comment fic round up
Comment fic that has been posted various places for the last few months. Spoilers for all aired episodes of all related shows, I guess. And one for a fic that hasn't been posted yet (the second John Mayer/TSwift fic is what I'm talking about). Enjoy?
dirty old man; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
The first time John meets Taylor she's eighteen years old and he feels like a dirty old man. He's thirty, in a relationship that he knows is never going to last no matter how much he wants it to work, and for weeks after, all he can think about is the girl. (And she is a girl, he knows that. Self-delusion is not one of his many faults.)
Still. He tries to forget. He and Jen break up and get back together. They do it all again. When she asks him if this is about other women, he tells a half truth and says no. It's not about other women. It's about a girl. A blonde haired, blue eyed teenage girl with legs that go on forever that he hasn't been able to stop thinking about for months.
They break up for good. He asks his publicist to get him Taylor's phone number.
***
The next time he sees Taylor she's nineteen and still half in love with that Jonas kid. They're writing in his studio, and she's telling him that she doesn't know how to write something she doesn't feel. She asks him if having a broken heart is worth all of this.
He says yes.
What he doesn't say is that he envies her the kind of pain she's in now. She wouldn't understand -- he's not sure he completely understands. But he knows that having your heart broken at thirty is so much better and worse than it was at eighteen.
She is so very young. She smiles at him, pushes her hair back behind her ear. He'll realize years later that was the moment he tumbled headlong into love with her.
But for now, he plays a chord on his guitar and changes the subject. She's only nineteen and he's still a dirty old man.
***
They become friends. If it's not the most unlikely friendship of his life, it's got to be in the top five. As far as he can tell, they have absolutely nothing in common except for what they do for a living. But it works in spite of that, maybe because of it.
Taylor bakes him cookies and he teaches her how to drink whiskey neat. She tells him he needs to get out more, he holds her hand when she gets her heart broken again. He falls a little bit more in love with her every day.
***
The day after her twenty-first birthday, he decides he's waited long enough. This thing -- the one that he's done everything he could think of to get rid of -- isn't going anywhere. The world will probably still judge him a dirty old man, but he's past caring.
It's late when he calls, but she picks up the phone on the second ring, just like she always does. "John?" she asks, in the voice he's grown to know so well in the last few years. "What's up?"
He freezes. He's thirty-three, he's dated more women than he can even remember, and suddenly he feels like a tongue-tied kid trying to ask out his first girl.
"John?" she asks again, and this time he forces the words out of his mouth. It's just four words, but he knows that they're going to change his life.
"Have dinner with me."
The ten seconds she takes to answer are the longest of his life. They stay that way for three hundred sixty-four more days until he's waiting for an answer to the marriage proposal that he didn't expect to ever make.
She says yes both times. People do call him a dirty old man. He doesn't care.
last name; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
There are a lot of different types of little girls. Some little girls play school or doctor. Some play with toy soldiers or with Barbies. Some spend all their time on a softball diamond or a soccer field, and some with ballet shoes or ice skates. And then there are the little girls that play wedding.
Taylor was a little girl who played wedding.
She'd spent a lot of time as a little girl dreaming about what her wedding day would be like. As she grew up, those dreams changed, evolved, just like her picture of who the groom would be changed. (She burned all the pictures of her wedding to her cat when she was four. Some things are best forgotten.) She grew up. She learned what mattered. She fell in and out of love, got her heart broken, and had it heal. And still, she dreamed of her wedding day.
In all her dreams, she never would have guessed that when it finally happened she would be standing in a Las Vegas wedding chapel with an Elvis impersonator standing in front of her reciting a ceremony that she knew practically by heart. The things that she would do for love would never stop surprising her.
John squeezed her hand. She looked up at him, saw him smiling down at her expectantly, Elvis looking at her the same way. "Oh," she said, a blush creeping across her cheeks. She looked John in the eyes, trying to look at him with all the love she felt for him, and slipped the ring onto his finger. "I do."
