A/N: To the guest reviewer who said they hope Jude and Tommy don't end up together:

I can't respond fully to this at this point in the story without spoiling things I'd rather not spoil. At the end of the story maybe I'll address this concern again, that Jude and Tommy are not healthy together, because on many levels I very much agree. Jommy is my most problematic of faves. In real life there'd be no question in my mind that they're better off apart. I really think that in the context of the show itself they're very much better off apart as well, which is why I'm a somewhat outspoken proponent of the finale.

In the context of this specific story, however, it's much more complicated than that given the story I've set up (both in the two previous stories and in this one). I take these characters on a very rough and somewhat meandering journey, and at the end of it I might give my thoughts on where I think the greater victory lies: in them ending up together or ending up apart. You are not wrong, but it's more complex than "their relationship is toxic."

I will also say in my own defense, given that every chaptered story I've written up to this point has them finding their way back to one another, that fanfiction is a fantasy. I'm a sucker for the angst and the longing, but I've always been a sucker for the reunion as well. It's certainly in no way meant to represent my idea of a healthy relationship (at least it's not now... I can't totally speak for my 14-year-old self and her warped ideas of romance), but in the end, this is all just fanfiction for a mid-2000s teen drama, and I write what I enjoy writing and reading, even if that's sometimes cheesy and dramatic and utterly unrealistic

That evening, at home, they barely looked at each other. After they ate dinner in silence, Jude locked herself in the music room and tried once again to write. When she gave up after an hour or so, Tommy was gone. A note on the counter said "Meeting -T" and she sighed. She didn't want to be so angry at him, but every time she thought about what he'd said…

She found herself humming Benjamin's single to herself in the shower. Thinking about how much they still had left to do before the deadline, and how little she wanted to spend time with Tommy, she grabbed her cell phone after she got out of the shower and called Benjamin.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Benjamin, you don't have plans tomorrow night do you?"

"Um…" He sounded confused. "No, I don't think so. Why, what'd you have in mind?" She heard the flirtatious hint to his tone and ignored it.

"We don't have the studio until 4 tomorrow afternoon, and you're only scheduled to work until 7, but we're behind schedule on the single because someone couldn't agree with me on my song choice for two goddamn days." She said it teasingly, not angrily. "I need you to stay late with me, if you can. We're talking all-nighter, maybe. I still have to clear it with Nora, but I don't think anything else is going on, so I'm pretty sure she'll say yes."

"Wow, okay. Uh, yeah, I can't think of any reason I couldn't. Sure."

"Good. I shouldn't need you for the whole night, a lot of what needs to get done is just production stuff after you're finished recording. Maybe about midnight you can be done, and I'll work until 3 or 4 AM. You probably don't need to stay for that. Unless you want to, I guess."

"I'd love to."

"Sorry to take your evening."

"Not at all. Working late sounds fun, actually. Empty studio, middle of the night… It'll be fun."

"This way we'll be ahead of schedule, and if something changes or goes wrong, we have time. We'll get lots of work done." She emphasized the word "work."

"Absolutely."

"It's not a slumber party, Ben. It's work," Jude warned.

"I know," Benjamin laughed. "I'm with you, madame producer. All the way."

Jude rolled her eyes. "Fine. Get some sleep, okay? I want you to actually be able to focus tomorrow. It would be good if you could sing, too."

"Aye aye, captain." Jude couldn't help but laugh at that. Benjamin added, "Hey, say hi to Quincy for me." She hung up without responding.

… ... … ... …

"Can you take your motorcycle, please?" Jude asked as Tommy put on his shirt the next morning. She was sitting up in bed when he came back from taking a shower. It was the first thing she'd said to him since their fight the day before.

He turned to look at her. "What?"

"I need my car, and yours is still taking an eternity to get fixed," she sighed.

"You're actually that mad at me?" He looked hurt. "I was going to come get you, but you're so mad at me that you won't ride in a car with me. Seriously?"

"No." Jude rolled her eyes. "It doesn't make sense for you to go to work for three hours, come get me, and then go back to work."

"But it apparently made sense when we made the plan. We're leaving work at the same time later, Jude, I don't mind coming back here to–"

"No, we're not. That's the point. I'm working late. It has nothing to do with being unwilling to be in the same car with you, because I am not that petty. Can you just take the bike or call a car or something?"

