[FIC] And the melody rippled (like a hummingbird's wings)
Title: And the melody rippled (like a hummingbird’s wings)
Author: shipmateee
Pairing: Joe/Miley!friendship, Nick/Miley, slight Joe/Nick
Rating: G
Word Count: 2500
Warnings: angst
Summary: Joe can suddenly see why tweens the world over have fallen in love with this scrawny, southern fourteen-year-old girl.
Disclaimer: Probably didn't happen, guys. Let's not jump to conclusions.
Author's Notes: Dedicated to ditchthistown and her gorgeous bff!Joe/Miley icon. You are amazing, btw. I promised this to her forever ago, and it was meant to be all silly friendship fluff and it turned into this weird, snapshot-like angsty mess. I don't even know, okay.
Nick is fourteen, bright and young and full of passion, and he’s somehow bagged Hannah Montana.
Joe doesn’t really get the big deal about her - skinny little thing with too-bright eyes and smile - but Nick told him they’d met at some charity thing and “Miley’s really cool, Joe, I think you’ll like her.” Taking note of the heavy something coiling low in his stomach, Joe doesn’t really think so.
Nick looks so ecstatic over the next few days, though, so entirely full. Joe can almost see the pleasure seeping out all over the place, watches as Nick makes use of it in the only way he knows how, strumming light melodies on his guitar until his hands cramp up and his voice is raw. Joe can only watch from the side, itching to be involved with whatever makes Nick happy like so many other times.
Instead, Joe plasters on a clean smile and tries to shrug it off. Slings an arm around Nick’s neck, ruffling his curls in the process, and calls Nick a ‘playa’ for a fortnight. It’s just another infatuation. He’ll get over it in a week or so.
*
Two months into their relationship and it dawns on Joe that, yeah, maybe it isn’t an infatuation anymore. He’s seen them around the house together, coming home tired and giggly from riding their bikes till dusk, bright flush on Nick’s cheeks whenever he talks about her to anyone who’ll listen. Despite Miley being around so much, Joe’s never actually spoken to her, had a real conversation, only occasionally sounding off a “Hey” whenever he’s walked past, which she’d always politely returned. So, it comes as a surprise when Nick bursts into his room one day, determined expression fixed on his still boyish face.
“I want you to meet Miley,” Nick orders, as though he’s telling him they need to practice or something. Nick swipes a hand through his hair, tugging on a curl absently.
“Nicky, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve all met her. You bring her round here often enough,” says Joe, chucking his book down and crossing his legs over the comforter.
Nick huffs. “No, I mean, I want you to meet her. Properly. With conversation that lasts more than one word.”
Nick wanders over to Joe’s bed, flopping down beside him. Joe looks him over, Nick’s shirt having hitched up to show the harsh angles of his hipbones, and Joe lifts a hand to brush back a few curls that have flopped into Nick’s eyes, warm heat sloshing through his nerves, which he tries to swallow down. In brushing back the curls he can see Nick’s eyes clearly, the plead pouring out. Joe sighs.
“All right.”
*
It’s a few weeks later, by which time Joe had forgotten about he and Nick’s little exchange until he walks into the sitting room to find Miley seated alone on one of the couches. She’s staring out the window, and he takes her in for the first time, all creamy skin and growing limbs, focusing on the soft-looking dark hair falling down her back in waves. Joe still doesn’t know what Nick sees in her.
“Hey,” he calls, and Miley jumps, startled, before tucking a dark lock of hair behind one ear. “Where’s Nick?”
“He went upstairs to get his guitar. Said to wait here.” Miley smiles at him openly across the room and pats the seat next to her, inviting him to sit. Joe doesn’t really want to and he shuffles his feet for a few seconds before going to take the seat furthest from her. He’d been raised to be polite. There are a few moments of silence and he smiles at her awkwardly, tapping his fingers in an uneven rhythm against the arm of the couch. She blinks, once, twice, lashes fluttering against her cheeks.
"Um, I like your hair," and Joe wants to kick himself because all he’d wanted to do was alleviate the suffocating pressure in the room, and, yeah, that's totally a regular thing to say to your little brother's girlfriend. Joe’s mildly surprised when Miley beams at him, like he’d just told her she could have anything in the world.