Elvis said more words, Taylor looked at John. He slid a matching band onto her finger, rubbing his thumb across her skin. "I do," he said, and Taylor felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest with happiness. This was better than any dream. Better than all the dreams.
Before she knew what was happening, John was pulling her into his arms, kissing her as if it was the most important thing he'd ever do. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him back the same way.
The little girl who played wedding would never have believed that this was how happily ever after began. The woman who was kissing her husband knew it was. Dreams do come true.
friend to the melody; one tree hill, nathan/haley
When Haley and her sisters were little girls, the whole family would go on camping trips. At night, they'd gather around a campfire and roast marshmallows and sing. They sang all kinds of music: old folk songs her parents loved, the top forty songs that Taylor knew by heart, and everything in between. Peter, Paul and Mary would follow the Spice Girls, and Nirvana might come after that. There was never any rhyme or reason to their sing-alongs, they simply went where the music led them.
No matter the music, one thing always remained the same; Haley sang the harmonies. Taylor didn't have the patience to learn anything other than the melody, and besides Taylor had always thought she deserved to be the center of attention. Quinn would have learned, but her voice wasn't strong enough. Her mom joined her on the harmonies sometimes, and those were the times that Haley liked best, because it was something that was just theirs, not something she had to share with her sisters.
But mostly the harmonies were Haley's. She learned to love them, the ways that they supported and changed the melody, the way they made it better. Anyone could sing the melody, she told herself. She could sing the harmonies because she was special. Haley liked feeling special.
Haley grew up. The family stopped going on camping trips. (Taylor refused to be separated from her hair dryer.) Haley kept singing harmony. She tried not to wonder when it would be her turn for the melody.
When she met and fell in love with Nathan, she didn't realize their life together would be defined by melody and harmony. The melody was Nathan's, the dramatic ups and downs of his life and dreams, the cheers of the crowd. And as in everything else, the harmony was hers. Her life wove together and around his, holding him up and pulling him back down to earth. Pulling him back down to her, to them.
Haley learned that living a harmony was more difficult than singing one.
When she met Chris, she met the first person that who didn't need her to sing the harmony; he could do it for himself. When he offered her the chance to live her dreams, she had to take it. She had to see if she was meant to sing the melodies.
When she came back, it wasn't because she wasn't good enough. She was. And it wasn't because she missed being the one to always sing the harmonies. It was because she finally understood how melody and harmony were supposed to work together, how to make them fit.
She had to leave so that she could understand. She came back so she could live it.
sugar, we're going down; legally blonde, elle/emmett
Elle knows what everyone at Harvard thinks of her. She thinks it of herself sometimes, especially at three o'clock in the morning when she feels certain that she's going to fail. It's at three o'clock that she thinks she was always meant to fail, that she was destined to become what everyone (herself included) always thought she'd be; a dumb, blonde trophy wife.
And maybe she would have been content with that once. She knows she would have been content with that once.
But she wants more now. She wants Callahan's internship and to wipe the smug smiles off Warner and Vivienne's faces and to earn one of Emmett's, because they're all too rare and he has a lovely smile.
(She tries not to let herself think about his smile.)
She wants more. She's going to have more. Because if there's one thing that Elle Woods knows about herself it's that she doesn't go down without a fight. Not when it came to being elected president of Delta Nu, not when she chased Warner from California to Harvard, and she's certainly not going to start now.
Elle knows what everyone at Harvard thinks of her. She can't wait to prove them wrong.
that's how you know; wimbledon, lizzie/peter
Cameras have never bothered Lizzie. They bother her father, he thinks they distract her and throw off her game, and she lets him think that she feels the same. But she's always seen them as part and parcel of playing tennis, and besides, Lizzie's enough her mother's daughter to like playing for them.
But now, after Wimbledon, after Peter (she has to remind herself that he's the important part, not the tournament), the cameras are different. She's different.