"You're working late?"

"Yes," she sighed. "Almost definitely past midnight, maybe all night. Too late to be riding my motorcycle home, late enough I really don't want to have to call a car or a cab… I just want to have my car. Please. I am asking you nicely."

Tommy stared at her for a second, then gave an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, fine, whatever." He turned to grab a belt, muttering, "Sure, pull an all-nighter to avoid me. Real mature." Jude refrained from retorting, instead laying back down and pulling the blankets over her head.

.

Tommy considered going to apologize a dozen times during the day. His phone burned a hole in his pocket all morning, and he felt Jude's presence in the next studio like a phantom ache all afternoon. He wanted to apologize. He wanted her to smile at him, to put her arms around him, say she was sorry too… But the thought of going in there, in front of Benjamin, with his tail between his legs? In the end he couldn't do it.

He was angry at her, too, and the thought of her pulling an all-nighter just to spite him, with a guy that did nothing but flirt with her, made him furious. Maybe he had been out of line with what he said to her artist, but she was out of line with what she'd said to him. Accusing him of being jealous of her, essentially blaming him, and for what? For being there for her through two months of her intolerable selfishness.

But then again… she was right when she said he undermined her. Maybe sabotage was too strong a word, but to insinuate that Jude wasn't a professional had been wrong, and to say it to her artist had been even worse, no matter how much the flirting grated on his nerves.

He went back and forth between anger and guilt all day. As he left for the day, he stood in the hall for a long time, staring at the door to studio two, and trying to decide whether to, at the very least, go say good night. What eventually made his decision was the sight of Benjamin returning with takeout, saying, "Hey, Harrison. I'm back!" as he walked into the studio, closing the door behind him. Tommy couldn't bring himself to follow Benjamin into the studio, to interrupt them eating Chinese food on the couch the way he and Jude had done so many times. He pulled out his phone instead and texted her, "Heading home. See you tomorrow" and walked out.

.

Jude looked up as Benjamin walked in, saying, "Hey, Harrison. I'm back!"

"Finally. I'm starving." She accepted a container of food from him. "Hey, could you maybe… Not call me that?"

He gave her a confused look. "Call you what?"

"Harrison."

"Um… it's your name." He looked amused.

"Just… Please don't."

"Whatever you say, girl," he laughed.

Jude winced. "Yeah, not that either. Can you just… Stick with Jude, okay?"

"How about 'divine empress of production?'" he teased, raising his eyebrows.

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes. "Forget I said anything." Her phone chimed and she looked down at it. There was a text from Tommy, and her finger hovered over the notification before turning the phone off without replying. "Hey!" she said to Benjamin when she looked up. "Don't eat over the board! Couch!"

"You eat at the board all the time!" he protested with a laugh, but moved back to the couch.

"I do not! Maybe occasionally, if I haven't had lunch, or a few times when I…" The phrase "when I was pregnant" died in her throat, and she shook her head. "Anyway, this is very delicate, expensive equipment." She then opened the container in her hands and pointedly took a bite over the mixer, making Benjamin laugh again.

.

It was around 2 AM when Jude was finally satisfied that they'd recorded everything they needed.

"You're sure?" Benjamin asked in her headphones after she told him he was done.

"Pretty much. I still have work to do, but we have all the raw material."

"Can I listen?"

"Yeah, sure. Come out here." He sat next to her at the computer, and she hit play.

'Cause all of these things you were going to do
Well I'm going to lay them in line for you
And your old drums lying in your room
Well I'm going to beat them in time for you

The song was good, Jude thought again as they listened. He'd wanted to go with a love song, but this song, about his older brother, had captured Jude's attention and wouldn't let it go. He'd argued that the other song would sell better, that people love love, and Jude had replied that the emotion in this song was more real. Even though it was emotional, it was still catchy enough to get attention on the radio, and the version he'd posted on YouTube a year ago was approaching a million views. She'd finally been able to convince him by having him record the basic vocal and guitar tracks for both songs, and then talking him through what she was thinking for other instrumentals.

As the last note finished, Benjamin was nodding. "Okay, Jude. All residual doubt about the choice of single is gone. I now trust you completely and totally."

