John meets Miss Taylor when his hair is short, his collar is popped and he is on top of the fucking world. She literally runs up to him and drags ont his arm and is like any other eighteen-year-old kid who wants an autograph and a picture. She’s so hilariously cute it’s almost unbelievable. In the end, someone does get a picture (always, of course), and when he comes across it, he gets ahold of her number to text it to her.
And so that begins.
She texts him, all the time, little heartbreaking stories that he knows all too well, that he remembers from past lives, treating him like her own diary, and he engages her, all too easily. She shows up at a gig he has in Atlanta, and ends up hitching a ride back to her hotel on his bus. (They’re parked outside the St. Regis for three hours, him teaching her to play slide guitar and her shyly strumming out a song she calls Sparks Fly.) He actually joins her onstage in LA after all this nonsense.
And then he kisses her.
He pulls back immediately, but she’s back on him in a heartbeat, slim arms flung around his neck and curly hair surrounding him. They make out for forty-five minutes, and then she just stops and literally runs away.
Not the first time that’s happened.
He sends her the final cut of the song they managed to record in one cold, rainy New York afternoon (where she smiled and laughed the entire time, and he didn’t even get aggravated with that), and that opens back the marathon of texts, which are so completely less about the music at this point, but a play-by-play of each of their days. And the sick thing is, he actually does want to know everything. She’s coming back to New York in December. He’s singing along to their song for two weeks before the show.
When he kisses her this time, in her sparkly, sparkly dress, he pulls her in, slows her down, takes over. It’s been too long coming. He knows it’s going to happen, and doesn’t know what’s up for after that, but it has to happen now, or he’s going to explode. Maybe it would all be all right.
The story goes the way it usually does after that.
*
John meets his Katy-girl when he looks and feels like a man who’s been sent back in time and hasn’t weathered the journey well. Whenever he’d seen her before, she always had, like, blue or purple hair and a Dr. Seuss dress or something. With inky black hair and a hot little black cocktail dress (an old, personal favorite), she’s something he would have died over in his early New York days. But her pretty, big Betty Boop eyes are tired. And that kind of feels like home to him, these days.
They go out to dinner, and talk on the phone the way people did before the age of social media. She’s lovely, and there’s something her recognizes of himself in her. Not like a kindred spirit, not like that, but an understanding of the world that they live in. And he thinks something else, about fate and choice, but if he’s getting too philosophical about it, he’s going in the wrong direction.
It’s always been a problem for him, that he always thinks of the Last One as he gets closer and more intimate with the Current One. Always been a problem, and it’s both a comfort and a thorn in knowing that certain things don’t change. Now, that One, it’s impossible to miss her these days, and he gets that feeling again, he sees the world she’s living in, and it’s a familiar place and on some level, his heart breaks for her all over again.
He wonders if Katy can see when he’s lost in those other thoughts, but it’s not really like that with her. Besides- she’s had a life too, and she gets it.
i love this so much and the comparison between what he was like when he met Taylor vs Katy is so so incredible and I ESPECIALLY loved the last line because I love thinking about Katy/Russell and how that affects her with John and ugh all these pretty famous people are going to kill me one day
John meets Miss Taylor when his hair is short, his collar is popped and he is on top of the fucking world. She literally runs up to him and drags ont his arm and is like any other eighteen-year-old kid who wants an autograph and a picture. She’s so hilariously cute it’s almost unbelievable. In the end, someone does get a picture (always, of course), and when he comes across it, he gets ahold of her number to text it to her.
And so that begins.
She texts him, all the time, little heartbreaking stories that he knows all too well, that he remembers from past lives, treating him like her own diary, and he engages her, all too easily. She shows up at a gig he has in Atlanta, and ends up hitching a ride back to her hotel on his bus. (They’re parked outside the St. Regis for three hours, him teaching her to play slide guitar and her shyly strumming out a song she calls Sparks Fly.) He actually joins her onstage in LA after all this nonsense.
And then he kisses her.
He pulls back immediately, but she’s back on him in a heartbeat, slim arms flung around his neck and curly hair surrounding him. They make out for forty-five minutes, and then she just stops and literally runs away.
Not the first time that’s happened.
He sends her the final cut of the song they managed to record in one cold, rainy New York afternoon (where she smiled and laughed the entire time, and he didn’t even get aggravated with that), and that opens back the marathon of texts, which are so completely less about the music at this point, but a play-by-play of each of their days. And the sick thing is, he actually does want to know everything. She’s coming back to New York in December. He’s singing along to their song for two weeks before the show.
When he kisses her this time, in her sparkly, sparkly dress, he pulls her in, slows her down, takes over. It’s been too long coming. He knows it’s going to happen, and doesn’t know what’s up for after that, but it has to happen now, or he’s going to explode. Maybe it would all be all right.
The story goes the way it usually does after that.
*
John meets his Katy-girl when he looks and feels like a man who’s been sent back in time and hasn’t weathered the journey well. Whenever he’d seen her before, she always had, like, blue or purple hair and a Dr. Seuss dress or something. With inky black hair and a hot little black cocktail dress (an old, personal favorite), she’s something he would have died over in his early New York days. But her pretty, big Betty Boop eyes are tired. And that kind of feels like home to him, these days.
They go out to dinner, and talk on the phone the way people did before the age of social media. She’s lovely, and there’s something her recognizes of himself in her. Not like a kindred spirit, not like that, but an understanding of the world that they live in. And he thinks something else, about fate and choice, but if he’s getting too philosophical about it, he’s going in the wrong direction.
It’s always been a problem for him, that he always thinks of the Last One as he gets closer and more intimate with the Current One. Always been a problem, and it’s both a comfort and a thorn in knowing that certain things don’t change. Now, that One, it’s impossible to miss her these days, and he gets that feeling again, he sees the world she’s living in, and it’s a familiar place and on some level, his heart breaks for her all over again.
He wonders if Katy can see when he’s lost in those other thoughts, but it’s not really like that with her. Besides- she’s had a life too, and she gets it.
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And well...you know how I feel about John and Taylor.
Thanks for the prompt, missy!
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