fic: let's all pack up and move this year (disney rpf, nick/miley, etc., 1/4)
Title: Let's All Pack Up and Move This Year
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Disney RPF; Nick Jonas/Miley Cyrus, Joe Jonas/Demi Lovato, Kevin Jonas/Danielle Jonas, David Henrie/Selena Gomez, John Mayer/Taylor Swif
Rating: R
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Word Count:28,709
Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one, this is all for fun. This hasn't happened. Yet. Etc.
Summary: This is a story about finding yourself and then finding your way back. Set six years in the future, it is the story of Nick and Miley's separate struggles with the choices they've made and who they've become, and how the choices they make next will change the rest of their lives. The story deviates from reality somewhere in fall 2009.
Author's Notes: Written for jb_bigbang 2010. Many thanks to my brilliant artist, magic_panic, whose work can be found here and below. Many, many thanks to the people that looked at this in various stages of development, including, but not limited to the following: perfectlystill, leobrat and normative_jean. I am 100% sure that this wouldn't have been finished without your assistance and cheerleading. You can start calling in those favors any time now.
Let's all pack up and move this year
Slip the liars and disappear
Leave memories for auctioneers
And those just standing still
They'll miss the taste of wanting you
Call out your name like I still do
But they never said a word that's true
And they only hold you down
~ Matt Nathanson, Heartbreak World
I should know who I am by now
I walk the record stands somehow
Thinking of winter
Your name is the splinter inside me
~ Joshua Radin, Winter
Six days before her twenty-fourth birthday, sitting in her trailer in Wilmington, North Carolina, Miley has an epiphany. It's not a bolt of lightning from the sky or the voice of god in her ear, but it's there and it's hers. And it's so simple that she doesn't know why she didn't realize it sooner.
She's not happy.
One minute, she's reading her lines, trying to figure out if she's ever known a teenager that talks like this Capeside script reads, and the next, she's struck by the realization that if this is what she gave up her entire life to have, then maybe it wasn't worth it after all. If all the time and energy and love that she poured into building her career as a teenager led her here, to a guest spot on a spin off of a show that was at it's peak a more than a decade earlier, then what the hell did she do it for?
It's not the kind of epiphany you want to have five minutes before you're due on set and you still don't know your lines.
She's still staring blankly at her script when the curly-haired PA whose name she can never remember knocks on the door of her trailer and pokes her head inside. "Ms. Cyrus? We need you as soon as you're ready."
Miley just blinks at her. She smiles weakly. "Just give me a minute, okay? I'll be right behind you."
The PA looks hesitant, like she's debating whether or not to say something. If a PA is looking at her like that, Miley thinks, she doesn't even want to know what she looks like right now. In the end, the PA just nods and closes the door of the trailer, leaving Miley alone again.
Miley slumps down on her sofa and groans. This is going to be the day from hell, she can already tell.
***
When they break for lunch two hours later, Miley's exhausted. All she wants to do is go back to her apartment and crawl under the covers and pretend today never started.
She calls Demi instead.
Demi answers on the second ring, and Miley barely lets her say hello before she's asking the question that she's no longer certain she knows the answer to.
"Are you happy, Dem?"
There's a long pause and Miley thinks she can hear Demi wondering if she's had some sort of psychotic break. Miley's not so sure she hasn't. "Yes," Demi says finally, stretching the one syllable out to two. She waits a beat. "Are you?"
Miley lets out the breath she wasn't even aware she'd been holding and sinks down onto her couch, tucking her feet up underneath her. "I don't know. I don't think so."
"What's wrong, Miles?"
Miley laughs and the sound of it, more broken and bitter than she's ever heard before, scares her. She doesn't want to sound like that. She doesn't know who the person that could sound like that is.
"Miley?"
She blinks, bringing the room back into focus. "Sorry."
"It's okay. What's wrong, Miles?" Demi repeats. Her voice is gentle and Miley can hear the worry laced through every word.
Miley shrugs her shoulders helplessly and says, "I don't know. I just --" She breaks off and asks, "How do you know you're happy?"
Demi pauses again. "I don't know," she says haltingly. "I just -- I just do. Why do you think you're not happy?"
Miley looks out the little window of the trailer and tries to think of something that won't make her sound certifiably insane. "Have you ever just known something was true? You don't know where it came from, you don't know why you didn't realize it sooner, but all of a sudden you know and everything is different?"
