Taylor Swift – Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince
Taylor put her earbuds in and flipped through her phone. She lowered herself onto the top step of the stairwell, checking to make sure she still had service here. Shaking Connor hadn't been easy, but she had eventually convinced him that he needed to go reconcile whatever disagreement he had with Markus while she ordered room service.
She wasn't entirely sure why she didn't want Connor to know she was going off to talk to Alex in private, except that it was about him. Just the whole thing was making her nervous, and maybe she was still on the fence about whether she wanted to stay in Detroit or go home to Los Angeles.
The phone started to ring in her ear, and she closed her eyes, waiting for him to answer. Feeling her heart rate increase. Her lips quirked when she imagined Connor scanning her. Knowing. "Well, well. Finally made time in your busy schedule to call."
"Hey Alex," she sighed. It had really only been a day since she told him he didn't need to call her every day to check on her, but he wasn't going to let it pass without comment. That wasn't in his nature.
"Are you staying in Washington D.C. while they vote on this bill?" He sounded like he'd been itching to ask it. Taylor sat the phone in her hand down on the stair, just by her hip, and crossed her arms over her knees.
"I don't think so. Nothing is decided just yet, but I think we'll fly back to Detroit by then end of the week. Next week at the earliest." She didn't want to tell him they might put in the extra days because of the threat from Helping Humans. There was no need to worry him unnecessarily. "We have no idea how long it will take the bill to get through Congress, if it even passes. President Warren is hoping it passes through before the holidays."
"And what about you?" Alex asked it very neutrally, but she knew what he really wanted to know. How soon would she be coming back to Los Angeles? At the end of the day, he only cared about this insomuch as she was a part of it. He wasn't asking about the bill at all.
"I didn't call to talk about my flight plans," she said finally. She leaned forward, pressed her forehead against her folded arms, listening to the silence all around her.
"Well what did you call to talk about?" Alex said when he realized she wasn't continuing. He sounded apprehensive now. She wished she knew if he suspected or if he just thought she was going to say that she was never coming home. As the silence stretched on, he added, softer, "I'm listening, Taylor."
Just that was enough to almost break her. She couldn't bring herself to imagine doing anything to hurt him, not on purpose. He was the person who had stuck around, who had waded through all of her messes and put all of her pieces back together. He was the one who was always there, always checking on her. He was her family.
"You were right," she managed to croak out, over the raw lump in her throat that was forming already.
"You gotta be more specific. That happens all the time with me." He was trying to make a joke, trying to make her smile. He could already tell how fragile she was becoming. He could always tell. She smiled despite herself.
"About Connor." She huffed, a tremble going up her spine. She didn't think it would be this hard. "About me and Connor. You were right. I lied."
"Oh." Alex's one-word response was hard to decipher. Perhaps more surprise than anything else. Clearly, he was expecting her to say something else. "Taylor, I was teasing before. I really don't care if you're in love with an android."
"I know." Almost a whisper now. Maybe she was just telling him as a prelude to the real truth: she couldn't leave Connor now. But she didn't want to leave Alex either. Life wasn't fair.
"You're serious about this, huh?" A choked laugh escaped her before she could stifle it.
"What gave it away?"
"Oh, I don't know, the really dramatic phone call?" He drawled it, and she could picture his smile behind her eyelids. It brought a real smile to her face. "Why Connor, anyway? I thought maybe you'd go with Markus in the end and form some human-android power couple."
Taylor snorted, and then started to giggle uncontrollably. In the back of her mind, she knew Alex had only said it as a joke, but the images it conjured made her want to laugh hysterically. "Don't bring that up in front of anyone else, please."
He laughed then, but when the sound of both of their laughter faded, he asked, "Seriously though. Why him?"
It was Alex's way of protecting her. She knew that. He had been through her relationships before. Her breakups. So he wanted to know if this was serious. He was protecting her, like always.