Now Lizzie wants to keep this new part of her life hers, theirs. She doesn't want cameras shoved in her face every time she leaves the hotel with Peter's hand clasped tightly in hers. She just wants to be left alone to play tennis and to live her life.
She worries that Peter won't be able to handle the cameras, that he'll get sick of not having any privacy and leave. When she tells him this, he laughs and cups her face and kisses her. He says that she's worth it, that she's worth everything, and he can put up with the nuisance of the cameras if it means he gets to have her. He makes her say that she believes him and she does, mostly. But the fear remains, a tiny, nagging little thing in the corner of her brain that never completely goes away.
Cameras have never bothered Lizzie. They do now.
She thinks this must be how she knows that what she has is real.
graduation day; greek, cappie/casey
Graduation is in May. Casey sits between Evan and Ashleigh and tries to pay attention to the ceremony. It’s no use; all she can think about is who isn’t there.
Somehow, when she’d pictured this day back in freshman year, she’d thought that she and Ashleigh, Evan and Cappie, they’d all be doing this together, moving on, moving forward. But only three quarters of them are here, and the day feels incomplete.
She crosses the stage, gets her diploma, tosses her cap in the air with the rest of her classmates. She knows she won’t remember doing any of it.
The ZBZs have a reception after the ceremony for members and their parents. Her parents are there, hugging her and telling her that they’re proud of her, and though they’re the words that Casey’s always wanted to hear, she doesn’t really hear them. Rusty gives her a hug, whispers in her ear. “Outside,” is all he says, but it’s enough, and Casey bolts for the door.
Cappie is standing there on the lawn, hands tucked into his pockets. He looks nervous. “Hey, Case,” he says, and it’s like the last two months haven’t happened. She’s running towards him, throwing herself into his arms before she can even stop to think that she’s not supposed to do that anymore. That she’s not supposed to love him like this anymore.
He catches her, holds her tight. She buries her head in his chest, breathing in the scent of him. He smells like the Kappa Tau house. She never thought she’d miss that smell; she did. He kisses the top of her head and lets her go.
She makes herself step back. “What are you doing here, Cap?” she asks.
He reaches out to touch her cheek. “I wanted to wish you a happy graduation.”
She fights the impulse to turn her cheek into his hand. “Is that all?”
He shrugs, helplessly.
She knows the feeling. They have had this fight too many times for her to count. She nods, once. “Okay,” she says. “I’m going to go back in, then. I have to congratulate my sisters.” She turns around and heads for the door. She can’t look at him as she says, “Goodbye, Cap.”
His hand catches her arm. “Casey, wait.”
She doesn’t turn around. “What is it?”
“I still love you.”
She closes her eyes, counts to five. “I love you, too.” She wrenches her arm free and runs into the house.
Love isn’t enough. She knows that now. She wishes she didn’t.
and it's surely to their credit; glee, rachel/jesse, rachel/finn
Two weeks after Vocal Adrenaline beat New Directions at Regionals and four weeks after Jesse broke her heart by breaking an egg over her head, the flowers arrive at Rachel’s house.
Her daddy carries them up to her room and sets them on her dresser. They’re roses, bright and brilliantly red. Daddy says something about Finn being smarter than he looks, but Rachel doesn’t hear him. She knows without reading the card that the flowers aren’t from Finn.
She reaches out a hesitant hand to touch one of the petals and it’s soft against her skin. She tries not to remember the way Jesse’s skin felt under her fingertips. She can’t not remember.
Almost against her will, she pulls the card out from among the flowers. Her nail slides under the seal of the envelope and she draws out the plain white card, reads the words scrawled in the messy handwriting that she knows so well.
I’m sorry, it says. We’re not over. The card isn’t signed.
Her heart clenches, breaks all over again. She hopes that it’s true. She hopes she never sees him again. She’s already forgiven him.