"I like your hair, too!" Miley immediately responds, all sincerity and toothy smile, like she'd wanted to bring it up for a while. Leaning forward abruptly, elbows on knees and head in her hands, Miley starts chattering on like they do this all the time. "It looks so soft, what product do you use? I've been using this great one for a while, that's like, all natural ingredients, but I can never get it to look that soft, no matter how long I take on it."
The tight feeling in the room washes out like sand as she continues on and he can’t help but smile at her bubbly personality and wild hand gestures as she gets into a story about how she’d once used this henna shampoo and it’d turned her hair red for weeks.
Joe can suddenly see why tweens the world over have fallen in love with this scrawny, southern fourteen-year-old girl.
*
The thing about Miley, Joe soon realizes, is that she’s like this endless bundle of untapped energy. She has to shuffle her foot, or tap her fingers to an unknown rhythm constantly when sitting, and when she’s up and moving she likes to break out into sporadic dance steps, twirling circles around him again and again.
Once she’d clasped his hands in hers and tugged him into it, and they’d pseudo-waltz around the garden. Nick had laughed, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, before Joe tripped, fell on his ass and Miley’s infectious laughter had sounded out everything else.
As Joe had stared up at her, he came to the conclusion that he’d fallen a little bit in love with her.
He was more okay with this than he’d like to admit.
*
It soon becomes habit for Miley to sit in his room and toy with his hair products and chat about nothing and everything. Nick began to come join them at first, but Miley would wrinkle her nose in that indefinable way that would mean she didn’t really want him there, intruding on the space and relationship she’s made with Joe. It shouldn’t make Joe so happy, but it does, and Nick eventually stops coming in when Miley doesn’t speak to him beforehand.
Nick doesn’t question Joe about it, and from what he’s learned from Miley, he doesn’t question her either. Nick and Miley are still going strong, it’s just that something different has blossomed between her and Joe, and it would seem that she wants to help it flower, despite how out-of-place it stands.
When he thinks about it, she’s the closest to a sister he’s ever had, except a thousand times better. Sometimes he likes to think he wouldn’t give her up for anything, but then he sees them together, Miley and Nick, and reality springs back full force.
He knows it won’t be forever.
*
It’s so weird for Joe because he’s always been this huge flirt; never one for platonic relationships, with boring, complicated things like boundaries.
With Miley, though, it’s different.
She’s sort of untouchable, in the way that she’s not at all. It’s an unspoken thing between them; they’ll never be like that, because they’re something entirely different and entirely better. He doesn’t want to say that he and Miley are best friends because it seems a little mechanical, so he’d rather not name it at all.
There’s a strong little undercurrent of connection that runs between Joe and Miley, Miley and Joe, twining in circles and knots until they can finally wrap fingers around the thrum beneath the other’s skin. Joe’s never felt like that with anyone besides Nick, and it makes him happy. Really, really happy.
Joe likes to entertain the idea sometimes, that if Nick wasn’t . . . wasn’t Nick and the world and everything in between, then Miley would easily slip into that position, no questions asked.
When he tells her this, she grasps his hand tightly, and whispers with a melancholy smile “Yeah.”
It’s enough.
*
The tour’s fantastic, and everything rushes past in a cyclone of vivid colors and piercing sounds that Joe can never quite concentrate on long enough to make out. He’s lost track of how many shows they’ve played and what city they’re in and how many hours of sleep he’s running on, and instead always rushes to catch Miley after her final set, twirling her in circles when she runs off stage hopped up on adrenaline and pure, heated happiness.
Joe thinks he could live every day of the rest of his life like this.
*
“Thank you.”
She says it quietly, without dramatics or flair, eyes flickering in the soft light.
When he takes her hand, it’s refreshingly cool, and he intertwines their fingers. He notices wryly that some of her nail polish has chipped off. Miley sighs and its barely audible, before taking a step forward and leaning her head on his chest, resting against him. He can feel her smile into his well-worn shirt, and when it begins to get damp he doesn’t question it, just slowly cards his fingers through her hair.
*
They’re traveling to the next city, it’s raining and Joe’s decided to hitch his ride in Miley’s bus. She’s curled up underneath her comforter wearing a jumper that’s much too large for her that he’s pretty sure she’d stolen from his closet the last time she’d been round. He finds he doesn’t mind so much.