She paused to consider the question he had asked. Why Connor? "I've met a lot of people. Human and android. Comes with the gig, right?" It was her feeble attempt at a return joke. To let him know she was okay. He huffed a laugh.
"There aren't any like Connor." She said quietly. "He's just good." Another hesitation. She thought of his face, the soft furrow in his brow, the warm touch of his hands. "When he looks at me, he sees me. Not a celebrity or a lie or a past, just me. And he loves me."
"You say that like it's impossible." Alex sounded a little sad now, but he continued, "I'm happy for you. I give you my blessing, if that's what you want. At least I can be sure he will look out for you."
That last tidbit did surprise her, just a little. As with her career, Alex was territorial about her safety. He didn't trust anyone else to keep her safe because he didn't trust them to know when she was lying. Maybe he just knew she couldn't lie to Connor even if she tried, or maybe they had developed some kind of rapport when she wasn't looking.
The hush petered on, both in the stairwell and on the line. They were at an impasse. She knew he was waiting for the next line, for her to say she was staying in Detroit. With her eyes still closed, she could picture him so perfectly, sitting in Emily's nursery that he'd had to repaint because he'd been so convinced that he was going to have a boy. He'd be in the rocking chair, but still, not moving, the phone pressed to his ear because he didn't like using earbuds, didn't even like texting.
"I told him I had to come back home when this is over." She cut him loose from his anticipation, because in that picture in her head he looked unhappy. She would do anything if it meant he wouldn't be sad.
"You did, huh?" What she didn't expect was the lack of relief in his voice when he answered. He sounded carefully impartial now, and she really wished she could see his face. "Can I ask you something now, Taylor?"
"Of course," she said, even though she could already feel the fear squeezing around the heart in her chest. It was the way he said it. Unsettling.
"What does home mean to you?" He said it clearly, without hesitation. Just a question, but if her head hadn't been tucked into her arms, she would have flinched. She thought of her house in Los Angeles, of Alex and his family, of her career. Helping androids with Raj.
"Home is there. It's in L.A., with you," she said, but her voice faltered.
"What is Connor to you, then?" Alex asked next, unaffected. She hated him in this moment. How easily he picked her apart and cut right to the quick. "Someone you love or someone you leave behind?"
"H-He's—" Her fingers clenched around her knees. She didn't want to speak with the tremor in her voice. "Why are you asking me this? I thought you wanted me to come home."
"I'm asking because I care about you, Taylor." Alex sighed, deep and heavy and full of the sadness he had forced from his tone a few minutes before. "You have enough regrets already, I think. Do you think I want to be responsible for another one?"
A helpless, breathless laugh escaped her, emotion on the verge of hysteria. She was swinging between the urge to cry and laugh, and she was really tired of crying at this point. "How noble of you to make this harder for me."
"Or easier, depending how you take it. I know it's your forte and all, but don't make it harder than it has to be." The twinge of teasing had crept back into his voice now, but she knew he was just trying to hide his feelings at this point. For her sake.
She remembered, suddenly, that moment when she had told him that she'd accepted this job. To be the ambassador for Markus and the deviants. Sitting across from him in that hotel room in Detroit, with him drilling her about her mental health. When she had hugged him, she thought she felt him shudder, but had dismissed it as her imagination.
In this moment, her eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around her knees, his words echoing in her head, she knew she hadn't imagined it. He had held it in, hidden it from her. Protected her, and she had been too selfish to see it at the time.
"I'll try."
"Taylor?" Connor spoke as softly as he could manage, trying not to startle the blonde curled on the stairs. He had found her just a bit ago, in the middle of a conversation with what must have been Alex. He hadn't wanted to eavesdrop, but when he realized what the conversation was about, he somehow couldn't make himself leave.
Taylor startled anyway, despite his efforts. She'd been quiet long enough that he was quite sure that Alex was no longer on the line with her, but she hadn't moved. Now she turned to face him, her face blanched white.
