"Sometimes a fight is better black and white (so stop the world)"
Fandom: Disneyverse- Demi/Selena
Author: letscall_l
Disclaimer: I do not own or mean to offend
Warnings: implied femslash // fluff //angst
Word count: 1348
Summary: Selena is in Puerto Rico and Nick is missing Miley
a/n: no last names so its legal!
She's had to get out of the studio. Dim lights, drawn curtains, a single mic just haven't been putting her in her element. At all. She's stuck. Blocked.
The roof is always open to them. Disney royalty. A single glance, with frustrated eyes, and the electric is switched off. Green in the new black these days. Green is Selena's. Keys are dangled before them - no lock is safe.
Demi has a chair up there now. A piano stool missing a back support, and more rips than stuffing. But it keeps her grounded.
Her fingers feel broken against the fret board. The lines are bruised into her skin. She feels like no amount of scrubbing or pressing on them will ever get them to fade.
Demi's face feels the humid breeze again. Its been an hour since she last tried to get it right and Demi desperately needs this on the album. Its the only song that matters. Of course the only song that matters is always the one that wants her to crawl over glass before it works.
She prepares the first chord. Her plec seems to comply for once and it sounds good. Like acoustic mellow good.
Her lips move. Sound actually comes out.
"I don't know why, I don't know why,
I was so afraid,
I don't know how, I don't know how,"
Her guitar finds a back up as she builds a more confident rhythm. The sound is textured, thick, and rich - she's glad he waited.
"To fix the pain,
Livin' a lie, livin' a lie,
Needs to change,
We're out of time, we're out of time,
And its still the same."
The first verse is always okay. Its not the perfect she strives for behind the mic. But the natural unplugged air reverberates her efforts and it should sound better live. Except for the chorus.
Demi repeats the same chords. The chorus doesn't start because her heart is flying away in the lyrics. Her throat closes.
"You can't...you can't - 'stop' the world..."
Her voice breaks. It squeaks so out of tune she could have been mistaken for a boy going through puberty.
Demi doesn't bother trying again. The song cuts off. Her hand stills but the other guitar lingers until it realizes that she's no longer singing.
Its useless to try. Demi knows. She painfully presses her fingers back to the first note. Pointless.
Selena is in Puerto Rico. Without her. Selena is in Puerto Rico without her and Demi can't get her stupid song right.
Stupid song which she'll probably mess up, somehow, on tour because Selena is in Puerto Rico, and then Canada, and Demi is sick of being so gender neutral about it.
There is only so many times she can avoid nouns and mix pronouns until she finally slips. Just a few more accidental 'girlfriend's and 'closeness' before someone confronts her; hopefully not the Mouse or the record company, who have already said enough; about how impossible it is for a sixteen year old girl to have her heart fractured and pieced back together in every song. Its possible. But its not different people. Just one girl.
"You okay?"
Demi blinks. She was so lost, she'd forgot she actually had company. Her co-writer. Nick looks with concerned head tilts at her monotonous form. She's hunched in a sweatshirt, belonging to a university that she's never attended, looking like she's about to fall to pieces again. Nick looks ready to catch her again. Catch her.
He shouldn't have to. They fly out to South America in a few weeks and Demi doesn't want to feel like just because she's broken down into his arms in tears, or fought so hard against his comforting embraces more than she ever did with Joe - that he always had to catch her. Demi is meant to be strong. Even if 'this love' was tearing her apart.
Demi moves so he doesn't try to approach her and stiffly nods. She's beyond faking smiles around him, because he taught her how. Over crowded couches and isolated moments on tour bus bunks. Their platonic 'I'm here' connection stood towering.
But he shouldn't have to catch her. Because Selena maybe in Puerto Rico without Demi, but Nick is alone with her wishing he was fourteen and with Miley. Time doesn't separate her and Selena. But a boy and time separates Nick and Miley.
Every text, every photo, cements it in Nick's heart. Demi has witnessed them 'reconnect' and she's certain soon they will emerge from the dark clouds. Whether or not unscathed is a different question.
It hurts her heart. They are the same. Their eyes darken and swirl for the same unreachable wants and close for the same rain of hope. The storm will come.
"I'm fine." Her neck falls back. Heaven needs to open up, to see her pleading desire and accept it willingly as prayer.
"No your not." They don't need sentences that go on. They are 'one word conversations on IM' personified. Always have been. Its a thing.
"No, I'm not." Demi sarcastically smiles to the sky, knowing Nick was returning it. He appreciates everything about her. Nick sees into her very being; he was never the one to joke like Joe or accept like Kevin. He's a subdued substitute for a girl in Puerto Rico who knows Demi is tossing and turning at night over a song about her.
A song that is the mature equivalent, the confession, to 'Don't Forget's 'Two Worlds Collide'. They've collided. They've shattered stars into universes unknown and woken together in rays of cosmic glows. Metal bands can't withstand their heat anymore. They can't stop the world. They collide, crash, create and burn brightly as one. But for now, Demi is torn, they reside as two. Because Puerto Rico, the home of the birth of their relationship, is not around her; anymore than Nick is around Miley (despite what the seats of his car say).
And because Nick knows her, she's not surprised.
"Its for Selena right?" His voice is new to her ears. When did she miss him grow up? When did she grow up?
When did she change jeans for skirts? Switch Converse for heels? Then again, when did she change her heels for the nikes? She doesn't know. She's finally collided with Selena and all she wants is for time to stop and let them be.
Demi's husky voice finds its way back to Nick, a guitar string ghosts over it.
"Its always for her."
Obviously. She can point out a line, more if she has to, in every song - that directly / subtly / or forlornly referenced Selena in anyway. Just like Nick could. She registers, curiously, glancing at him. How? Its wordless. By the way Nick's lip pulls upwards along his jaw she knows she was being obvious in some way.
"Plus you left your pre-song speech next to my compositions." Nick smirks. She can see Selena's identical facial expression in her mind. Bashfully rolling her eyes.
"Ah, I wondered where I'd left that." Demi tries to save face. Her pre-song speeches were what made songs like 'Don't Forget' and 'Get Back' live legends. A set-list -must- have. So instead of improvisation which could lead to disaster, she wrote the speeches. The words that would precede 'Selena's song' would join thousands of Youtube videos of her 'Don't forget' dedications - except the "last year I had my heart broken" would become "sometimes you fall in love and people don't want you to be together." - and maybe they would get it.
"What did you think?" She's asking about the speech. But she's asking about the song. She's asking for Selena; for Miley.
"I think we can do it." Nick gets it.
God, Nick gets it so much that Demi wants to burst with happiness just knowing he does.
She's got two weeks to nail it. To batter her fingers into the wood, rip her lungs to shreds and strain her voice past their usual limits. Nick has uncertain months and the power of vintage car dates-that-aren't-dates. He's right. So while Selena is tanning in the tropical heat and wondering if all that tossing she's doing will make her finally tumble - Demi is going to stop the world.
"I'll get it this time."