped the phone to my side. "What?"
"I just heard it today. I mean, obviously. It's really great! I can't wait for your tour!" The girl was rambling. It was something that I was pretty used to, and I had gotten pretty good at translating excited-fan-chatter over the years, but this was making no sense to me. "Do you mind if I get a picture with you?"
"Uh... Sure." I didn't usually agree to that sort of thing when I was travelling alone. It drew too much attention, and I usually tried to blend in. Which was actually kind of funny, considering my sheer size alone. But she had confused me, and I didn't know what else to say.
The girl handed her phone to someone - it might've been her mom - and I forced a smile as she took the picture.
"It was so great to meet you. I can't wait to tell my friends!" she squealed, and then scurried off.
I let out a sigh of relief. Sometimes girls like her tended to stick around, and it got a little irritating. It took a moment, in my confusion and relief, to remember that Bella was still on the phone, waiting.
"Hey, the weirdest thing just happened," I told her as I started off again. "This girl just told me she loved our new album? I mean, I know sometimes people don't realize how old tracks can be by the time they get popular, but I mean, this is only our second release, and she said she just heard it today obviously."
"Emmett, you need to come back now!" Bella's voice was tight, worried.
"Are you okay? What's wrong?" I asked, worry starting to replace the confusion.
"The new album...every track...it's been leaked."
X
APOV
I was stretched out by the pool when I got the call. We had finally finished recording, and I had planned to spend a few hard-earned days relaxing and tanning, and pretending I had nothing to do with that world. Even if I was in LA.
Seattle Thorn had started as a pet project for me and my best friend in college, Edward Masen. He worked part time in this speak-easy inspired piano bar. I used to hang out during his shifts because I had a late class nearby, and then he'd walk me to my apartment after he got off. It was nice, because I'm really little, and it always made me nervous to move around the city alone at night.
Then one night he played "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino. I was sitting at the bar, and the place was nearly empty, so I started to sing along. It turned out the guy sitting a few stools down was the owner, and he liked my voice, so he hired me to sing with Edward's playing. We did that all through college, and eventually we hooked up with Rose and Jacob, taking a few gigs on the weekends for parties and such for extra cash. Every last one of us were the starving artist types, so it came in handy while we discovered our degrees were essentially worth nothing.
That was a bummer.
About a year into the gigs and parties, we were approached by Esme Platt, a representative of a small, but successful, label called Unwound Records.
The rest is history.
We debuted at the top of the charts in May 2011. We went platinum. Well, us and another Unwound band, Burnt Vermillion.
But that's another story for another time.
So there I was, celebrating the completion of our second album by doing absolutely nothing for what felt like the first time in two years. The album wouldn't officially drop for another two months, and for the next month we all had a sort of vacation before the interviews and promos began. Life was good.
And then my phone rang.
"Have you heard this shit yet?" Rose greeted me as soon as I picked up the phone.
I sighed and rolled over to my stomach. "I don't know what you're talking about. You know you called me? I'm not actually with you."
"Shut it, smartass." Rose had next to no patience. Ever. "Listen."
I strained to hear through the phone.
'Cause they took your loved ones
But returned them in exchange for you
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way
'Cause she's a cruel mistress
And a bargain must be made
But oh, my love, don't forget me
I let the water take me
I sat up, startled. That was my voice. That was our song! "Is that... Where are you?"
"That's the thing! I'm in my car! That's the radio, Alice!"
"How did they get that? Did Esme release a promo already?"
"No, I already asked her. Apparently there's been this whole big thing at Unwound. A server's been hacked. We've been leaked."
X
CPOV
"Have they been notified?"
I looked up to find Esme standing in the door to my office. I nodded and she glided into the room. And I mean glided. She always displayed an incredible amount of grace, even in the smallest things. It was one of the things I loved most about her.
She sat on the edge of my desk, crossing her legs. She was teasing me, and I knew it. But I didn't allow myself to touch her. The office wasn't the place for that. We had both made it this far by maintaining distance in the public eye. And now, especially, the bands we represented needed us to be careful.
This would only work out if we could play off of the animosity between Burnt Vermillion and Seattle Thorn.
"Carlisle?" She broke into my thoughts, reaching out to touch my shoulder gently.
"Hmm?"
"I said it's probably time to get on with this, isn't it? We need to get them all moved." She smiled that soft, sweet smile that I loved. It was hard to believe, looking at her face, what that mind of hers could come up with.
I nodded and reached out to hit a random key on my keyboard, waking up my desktop. "The Forks property?"
Esme nodded. "They're not going to like it."
"They don't have much of a choice." I shrugged as I accessed the airline's website. Esme watched, tapping her company credit card on my desk as she waited.
X
BPOV
As soon as Carlisle had managed to round up Jasper and Leah, and Emmett had made it from JFK to Unwound's offices, we were all corralled into Carlisle's office. We all knew by this point what had happened, but I guess Carlisle thought there needed to be an official announcement or something. Very by-the-books, Carlisle.
