This was an idea I was kicking around in my head. Daisy and Billy were at their best when they were writing and making music together. What if they were actually working on a second album while on tour? This mostly sticks to the cannon of the TV show and covers moments in between what we see during the show.
As a heads up, chapters/tracks will be uploaded out of order but if you've watched the show it won't matter. The track number does not refer to the chapter number.
Track 5: It Was Always You
Daisy: One night, we were working on a song for the second album. [Laughs] For when we still thought we would make a second album. The song was going to be called "Take It All Back," I think, and we were sitting on the floor in his hotel room. He was strumming on his guitar, and I was scribbling notes into my little red notebook. We couldn't get a line just right so we were messing around with it.
Billy: When we were in a groove it felt like we were invincible. She had done a bump of coke after lunch but it was definitely out of her system by then, but she still looked like she was high on something–that's how much songwriting brought her to life. It was a drug for each of us, and when we did it together, it may as well have been a shot of heroin straight to our veins.
Daisy: After my overdose, I was trying my best to stick to my screwed-up version of "sober." I remember going to my purse to get some more coke earlier that night but stopping myself. I didn't want to get high. I knew I would want to remember this night clearly. I could just feel that it was going to be important.
Billy: She came back from the bathroom and sat down next to me again and said, "I'm not high right now." And I said, "Okay." And she said, "How do you do it?" How do I do what? "Feel. How do you feel all of it, all the time, without dulling it? Without feeling like you're trying to walk through fire." She looked at me like she really believed I had an answer for her.
Daisy: I hated him for being able to mask how he was feeling so often. I felt like I had to fill in all these blanks when it came to him. I was always taking my best guess at what he meant when he said something or how he felt when he gave me a certain look.
Billy Dunne was a fucking enigma, and I may as well have written how I felt across my forehead.
Billy: She said, "You know, Billy this is the only version I know of you. This restrained, tortured version. And I know there's more, I can see that there's more. But you keep it caged. You won't let it free. Not truly."
Daisy: And he just kept staring at me. Like he knew exactly what I meant and had no fucking clue what I meant all at the same time, so I said, "Or maybe there isn't more to it for you. Maybe it is all in my fucking head. Like I've suspected all along. Just a good songwriting exercise for us. Maybe you handle it so well because you're not feeling what I feel."
Billy: I was always so scared that if I gave it any space to grow, what I was feeling would burn us both up… and burn everything down.
Daisy: Even after Nicky left, Billy kept me at arm's length on the tour. Like he was scared if he got too close, he'd close the distance between us.
Billy: With addiction–you can learn how to control it, but you never beat it. It's never gone. You learn to avoid certain triggers, identify when you're feeling weak, or when you need to remove yourself from a situation or get help.
With Daisy, it was the same way. I could feel myself being pulled into her orbit again and again. Daisy was the fucking sun, and I was on a collision course. Spinning out of control and I just wanted the whole thing to stop before I burned up.
But I had this woman, this beautiful, strong but breakable, unstoppable powerhouse of a woman looking at me like I was breaking her heart.
Daisy: Billy was silent for a long time before he moved his hand from his guitar to touch my knee.
Billy: And she brought her eyes to meet mine, and goddamn, I don't think anyone's ever looked at me like that. Not ever.
Daisy: And he dropped the mask for a moment. He gave me a gift, and for just a few breaths, he let me see everything run across his face. Let me hear the heave of his chest as he stared into my eyes and just…took me in.
And then, very quietly, as if he was scared anyone else would hear, he said, "It's not just you."
Billy: And she got this sad, small smile on her face. I knew it wasn't enough. What I could give her would never be enough. She deserved someone who could give her everything, and I could only give her words in a song or moments on stage.
But it broke me too–that I couldn't be what she needed or what she deserved. I needed to let her go, but I couldn't find the strength in myself to do it. I loved her, but not enough to let her go, not yet, not then.
So instead, I pushed some of the hair out of her face and brought her eyes to mine again.
Daisy: I really thought he was maybe going to kiss me. And I said, "Why are you looking at me like that? Why do you always look at me like that?" And he smiled. I said, "Why do you make it so hard to figure out what you're thinking all the time? When you're mad, when you're brooding, when you've got that distant look on your face. What is it you're thinking?"
Billy: I felt like I owed her an answer. I knew one day, this whole thing was going to come off the tracks. That was the only future I could imagine for us, but I was too selfish to stop things before it got to that. I wanted every moment I possibly had with Daisy Jones. I wasn't going to give her up a moment too soon–not a moment before I had to. So I looked at her, and told her what she wanted to know, "It's always you."
Daisy: But the way he said it was like it killed him to admit it. That killed me.
Billy: I don't know what I was expecting from that confession. She just took a deep breath and looked away from me for a moment before turning back and saying, "What if we said, 'I'm fading into your distance' instead of 'We're fading into the distance'?" And it took me a moment to realize she was back to workshopping the song. Like our whole conversation hadn't taken place.
We stayed up working on it a little longer but we never finished the song.
Daisy: That night, I went back to my hotel room and wrote the first full song for our second album that was never recorded. It was called, "It Was Always You."