Joe’s seated on the floor against the wall opposite her, head tilted back toward the ceiling. They’re not speaking, haven’t for the past forty minutes. Instead, they’d just been sated enough by the other’s company, listening to the distance sounds of thunder and the rumbling of tires along the asphalt.
Miley lets her head flop to the left and she stares at him intently, her normally electric blue eyes dulled to a dusky blue-grey, flickering quickly over Joe. There’s something in her countenance, her expression that tilts his lips into a frown. They must’ve avoided the previously imminent storm, or driven right into it because the sudden silence that descends over the bus is suffocating. She smiles, world weary and tired, so tired. Joe understands that this, right here, won’t happen again for a long, long time.
She closes her eyes, dark lashes shadowing her cheeks, smile still ghosting across her lips.
It’s the final time they’re together before the world tips upside down.
*
Nick and Miley’s relationship had been deteriorating for the past few weeks, as evidenced by the harsh, clipped conversations Joe would overhear from behind Nick’s bunk late at night, and the choked, barely there voicemail messages Joe would find the next morning from Miley on his phone, of her reaching out for some semblance of balance.
It’s past Christmas and they’ve all just had a break for a few days when Nick wanders into their dressing room drained and weary, like he’s just taken a weight off of his shoulders and put a heavier one there in it’s place. Joe already knows what he’s done before Nick’s even said anything because there is the notable absence of Miley trailing behind him as she had done so many previous times on this tour.
Nick looks up, running a hand absently through his curls, and Joe frowns. Joe feels something break apart in the atmosphere, and Nick’s suddenly rushing at him, face crumpling, and Joe just opens his arms and falls back onto the couch with him.
Joe tangles his fingers in Nick’s curls, and has to force down the pleasant flush that’s spreading throughout his body as he winds a strand around his finger because he hasn’t been able to hold Nick like this in such a long time. Not since Nick had started to fill out a little, begin to grow into himself, find the things that make him tick. Despite the notable lack of space between them, Joe had really missed Nick, the Nick from before.
“Shh, Nicky. It’s okay, I’m here. You know I’m always here.”
Joe’s loyalty lies with Nick, it’s intertwined in their blood even if he wanted to choose something, someone else. The entire situation is breaking Joe apart, but it’s Nick and this is his first proper break up, so Joe just lets him take it.
Nick’s all bundled up on Joe’s lap, face pressed into his shirt, shoulders shaking with barely audible sobs, and Joe’s certain he’ll remember this December for quite a while.
He still can’t help wondering if this was Miley’s first proper break up, too.
*
The phone call comes at 2:00am on a Wednesday.
It’s been months, but her voice is instantly recognizable. Joe can almost see her, twining her hair between her fingers whilst bumping her heel against the edge of the bed. It makes him smile.
“I missed you. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” and Joe means it, really means it, so it comes out with ferocity.
There’s a surprised little sob on the other end of the line, and he clenches his fist into the sheet. The silence that befalls them is uncomfortable, and he’s reminded of that first time in the sitting room. Miley sniffles and then quietly says, “Okay.”
He sings to her till the sun shines through the slits in his curtains.
*
When Joe finally sees Miley in what feels like a lifetime, he tugs at a lock of her hair.
“I like your hair,” he grins.
Joe nearly topples over when she throws herself into his arms, smiling for all the world.
*
Joe comes to the studio when Miley and Nick record Before The Storm. He watches through the glass, absorbed in how effortless they are with one another, so different to when they were younger, more haphazard.
Miley smiles, and touches Nick’s arm when he praises her singing. Nick’s flush does not go unnoticed by Joe.
She lifts her hand in a small wave when Nick fiddles with the strings on his guitar, and laughs animatedly when Joe responds with a gangster sign. When Nick joins in, Joe feels more secure and sated than ever before.
On the ride back, he takes her hand loosely in his, and he watches the streetlights flicker over her face as she smiles out the window.
*
Joe looks up at Miley lounging on his comforter, auburn hair long and tumbling down her shoulders from where she’d let it out of her bun, t-shirt sloppily falling off one shoulder, and eyes so bright and open that he just falls in love with her all over again.
“You’re amazing,” he says quietly.
“You’re a dork,” she laughs, and proceeds to tug the brim of his hat down over his eyes.