"You weren't in the room." He said, almost conversationally. As explanation for his presence. He didn't add that he had found her quickly by tracking the signal on her phone. Somehow, he thought she would not approve. Instead, he asked, "Did you actually eat, or was that a lie, too?"
"Also a lie," she admitted sheepishly, grimacing. The color started to return to her face, slowly, and she stood, picking up her phone as she did. "There's still plenty of time for that. We can go back now."
Connor nodded, reaching his hand out to her. She didn't hesitate to take it, sliding her fingers through his. He continued to watch her in his peripherals as they left the staircase, heading back down the hallway toward their room.
"You didn't have to sneak away to talk to Alex," he said after a moment, holding the door open so she could enter. She slipped past him but threw a surprised look over her shoulder. "I would have given you privacy."
There was a smile on her face when she finally turned enough for him to see her expression again, settling on the bed. She reached for the room phone to order food as she had promised. Before she lifted the receiver, her blue eyes flickered over him again. "Don't take this the wrong way, Connor, but your concept of privacy still needs work."
His LED pulsed yellow for a few seconds while he considered her words. He thought back to the pieces of the conversation he had managed to overhear in the stairwell, most of it related to her return to Los Angeles that she assured him was inevitable. Yet from what he gleaned in his one-sided access to the conversation, Alex wasn't as sure.
Whatever small bit of understanding he thought he had of Alex now needed to be reevaluated. The other man had been adamant about Taylor's return home, yet now expressed doubts about it. Alex was already an anomaly to him, someone who was closer to Taylor than anyone else, who seemed to hold a secret codex to everything about her.
Yet as hard as he tried, Connor could not get a grasp on their relationship. At times, Taylor acted like she would do anything that Alex told her to do, and the next moment she would deliberately mislead him if not outright lie to him. Perhaps he just was too new to emotions to understand the complex levels that relationships could have. Taylor had said to him, in this very room, that loving someone gave them the power to hurt you.
"Happy now?" Taylor was smiling at him. Connor blinked, realizing she had returned the phone to its cradle, done with her ordering. As he took in the sight of her, he wondered if there was any hope that he could understand any of her other relationships when he still couldn't quite process the complexity of his own emotional response when he looked at her.
"May I ask you a personal question?" He hadn't phrased the question as such in quite a long time, but it evoked the response he was hoping for. She laughed.
"Always." When her laughter faded, she considered him again, her head tilting slightly. "I promised you that much the first day we met, remember?"
He did remember it, with exact detail. How she had asked him not to search the internet for her, looking totally unaffected. Looking back on it, knowing what he knew, he could see the lie in it now.
"I don't think I understand your relationship with Alex." He said it with complete honesty. He felt he owed her that much. Taylor's face went blank. She blinked, and then stared at him for a full minute, as though waiting for him to say more.
When he didn't, she patted the empty space on the bed beside her, inviting him to come closer. Connor crossed the room and eased down onto the bed, the mattress dipping slightly. Taylor crossed her legs in front of her and leaned closer, but she didn't move to touch him.
Still, she was quiet for a while. So long that he was worried he had crossed a line, asked something he should not have asked. Hesitantly, he said, "You don't have to—"
"No," she cut him off, shaking her head. A soft smile touched her face. "It's not...I'm trying to think of how to start." Her eyes lifted to meet his once more, still smiling. He liked being this close, seeing the dark blue of her eyes fading into lighter shades. "If my life was a tapestry and Alex was a thread, you couldn't pull him out without unraveling the whole thing."
He frowned, trying to understand the metaphor. Her smile never faded, but she did reach for his hand then, curling her fingers through his as she spoke. "How about I tell you the story of when we first met? Maybe it will give you some perspective."
"Okay." He agreed because he didn't really know what he was asking to know to begin with, and so he was willing to accept whatever she offered. If it helped him to understand. If it gave him a chance to convince her to stay.
"I was ten. I had been doing Chloe's Corner for years at that point. I did other work occasionally, but I was miserable." Her lips twitched, the smile dropping off of her face. "I had a different agent then. Older. His name was Garrett, but he insisted that I call him Mr. Hemming."