"The drums make it, right?"

"And that second guitar part."

"Say it…" Jude teased.

"You were right." He smiled.

"Aha! That's what I like to hear." She grinned. "But it's not just me. Your idea about the simpler bridge was really good. One chord per measure, the emotional effect is stunning. It's not finished yet, but it's sounding good."

"Agreed."

"So you can go home now. I shouldn't need you for anything else. Everything else is me, and then mastering by the end of next week. I could probably go home, too, actually, I should have time for this later, but I'm kind of on a roll." She didn't add that she didn't want to go home to Tommy.

"I'd love to watch you work, actually. I'd like to learn, even if it's just by observation. I haven't really used pro tools."

Jude thought of times when she was younger, back at G Major, when she'd spent hours in the studio with Tommy even after he'd told her she could go home. She'd pretend to do homework while really just watching him work. Sometimes she would watch the screen, trying to pinpoint exactly what he was doing, but more often than not, she'd watch him, taking in every detail of his look of concentration as he listened to the same section again and again, his fingers making minuscule changes on the mixer, his little smile when he finally got it right. Every once in a while he'd catch her staring at him, but after a while she couldn't bring herself to be embarrassed when their eyes met. In those days her crush on Tommy had been hopeless enough anyway, but she sometimes thought that watching him work was when she'd truly fallen in love with him.

"Jude?" Benjamin asked when she didn't respond.

"Hmm? Oh. Sure, yeah, if you want to stay. Sometimes it's better to have a second pair of ears anyway, in the middle of the night especially." She turned to the computer again and went immediately to the second chorus, where something was making the vocal track sound strange. She worked for most of the next hour in near-silence, almost successfully ignoring Benjamin's eyes on her. (Not just on the computer. She checked. His eyes were on her more often than they should have been.) After playing the song all the way through for about the twentieth time, Jude sat back and rubbed her eyes. "See, the challenge is to do that, work with that amount of focus, listen to the song that many times, and still be able to step back and hear it the way someone would when hearing it for the first time."

"To hear every note and still hear the song," Benjamin mused.

"Exactly." She yawned and stretched. "and for that to happen I need to take a break."

"Want coffee?"

Jude shook her head. "No more coffee. I've had like nine cups tonight. Even I draw the line at some point." She turned to him and whispered conspiratorially. "I saw a bottle of something in the fridge." She was kidding, not actually intending to steal and drink someone else's alcohol.

Benjamin laughed. "It's champagne. That's mine."

"Oh," Jude said, surprised. "Why do you have champagne in the fridge at the studio?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Saving it for when we like, officially wrapped the single or whatever."

"Oh. Well, in that case, never mind."

"Well… we could still drink it."

"We're not done though," Jude laughed.

"I'm done. You said so yourself. Nothing left to record for the single."

"You should save your celebration for when Nora says it's done, trust me. She could send us back to square one in a heartbeat."

"Then promise to bring a bottle when she approves it. You're the producer, it seems fair you'd be the one congratulating me anyway." He raised his eyebrows at her. "How 'bout it?"

"Alright, okay, you convinced me." She grinned.

He went and grabbed the bottle, returning with plastic cups.

"Classy," Jude remarked.

"You know me," Benjamin joked as he poured.

"Cheers," Jude said, raising the cup before downing half.

"I sort of thought you didn't drink," he mused.

"Hmm? Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. A lot of people go out or party around here. I've been to a few. You don't seem to go."

"Not anymore," Jude said quietly.

"Oh." His look was sympathetic. "Right. Sorry."

She nodded slowly. "It's partly that, yeah. It's hard to feel like partying a lot of the time. But also, Tom doesn't drink anymore." It felt strange to bring Tommy up, and Jude couldn't quite pinpoint why. "And I'm being supportive." She mumbled the last part into her cup before finishing the rest. Somewhere in her mind she thought that this was validating everything Tommy had said about her blurring the lines between personal and professional, but she pushed the thought away and filled her cup again.

A/N: The song is "Beat In Time" by a band called Red Kites. Check out Red Kites on YouTube! (/user/RedKitesMusic) They're a great group, friends of a friend of mine, and imo they deserve more fans. I specifically recommend the song "Hold Fast" in addition to this one.