It’s always enough.
Author: shipmateee
Pairing: Joe/Miley!friendship, Nick/Miley, slight Joe/Nick
Rating: G
Word Count: 2500
Warnings: angst
Summary: Joe can suddenly see why tweens the world over have fallen in love with this scrawny, southern fourteen-year-old girl.
Disclaimer: Probably didn't happen, guys. Let's not jump to conclusions.
Author's Notes: Dedicated to ditchthistown and her gorgeous bff!Joe/Miley icon. You are amazing, btw. I promised this to her forever ago, and it was meant to be all silly friendship fluff and it turned into this weird, snapshot-like angsty mess. I don't even know, okay.
Nick is fourteen, bright and young and full of passion, and he’s somehow bagged Hannah Montana.
Joe doesn’t really get the big deal about her - skinny little thing with too-bright eyes and smile - but Nick told him they’d met at some charity thing and “Miley’s really cool, Joe, I think you’ll like her.” Taking note of the heavy something coiling low in his stomach, Joe doesn’t really think so.
Nick looks so ecstatic over the next few days, though, so entirely full. Joe can almost see the pleasure seeping out all over the place, watches as Nick makes use of it in the only way he knows how, strumming light melodies on his guitar until his hands cramp up and his voice is raw. Joe can only watch from the side, itching to be involved with whatever makes Nick happy like so many other times.
Instead, Joe plasters on a clean smile and tries to shrug it off. Slings an arm around Nick’s neck, ruffling his curls in the process, and calls Nick a ‘playa’ for a fortnight. It’s just another infatuation. He’ll get over it in a week or so.
*
Two months into their relationship and it dawns on Joe that, yeah, maybe it isn’t an infatuation anymore. He’s seen them around the house together, coming home tired and giggly from riding their bikes till dusk, bright flush on Nick’s cheeks whenever he talks about her to anyone who’ll listen. Despite Miley being around so much, Joe’s never actually spoken to her, had a real conversation, only occasionally sounding off a “Hey” whenever he’s walked past, which she’d always politely returned. So, it comes as a surprise when Nick bursts into his room one day, determined expression fixed on his still boyish face.
“I want you to meet Miley,” Nick orders, as though he’s telling him they need to practice or something. Nick swipes a hand through his hair, tugging on a curl absently.
“Nicky, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve all met her. You bring her round here often enough,” says Joe, chucking his book down and crossing his legs over the comforter.
Nick huffs. “No, I mean, I want you to meet her. Properly. With conversation that lasts more than one word.”
Nick wanders over to Joe’s bed, flopping down beside him. Joe looks him over, Nick’s shirt having hitched up to show the harsh angles of his hipbones, and Joe lifts a hand to brush back a few curls that have flopped into Nick’s eyes, warm heat sloshing through his nerves, which he tries to swallow down. In brushing back the curls he can see Nick’s eyes clearly, the plead pouring out. Joe sighs.
“All right.”
*
It’s a few weeks later, by which time Joe had forgotten about he and Nick’s little exchange until he walks into the sitting room to find Miley seated alone on one of the couches. She’s staring out the window, and he takes her in for the first time, all creamy skin and growing limbs, focusing on the soft-looking dark hair falling down her back in waves. Joe still doesn’t know what Nick sees in her.
“Hey,” he calls, and Miley jumps, startled, before tucking a dark lock of hair behind one ear. “Where’s Nick?”
“He went upstairs to get his guitar. Said to wait here.” Miley smiles at him openly across the room and pats the seat next to her, inviting him to sit. Joe doesn’t really want to and he shuffles his feet for a few seconds before going to take the seat furthest from her. He’d been raised to be polite. There are a few moments of silence and he smiles at her awkwardly, tapping his fingers in an uneven rhythm against the arm of the couch. She blinks, once, twice, lashes fluttering against her cheeks.
"Um, I like your hair," and Joe wants to kick himself because all he’d wanted to do was alleviate the suffocating pressure in the room, and, yeah, that's totally a regular thing to say to your little brother's girlfriend. Joe’s mildly surprised when Miley beams at him, like he’d just told her she could have anything in the world.