When Finn comes over that night, the flowers are still there, on her dresser. The card is tucked away, sent to the box where she’s banished everything else that reminds her of Jesse. She knows she’ll keep it forever.
Finn asks who sent the flowers. Rachel blushes and looks away. She says they’re from her father.
She doesn’t feel guilty for the lie.
man in the moon; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
The theme for the nursery is John’s idea. When Taylor tells Miley that, just a month before the baby is due, Miley looks at her like she’s crazy.
Taylor thinks she should be offended on her husband’s behalf, but then she hadn’t thought he was serious when he first suggested it. So she just rests a hand on the swell of her stomach and suggests they get back to finalizing the guest list for the shower that Miley’s planning. Miley accepts the change of subject gracefully, but Taylor can still see the doubt and surprise lurking in her eyes.
It’s late at night when she mentions it to John. They’re in bed and he’s curled all around her, rubbing gentle circles on her stomach, trying to soothe their daughter to sleep. “Miley didn’t believe me about the nursery,” she says as she shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position. It doesn’t exist.
John’s hand pauses. “You told her?” he asks and there’s a hint of something in his voice that Taylor doesn’t recognize.
She tries to crane her neck around to look at him. “Yes, of course.” She covers his hand with her own, links their fingers together. He takes the hint and goes back to rubbing. “Shouldn’t I have?”
“N-no.”
“Are you embarrassed?” she asks incredulously. “You are, aren’t you? Why? It was so sweet? Is so sweet,” she corrects herself. “Why are you embarrassed?”
“I’m not embarrassed,” he says. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. I just - I just, you’re the only one that sees me that way.”
She softens, smiles. “You are that way, you know.”
“To you.”
“To us,” she corrects, stilling his hand over their daughter. “And she’s not going to sleep until you read to her, I don’t think.”
He heaves a sigh. “If she insists.”
“She does.”
She feels him reaching back to the nightstand, and when his arms go back around her, there’s a book in his hand. She snuggles back into him. He opens the book.
“In the great green room,” he reads. “There was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of a -“
Goodnight moon.
dirty old man; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
The first time John meets Taylor she's eighteen years old and he feels like a dirty old man. He's thirty, in a relationship that he knows is never going to last no matter how much he wants it to work, and for weeks after, all he can think about is the girl. (And she is a girl, he knows that. Self-delusion is not one of his many faults.)
Still. He tries to forget. He and Jen break up and get back together. They do it all again. When she asks him if this is about other women, he tells a half truth and says no. It's not about other women. It's about a girl. A blonde haired, blue eyed teenage girl with legs that go on forever that he hasn't been able to stop thinking about for months.
They break up for good. He asks his publicist to get him Taylor's phone number.
***
The next time he sees Taylor she's nineteen and still half in love with that Jonas kid. They're writing in his studio, and she's telling him that she doesn't know how to write something she doesn't feel. She asks him if having a broken heart is worth all of this.
He says yes.
What he doesn't say is that he envies her the kind of pain she's in now. She wouldn't understand -- he's not sure he completely understands. But he knows that having your heart broken at thirty is so much better and worse than it was at eighteen.
She is so very young. She smiles at him, pushes her hair back behind her ear. He'll realize years later that was the moment he tumbled headlong into love with her.
But for now, he plays a chord on his guitar and changes the subject. She's only nineteen and he's still a dirty old man.
***
They become friends. If it's not the most unlikely friendship of his life, it's got to be in the top five. As far as he can tell, they have absolutely nothing in common except for what they do for a living. But it works in spite of that, maybe because of it.
Taylor bakes him cookies and he teaches her how to drink whiskey neat. She tells him he needs to get out more, he holds her hand when she gets her heart broken again. He falls a little bit more in love with her every day.
***
The day after her twenty-first birthday, he decides he's waited long enough. This thing -- the one that he's done everything he could think of to get rid of -- isn't going anywhere. The world will probably still judge him a dirty old man, but he's past caring.