Her gaze had drifted off toward the floor, away from him, remembering. "He never took me seriously. I fought with him all the time, about everything he wanted me to do. I threatened to quit Chloe's Corner. I told my mom if she didn't get me a new agent that I would never act again."
"That doesn't sound like you," he said. The scrunched look on her face relaxed, just a bit, and she smiled again.
"I was acting out." Their eyes met. She looked to be weighing something, then she continued, "The truth is, he reminded me of Anthony. Not that he was ever like that. But I was under too much stress, and I just..." Another hesitation, her eyes dropping again. He squeezed her hand, and it seemed to give her enough push to say, "I just wanted my mom to look at me. To see."
Connor knew his LED was pulsing red. He tried to picture ten-year-old Taylor, rebelling in the hope that her mother would figure out the truth. When his stress levels continued to spike, he had to let the notion go and listen as Taylor continued the story.
"Well, she at least listened to my request for a new agent. She took me with her to interview some new candidates." Taylor smiled again. "Alex was an intern. The gopher who fetched coffee or whatever. But he snuck into the interview room when my mom left to meet me."
"Fan of yours?" He asked, mostly because she had gone quiet again, remembering the moment. The question made her snort, and she shook her head.
"No, that's the thing. I asked him if he wanted an autograph or something, but he told me he'd never watched a single thing I'd been in." Her grin widened. "He didn't even like my mom's music. He just wanted to meet someone famous, because he really wanted to be an agent, but they wouldn't let him around any of the celebrities.
"I was enamored with him. I thought he was the coolest person I had ever met." A chuckle escaped her. "Of course, I was ten, so I don't know how much weight that holds. But when my mom came back into the room, she found the two of us laughing. When I told her later that I wanted Alex to be my agent, she caved surprisingly easily."
They were both quiet for a moment. Taylor pursed her lips before she said, "It was years later when Alex told me that he stuck around that day trying to cheer me up because he saw me walk in, and I was the most miserable little girl he'd ever seen."
"Do you make it a habit to find people who know nothing about you?" His lips were curved into the slightest of smiles. Her eyebrows raised in surprise, and then she laughed.
"Do you know how impossible that is for me?" She paused. "Alex became my agent after that. He was with me through everything that happened after. I doubt he knew what he was in for, when he met me, but we were inseparable. My mom must have seen it too, even though it never felt like she noticed anything at the time.
"When she died, she put it in her will that she wanted Alex to have custody of me. Aunt Karina was our dad's sister, our godmother, so Jakob and Hayley went to live with her, and I had to choose. If Alex even wanted me. If I could live without my siblings."
A sardonic smile came over her lips. "In the end, it wasn't even a question. Alex didn't care that he was only ten years older than me. He went to custody court with my aunt, but the will was clear as day. I left for Los Angeles and never looked back."
She peered up at him, her blue eyes bright. "For a while, it felt like Alex was the only person in my life who cared about me. I mean, I talked to Jake occasionally, but Hayley refused. We'd hidden the truth from her, so she thought I chose being famous over my family. People who had known me before the trial were strange around me after. It took a long time to feel normal again, and without Alex it wouldn't have been possible."
A knock on the door interrupted her then. Connor stood and went to retrieve the room service for her. When he turned back, she was following his movements with her eyes. "You aren't asking about this because you're jealous of Alex now, are you?"
He paused, in the middle of setting out her food on the table, his brow furrowing. Amusement had tinged her features, but she had asked the question seriously. "No, I'm not jealous of Alex."
Taylor stood from the bed, coming to join him at the table just as he was finishing. Her hand touched against his arm. He turned his head toward her, and she was smiling. "Just checking. It's been a thing with you lately."
She was teasing him now. He could read it in the merriment laced through her tone as she sat down to eat. He supposed he deserved the prodding, after his episodes with both Kent and Markus. Taking the seat across from her, he slipped out his coin so he would have something to distract him while she ate.