"I like your hair, too!" Miley immediately responds, all sincerity and toothy smile, like she'd wanted to bring it up for a while. Leaning forward abruptly, elbows on knees and head in her hands, Miley starts chattering on like they do this all the time. "It looks so soft, what product do you use? I've been using this great one for a while, that's like, all natural ingredients, but I can never get it to look that soft, no matter how long I take on it."
The tight feeling in the room washes out like sand as she continues on and he can’t help but smile at her bubbly personality and wild hand gestures as she gets into a story about how she’d once used this henna shampoo and it’d turned her hair red for weeks.
Joe can suddenly see why tweens the world over have fallen in love with this scrawny, southern fourteen-year-old girl.
*
The thing about Miley, Joe soon realizes, is that she’s like this endless bundle of untapped energy. She has to shuffle her foot, or tap her fingers to an unknown rhythm constantly when sitting, and when she’s up and moving she likes to break out into sporadic dance steps, twirling circles around him again and again.
Once she’d clasped his hands in hers and tugged him into it, and they’d pseudo-waltz around the garden. Nick had laughed, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, before Joe tripped, fell on his ass and Miley’s infectious laughter had sounded out everything else.
As Joe had stared up at her, he came to the conclusion that he’d fallen a little bit in love with her.
He was more okay with this than he’d like to admit.
*
It soon becomes habit for Miley to sit in his room and toy with his hair products and chat about nothing and everything. Nick began to come join them at first, but Miley would wrinkle her nose in that indefinable way that would mean she didn’t really want him there, intruding on the space and relationship she’s made with Joe. It shouldn’t make Joe so happy, but it does, and Nick eventually stops coming in when Miley doesn’t speak to him beforehand.
Nick doesn’t question Joe about it, and from what he’s learned from Miley, he doesn’t question her either. Nick and Miley are still going strong, it’s just that something different has blossomed between her and Joe, and it would seem that she wants to help it flower, despite how out-of-place it stands.
When he thinks about it, she’s the closest to a sister he’s ever had, except a thousand times better. Sometimes he likes to think he wouldn’t give her up for anything, but then he sees them together, Miley and Nick, and reality springs back full force.
He knows it won’t be forever.
*
It’s so weird for Joe because he’s always been this huge flirt; never one for platonic relationships, with boring, complicated things like boundaries.
With Miley, though, it’s different.
She’s sort of untouchable, in the way that she’s not at all. It’s an unspoken thing between them; they’ll never be like that, because they’re something entirely different and entirely better. He doesn’t want to say that he and Miley are best friends because it seems a little mechanical, so he’d rather not name it at all.
There’s a strong little undercurrent of connection that runs between Joe and Miley, Miley and Joe, twining in circles and knots until they can finally wrap fingers around the thrum beneath the other’s skin. Joe’s never felt like that with anyone besides Nick, and it makes him happy. Really, really happy.
Joe likes to entertain the idea sometimes, that if Nick wasn’t . . . wasn’t Nick and the world and everything in between, then Miley would easily slip into that position, no questions asked.
When he tells her this, she grasps his hand tightly, and whispers with a melancholy smile “Yeah.”
It’s enough.
*
The tour’s fantastic, and everything rushes past in a cyclone of vivid colors and piercing sounds that Joe can never quite concentrate on long enough to make out. He’s lost track of how many shows they’ve played and what city they’re in and how many hours of sleep he’s running on, and instead always rushes to catch Miley after her final set, twirling her in circles when she runs off stage hopped up on adrenaline and pure, heated happiness.
Joe thinks he could live every day of the rest of his life like this.
*
“Thank you.”
She says it quietly, without dramatics or flair, eyes flickering in the soft light.
When he takes her hand, it’s refreshingly cool, and he intertwines their fingers. He notices wryly that some of her nail polish has chipped off. Miley sighs and its barely audible, before taking a step forward and leaning her head on his chest, resting against him. He can feel her smile into his well-worn shirt, and when it begins to get damp he doesn’t question it, just slowly cards his fingers through her hair.
*
They’re traveling to the next city, it’s raining and Joe’s decided to hitch his ride in Miley’s bus. She’s curled up underneath her comforter wearing a jumper that’s much too large for her that he’s pretty sure she’d stolen from his closet the last time she’d been round. He finds he doesn’t mind so much.