It's late when he calls, but she picks up the phone on the second ring, just like she always does. "John?" she asks, in the voice he's grown to know so well in the last few years. "What's up?"
He freezes. He's thirty-three, he's dated more women than he can even remember, and suddenly he feels like a tongue-tied kid trying to ask out his first girl.
"John?" she asks again, and this time he forces the words out of his mouth. It's just four words, but he knows that they're going to change his life.
"Have dinner with me."
The ten seconds she takes to answer are the longest of his life. They stay that way for three hundred sixty-four more days until he's waiting for an answer to the marriage proposal that he didn't expect to ever make.
She says yes both times. People do call him a dirty old man. He doesn't care.
last name; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
There are a lot of different types of little girls. Some little girls play school or doctor. Some play with toy soldiers or with Barbies. Some spend all their time on a softball diamond or a soccer field, and some with ballet shoes or ice skates. And then there are the little girls that play wedding.
Taylor was a little girl who played wedding.
She'd spent a lot of time as a little girl dreaming about what her wedding day would be like. As she grew up, those dreams changed, evolved, just like her picture of who the groom would be changed. (She burned all the pictures of her wedding to her cat when she was four. Some things are best forgotten.) She grew up. She learned what mattered. She fell in and out of love, got her heart broken, and had it heal. And still, she dreamed of her wedding day.
In all her dreams, she never would have guessed that when it finally happened she would be standing in a Las Vegas wedding chapel with an Elvis impersonator standing in front of her reciting a ceremony that she knew practically by heart. The things that she would do for love would never stop surprising her.
John squeezed her hand. She looked up at him, saw him smiling down at her expectantly, Elvis looking at her the same way. "Oh," she said, a blush creeping across her cheeks. She looked John in the eyes, trying to look at him with all the love she felt for him, and slipped the ring onto his finger. "I do."
Elvis said more words, Taylor looked at John. He slid a matching band onto her finger, rubbing his thumb across her skin. "I do," he said, and Taylor felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest with happiness. This was better than any dream. Better than all the dreams.
Before she knew what was happening, John was pulling her into his arms, kissing her as if it was the most important thing he'd ever do. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him back the same way.
The little girl who played wedding would never have believed that this was how happily ever after began. The woman who was kissing her husband knew it was. Dreams do come true.
friend to the melody; one tree hill, nathan/haley
When Haley and her sisters were little girls, the whole family would go on camping trips. At night, they'd gather around a campfire and roast marshmallows and sing. They sang all kinds of music: old folk songs her parents loved, the top forty songs that Taylor knew by heart, and everything in between. Peter, Paul and Mary would follow the Spice Girls, and Nirvana might come after that. There was never any rhyme or reason to their sing-alongs, they simply went where the music led them.
No matter the music, one thing always remained the same; Haley sang the harmonies. Taylor didn't have the patience to learn anything other than the melody, and besides Taylor had always thought she deserved to be the center of attention. Quinn would have learned, but her voice wasn't strong enough. Her mom joined her on the harmonies sometimes, and those were the times that Haley liked best, because it was something that was just theirs, not something she had to share with her sisters.
But mostly the harmonies were Haley's. She learned to love them, the ways that they supported and changed the melody, the way they made it better. Anyone could sing the melody, she told herself. She could sing the harmonies because she was special. Haley liked feeling special.
Haley grew up. The family stopped going on camping trips. (Taylor refused to be separated from her hair dryer.) Haley kept singing harmony. She tried not to wonder when it would be her turn for the melody.
When she met and fell in love with Nathan, she didn't realize their life together would be defined by melody and harmony. The melody was Nathan's, the dramatic ups and downs of his life and dreams, the cheers of the crowd. And as in everything else, the harmony was hers. Her life wove together and around his, holding him up and pulling him back down to earth. Pulling him back down to her, to them.