"So by now you've all heard that there's been a leak," he said as soon as he shut the door behind us before moving to sit behind his desk. All business, as usual. The familiarity of his behavior was somehow unsettling for me, with the exceptional circumstances we had encountered.
"It's every track? Everything?" Leah asked.
Jasper nodded and pulled out his phone. "I downloaded it on the way here. It's not just the music, either. It includes all of our album art."
Carlisle nodded tensely. "It's bigger than that, even. Twelve bands had their new albums stored on our server, ready to drop in the next two months. They've all been leaked."
I shook my head, my mind reeling. All of that work. The last year of our lives. Nothing to show for any of it. "How did this happen?"
"The tech guys are working on it. We don't know anything for sure yet." Carlisle looked weary. I could imagine that this was a lot of stress for him. It was hard to feel sorry for him, though, through my own disappointment.
Emmett put his arm around me and I leaned into him, closing my eyes and breathing deeply. "What do we do now? Can you stop the spread of the album? This is piracy, right?"
Carlisle shook his head. "It spread through person-to-person sharing software. The original user is probably long gone, and I doubt we could even track them down if they hadn't. Those sites are all but anonymous. The word got out on blogs and social sites, and the first amendment protects those. This is completely out of control, and a leak of this size is completely unprecedented in this industry."
Leah sighed, slumping down in her chair. Leah was tall and thin, with a sharp face and well-defined features. Everything about the way she held herself screamed pride. She was intimidating, a look that fit her well as our bassist. Now, though, she just looked defeated. "So what do we do now?"
"We're still figuring that out." Carlisle opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an envelope. "For now, we're putting all of the bands involved in a black-out state. Until we figure out how we're going to handle this, we need you all completely out of the public eye."
"You're putting us on lock-down?" Emmett gaped at Carlisle.
"More like...house arrest. It's just temporary." I guess Carlisle's words were supposed to be comforting, but they didn't come across that way. "You'll be staying at one of the Unwound properties. Yours is in a town called Forks, Washington. It's small, but you'll be well out of the public eye there."
He handed the envelope to Emmett, who opened it to show a stack of plane tickets and a printout of an address and directions from Sea-Tac airport.
"I've gotta go back to the airport?" Emmett groaned.
I patted his arm sympathetically. "I need time to get Renesmee ready. She's at the hotel with Angela."
Renesmee... Renesmee was conceived after our debut. She was the reason we had taken a year off from touring and recording between albums. I loved her to death and I wouldn't trade her for anything, but her existence was...complicated.
The label had bent over backwards to be accommodating despite the poor timing of my pregnancy and her birth. I guess when you're a platinum-selling artist, you get perks like that. They had given us our time off, despite the pressure to produce a follow-up album, and they had even found me an excellent nanny, Angela Weber. Angela was a twenty-two year old, fresh out of college with a degree in early child education, and "Nessie", as everyone had nicknamed her against my wishes, loved her like crazy.
"You need to be quick. The media has already gotten hold of the story, and we need to get you guys out of here," Carlisle said.
I nodded and stood up. Emmett stood as well, following me out. I felt like a little kid again, completely unsure of everything, with my big brother watching over me. It was nice, and a little crippling at the same time. This album was supposed to be the comeback, my own proof that I had made it, that what had happened hadn't broken me.
And now here we were. With nothing to show.
X
EPOV
We arrived at Sea-Tac pretty early in the day, considering most of us were still in LA. Rose would be arriving after us, since she had already been on her way to visit her family in Seattle. We had passed her in the air, but I was sure it she wasn't far behind, the way she drove.
Alice was in rare form. She seemed to have taken the leak as a personal insult. I mean, don't get me wrong, it sucked. But Esme had told us that eleven other bands had albums leaked, as well. I highly doubted they had done that to cover up a personal attack on any of us.
Against her will, Alice had kept her word and stayed quiet about the situation during the flight, but once we had all piled into the rental car to begin the two-hour drive to Forks, where we were to hide out until Unwound "figured something out", she completely lost it.
"...poured my damned heart and soul and probably a spleen into those songs!"
"And that one chorus! Did they think it was easy? Strained my voice, couldn't talk for days..."
"I swear if I ever figure out who's responsible, I'm going to..."
"Why would someone do this to me?!"
"...feed their entrails to a pack of wild dogs. Swear to God."
She could be a bit of a diva. Generally, Alice was really sweet. But she just took everything so personally.
But then, women were like that, I guessed.
We finally found the address, thanks to our guitar player, Jacob, who had family near the area, and piled out of the car. It was a good thing we had him, too, because we never would have found this place, otherwise. It was way up in the woods, following a winding mountain road.
The first thing I noticed was a sleek black SUV parked in the driveway.
"What was Rose driving?" I asked Alice.
She shrugged. "She didn't say. But that's a Denali. Rose has an Escalade."
We made our way cautiously up the front walk to the porch and then hesitated before knocking. Were we supposed to knock? Who knows.
After a moment the door opened to reveal the very last person I expected - or would ever hope - to see.
"Oh, fuck no!" Emmett McCarty swore before slamming the door in our faces.
X
AN: So. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? I'd love to hear from you guys!