Joe’s seated on the floor against the wall opposite her, head tilted back toward the ceiling. They’re not speaking, haven’t for the past forty minutes. Instead, they’d just been sated enough by the other’s company, listening to the distance sounds of thunder and the rumbling of tires along the asphalt.
Miley lets her head flop to the left and she stares at him intently, her normally electric blue eyes dulled to a dusky blue-grey, flickering quickly over Joe. There’s something in her countenance, her expression that tilts his lips into a frown. They must’ve avoided the previously imminent storm, or driven right into it because the sudden silence that descends over the bus is suffocating. She smiles, world weary and tired, so tired. Joe understands that this, right here, won’t happen again for a long, long time.
She closes her eyes, dark lashes shadowing her cheeks, smile still ghosting across her lips.
It’s the final time they’re together before the world tips upside down.
*
Nick and Miley’s relationship had been deteriorating for the past few weeks, as evidenced by the harsh, clipped conversations Joe would overhear from behind Nick’s bunk late at night, and the choked, barely there voicemail messages Joe would find the next morning from Miley on his phone, of her reaching out for some semblance of balance.
It’s past Christmas and they’ve all just had a break for a few days when Nick wanders into their dressing room drained and weary, like he’s just taken a weight off of his shoulders and put a heavier one there in it’s place. Joe already knows what he’s done before Nick’s even said anything because there is the notable absence of Miley trailing behind him as she had done so many previous times on this tour.
Nick looks up, running a hand absently through his curls, and Joe frowns. Joe feels something break apart in the atmosphere, and Nick’s suddenly rushing at him, face crumpling, and Joe just opens his arms and falls back onto the couch with him.
Joe tangles his fingers in Nick’s curls, and has to force down the pleasant flush that’s spreading throughout his body as he winds a strand around his finger because he hasn’t been able to hold Nick like this in such a long time. Not since Nick had started to fill out a little, begin to grow into himself, find the things that make him tick. Despite the notable lack of space between them, Joe had really missed Nick, the Nick from before.
“Shh, Nicky. It’s okay, I’m here. You know I’m always here.”
Joe’s loyalty lies with Nick, it’s intertwined in their blood even if he wanted to choose something, someone else. The entire situation is breaking Joe apart, but it’s Nick and this is his first proper break up, so Joe just lets him take it.
Nick’s all bundled up on Joe’s lap, face pressed into his shirt, shoulders shaking with barely audible sobs, and Joe’s certain he’ll remember this December for quite a while.
He still can’t help wondering if this was Miley’s first proper break up, too.
*
The phone call comes at 2:00am on a Wednesday.
It’s been months, but her voice is instantly recognizable. Joe can almost see her, twining her hair between her fingers whilst bumping her heel against the edge of the bed. It makes him smile.
“I missed you. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” and Joe means it, really means it, so it comes out with ferocity.
There’s a surprised little sob on the other end of the line, and he clenches his fist into the sheet. The silence that befalls them is uncomfortable, and he’s reminded of that first time in the sitting room. Miley sniffles and then quietly says, “Okay.”
He sings to her till the sun shines through the slits in his curtains.
*
When Joe finally sees Miley in what feels like a lifetime, he tugs at a lock of her hair.
“I like your hair,” he grins.
Joe nearly topples over when she throws herself into his arms, smiling for all the world.
*
Joe comes to the studio when Miley and Nick record Before The Storm. He watches through the glass, absorbed in how effortless they are with one another, so different to when they were younger, more haphazard.
Miley smiles, and touches Nick’s arm when he praises her singing. Nick’s flush does not go unnoticed by Joe.
She lifts her hand in a small wave when Nick fiddles with the strings on his guitar, and laughs animatedly when Joe responds with a gangster sign. When Nick joins in, Joe feels more secure and sated than ever before.
On the ride back, he takes her hand loosely in his, and he watches the streetlights flicker over her face as she smiles out the window.
*
Joe looks up at Miley lounging on his comforter, auburn hair long and tumbling down her shoulders from where she’d let it out of her bun, t-shirt sloppily falling off one shoulder, and eyes so bright and open that he just falls in love with her all over again.
“You’re amazing,” he says quietly.
“You’re a dork,” she laughs, and proceeds to tug the brim of his hat down over his eyes.
It’s always enough.