Haley learned that living a harmony was more difficult than singing one.
When she met Chris, she met the first person that who didn't need her to sing the harmony; he could do it for himself. When he offered her the chance to live her dreams, she had to take it. She had to see if she was meant to sing the melodies.
When she came back, it wasn't because she wasn't good enough. She was. And it wasn't because she missed being the one to always sing the harmonies. It was because she finally understood how melody and harmony were supposed to work together, how to make them fit.
She had to leave so that she could understand. She came back so she could live it.
sugar, we're going down; legally blonde, elle/emmett
Elle knows what everyone at Harvard thinks of her. She thinks it of herself sometimes, especially at three o'clock in the morning when she feels certain that she's going to fail. It's at three o'clock that she thinks she was always meant to fail, that she was destined to become what everyone (herself included) always thought she'd be; a dumb, blonde trophy wife.
And maybe she would have been content with that once. She knows she would have been content with that once.
But she wants more now. She wants Callahan's internship and to wipe the smug smiles off Warner and Vivienne's faces and to earn one of Emmett's, because they're all too rare and he has a lovely smile.
(She tries not to let herself think about his smile.)
She wants more. She's going to have more. Because if there's one thing that Elle Woods knows about herself it's that she doesn't go down without a fight. Not when it came to being elected president of Delta Nu, not when she chased Warner from California to Harvard, and she's certainly not going to start now.
Elle knows what everyone at Harvard thinks of her. She can't wait to prove them wrong.
that's how you know; wimbledon, lizzie/peter
Cameras have never bothered Lizzie. They bother her father, he thinks they distract her and throw off her game, and she lets him think that she feels the same. But she's always seen them as part and parcel of playing tennis, and besides, Lizzie's enough her mother's daughter to like playing for them.
But now, after Wimbledon, after Peter (she has to remind herself that he's the important part, not the tournament), the cameras are different. She's different.
Now Lizzie wants to keep this new part of her life hers, theirs. She doesn't want cameras shoved in her face every time she leaves the hotel with Peter's hand clasped tightly in hers. She just wants to be left alone to play tennis and to live her life.
She worries that Peter won't be able to handle the cameras, that he'll get sick of not having any privacy and leave. When she tells him this, he laughs and cups her face and kisses her. He says that she's worth it, that she's worth everything, and he can put up with the nuisance of the cameras if it means he gets to have her. He makes her say that she believes him and she does, mostly. But the fear remains, a tiny, nagging little thing in the corner of her brain that never completely goes away.
Cameras have never bothered Lizzie. They do now.
She thinks this must be how she knows that what she has is real.
graduation day; greek, cappie/casey
Graduation is in May. Casey sits between Evan and Ashleigh and tries to pay attention to the ceremony. It’s no use; all she can think about is who isn’t there.
Somehow, when she’d pictured this day back in freshman year, she’d thought that she and Ashleigh, Evan and Cappie, they’d all be doing this together, moving on, moving forward. But only three quarters of them are here, and the day feels incomplete.
She crosses the stage, gets her diploma, tosses her cap in the air with the rest of her classmates. She knows she won’t remember doing any of it.
The ZBZs have a reception after the ceremony for members and their parents. Her parents are there, hugging her and telling her that they’re proud of her, and though they’re the words that Casey’s always wanted to hear, she doesn’t really hear them. Rusty gives her a hug, whispers in her ear. “Outside,” is all he says, but it’s enough, and Casey bolts for the door.
Cappie is standing there on the lawn, hands tucked into his pockets. He looks nervous. “Hey, Case,” he says, and it’s like the last two months haven’t happened. She’s running towards him, throwing herself into his arms before she can even stop to think that she’s not supposed to do that anymore. That she’s not supposed to love him like this anymore.
He catches her, holds her tight. She buries her head in his chest, breathing in the scent of him. He smells like the Kappa Tau house. She never thought she’d miss that smell; she did. He kisses the top of her head and lets her go.