"I am a little jealous." Connor admitted after a few moments. It was enough to make her pause in her chewing, her eyebrows raising. He only glanced at her before he focused on his coin, rolling it over his knuckles. "Alex is closer to you than anyone else. Would you go back to Los Angeles if it wasn't for him?"
He could see Taylor freeze in her chair, even in his peripherals, her face draining of color like it had in the stairwell. He had wondered if maybe the conversation he walked in on had been going something like this, based on her side. Perhaps he had an ally to his cause in Alex after all.
For a minute or two, Taylor sat there, staring at her plate. Then she slowly resumed eating, not bothering to answer his question. A hush surrounded them while she ate, disturbed only by the sounds of her silverware and the flip of his coin.
Finally, when she was done, she sat her fork down, looking at him across the table. "There was a year, after the trial, when I still lived in Detroit."
He caught the coin, tucking it away, giving her his full attention again. She folded her hands into her lap before she continued. "I had been there, in the same spot, the whole time it was happening, but now everyone knew. I felt like they were looking at me all the time."
She hesitated, working her bottom lip between her teeth. "I couldn't sleep in my bedroom anymore. Sometimes I would just be out somewhere, and I would swear I saw Anthony. I would smell him. He was just over my shoulder, haunting me. I had panic attacks all the time, and it didn't get better until after my mother died. Until I left Detroit.
"When I came back to Detroit to help with the case, I thought things would be different." Taylor looked down, her lips pinching into a frown. He couldn't see her hands anymore, but he imagined her fingers were wringing in her lap. "It had been fourteen years, after all."
"They weren't?" Connor tilted his head as he watched her, studying her hands, scowling at them. He could remember those early days, when he had only noticed her increasing lack of sleep. Only at times she seemed vulnerable, and through the lens of what he knew now, he could see the very intricate bravado.
"I might as well have been a kid again." She lifted her head, her frown easing. "I wasn't brave. I hadn't changed. The very delicate sense of wellbeing that I had means nothing in that city. Down every alley and around every corner that I turn, I see Anthony. I want to be the kind of person who could face what they're afraid of, but I'm not. I'm just a coward."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and she took a shaky breath. He stood and went to her, reaching to touch her. She didn't protest, didn't fight him when he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest.
"I think you're brave." Taylor laughed softly into his shirt, disbelieving. His hands tightened and he buried his nose in her hair. "You risked your career to publicly support deviants when it wasn't a popular opinion. I watched you attend hearings over the past week with no idea what was coming, and you didn't even flinch. As terrified of Anthony Jacobsen as you are, I also saw you walk out onto a dancefloor and dance with him."
"I was a mess the whole time."
"That doesn't make it any less brave." He slid his hands down her back, closing his eyes, breathing in the soft scent of her shampoo. "I think that you sometimes focus on the negative inside your head. You can't see all of the good things that I see when I look at you."
This time she sighed. He felt the gentle puff of air against his chest. She didn't dispute him, though. After a moment, he said, "Anthony will go to jail."
"He went to jail last time," she said hopelessly. Connor supposed she had a point, and nothing he could say would erase her fear that whatever punishment Anthony landed in, he would find a way out of it.
"Do you believe good things can happen?" He said instead. That gave her pause, and she stilled in the circle of his arms.
"I want to." She eased away from him, just enough to look up into his face. "You happened. You were a very good thing."
A smile touched her face, the first real one in a while, but it was her words that made his thirium pump stutter. Her eyes dropped to his mouth and her tongue darted across her lips. "Kiss me?"
"I thought we were having a conversation," he said, smirking, but he was already leaning in.
"I'm done with that for now." Her breath was a soft sigh against his lips when she said it, he was close enough to feel it. Closing the remaining distance, he pressed his mouth over hers, tilting his head for better access. He kissed her with everything he had, every emotion he felt, hoping that somehow, he could make her see how beautiful she was to him.