She makes herself step back. “What are you doing here, Cap?” she asks.
He reaches out to touch her cheek. “I wanted to wish you a happy graduation.”
She fights the impulse to turn her cheek into his hand. “Is that all?”
He shrugs, helplessly.
She knows the feeling. They have had this fight too many times for her to count. She nods, once. “Okay,” she says. “I’m going to go back in, then. I have to congratulate my sisters.” She turns around and heads for the door. She can’t look at him as she says, “Goodbye, Cap.”
His hand catches her arm. “Casey, wait.”
She doesn’t turn around. “What is it?”
“I still love you.”
She closes her eyes, counts to five. “I love you, too.” She wrenches her arm free and runs into the house.
Love isn’t enough. She knows that now. She wishes she didn’t.
and it's surely to their credit; glee, rachel/jesse, rachel/finn
Two weeks after Vocal Adrenaline beat New Directions at Regionals and four weeks after Jesse broke her heart by breaking an egg over her head, the flowers arrive at Rachel’s house.
Her daddy carries them up to her room and sets them on her dresser. They’re roses, bright and brilliantly red. Daddy says something about Finn being smarter than he looks, but Rachel doesn’t hear him. She knows without reading the card that the flowers aren’t from Finn.
She reaches out a hesitant hand to touch one of the petals and it’s soft against her skin. She tries not to remember the way Jesse’s skin felt under her fingertips. She can’t not remember.
Almost against her will, she pulls the card out from among the flowers. Her nail slides under the seal of the envelope and she draws out the plain white card, reads the words scrawled in the messy handwriting that she knows so well.
I’m sorry, it says. We’re not over. The card isn’t signed.
Her heart clenches, breaks all over again. She hopes that it’s true. She hopes she never sees him again. She’s already forgiven him.
When Finn comes over that night, the flowers are still there, on her dresser. The card is tucked away, sent to the box where she’s banished everything else that reminds her of Jesse. She knows she’ll keep it forever.
Finn asks who sent the flowers. Rachel blushes and looks away. She says they’re from her father.
She doesn’t feel guilty for the lie.
man in the moon; rpf, john mayer/taylor swift
The theme for the nursery is John’s idea. When Taylor tells Miley that, just a month before the baby is due, Miley looks at her like she’s crazy.
Taylor thinks she should be offended on her husband’s behalf, but then she hadn’t thought he was serious when he first suggested it. So she just rests a hand on the swell of her stomach and suggests they get back to finalizing the guest list for the shower that Miley’s planning. Miley accepts the change of subject gracefully, but Taylor can still see the doubt and surprise lurking in her eyes.
It’s late at night when she mentions it to John. They’re in bed and he’s curled all around her, rubbing gentle circles on her stomach, trying to soothe their daughter to sleep. “Miley didn’t believe me about the nursery,” she says as she shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position. It doesn’t exist.
John’s hand pauses. “You told her?” he asks and there’s a hint of something in his voice that Taylor doesn’t recognize.
She tries to crane her neck around to look at him. “Yes, of course.” She covers his hand with her own, links their fingers together. He takes the hint and goes back to rubbing. “Shouldn’t I have?”
“N-no.”
“Are you embarrassed?” she asks incredulously. “You are, aren’t you? Why? It was so sweet? Is so sweet,” she corrects herself. “Why are you embarrassed?”
“I’m not embarrassed,” he says. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. I just - I just, you’re the only one that sees me that way.”
She softens, smiles. “You are that way, you know.”
“To you.”
“To us,” she corrects, stilling his hand over their daughter. “And she’s not going to sleep until you read to her, I don’t think.”
He heaves a sigh. “If she insists.”
“She does.”
She feels him reaching back to the nightstand, and when his arms go back around her, there’s a book in his hand. She snuggles back into him. He opens the book.
“In the great green room,” he reads. “There was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of a -“
Goodnight moon.