"Yes."
"That's what happened. I was just sitting there trying to memorize my lines and all of a sudden I just knew -- knew that this isn't what I want to be doing with my life." She laughs again, and she sounds less bitter to her own ears. "It's certainly not what I planned to be doing."
"What did you think you'd be doing?"
Miley sighs and rakes her hand back through her hair before remembering that the hair dresser will probably kill her for that. She shrugs. "I don't know, I thought I'd be making movies and touring and it would all be the same forever. And it's not. I'm guest starring on a goddamn spin off of Dawson's Creek, Dem." She hears Demi start to laugh and warns, "Don't you laugh. I haven't written a song in five years. It's -- it's just not what I thought it was going to be."
"So why keep doing it?"
"My contract for one."
"That's one," Demi counters. "And I know you're filming your last episode now. Do you have anything else lined up?"
"A couple things," Miley hedges. She doesn't want to think about how little there really is. It's too depressing and she's depressed enough.
"Anything you can't get out of?"
"No," Miley says slowly. "What are you suggesting?"
"Close your eyes."
"What?" Miley splutters. "How is that --"
"Do it," Demi orders. "And make it fast, I have to get back to the studio."
Miley closes her eyes, with a sigh. "Fine."
"Think about the last time you were happy. Really happy, happy all the way down to your bones. Happy because of you, not anything else."
Miley casts her mind back. Her mind is crowded with images, with memories of things she's done and places she's been, but those aren't what Demi means. She knows what Demi means. And as she sifts through her past, she keeps coming back to the same thing. The same place. The same word.
Home.
Miley opens her eyes. "I think I know what I need to do. Where I need to go," she corrects. It's impulsive, it's probably a little crazy, but just thinking about it is making her feel lighter than she has in weeks, maybe years. If there's one thing she's learned through the years, it's that when something feels this right, it usually is.
"Where are you going, Miley?"
She smiles. "Home."
###
"Can you play that back?" Nick asks, from his seat in the booth. The sound engineer obliges and Nick listens to the vocals that the band just recorded. He frowns, considering. Something about them isn't right. He just doesn't know what it is. He leans forward, presses the button to talk to the recording booth. "Let's do that again. This time with, I don't know, more longing."
The singer nods and Nick leans back in his chair. Kevin was right about this band, Nick thinks to himself. He's just not sure Kevin was right that he should be the one producing their album. Not when all the music in his head is such a muddle. Music lives in Nick's head, it always has. But it's always been clear, focused, and it's anything but that. It makes it hard to do his job.
He makes himself concentrate on the new vocal track. He half smiles to himself, tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh. This is better. This might even be good.
When they finish and look at the booth for a verdict, Nick flashes a thumbs up. Maybe today won't have been a waste after all.
***
The session ends and Nick promises to send copies of the demos once he's finished fiddling with them. He's pretty sure that they're going to be happy with the results. He's mostly happy with them and he's never happy with something this early in the recording process.
He steps out of the studio and onto a cold, busy Chicago street. He turns up the collar of his coat and starts walking. He could have called for a car, but he's not in the mood. Part of the reason he settled in Chicago was that no one cared who he was, that he could blend in and just be a face in the crowd. He wants to be a face in the crowd right now. So he walks.
He takes his cell out of his pocket and dials Joe's number. He should probably call Kevin, give him a report on how the session went, but Nick doesn't want to think about work anymore today. He wants... well, he doesn't know what he wants. And Joe's the brother to talk to when he feels like that. He waits for Joe to pick up, ear pressed to the phone.
"Nicky!" Joe's voice comes through in a boom. A very happy boom.
"Don't call me that," Nick says reflexively. That name is something that's best left in the past. A past with someone else.
"Aw, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"
Nick laughs. "I know you're on theatre hours, Joseph, but it's afternoon. Some of us actually have to get up in the morning and do work."
"Oh, but is it really work if it's what you love?" Joe asks in his best 'I am a dramatic actor' voice. Sometimes Nick thinks acting classes were the worst thing to ever happen to his brother.
Nick changes the subject. "How's Demi?"
"She's good," Joe says, voice back to normal. "Really good."
"Good," Nick says. "That's... good."
"Yeah." There's a pause. "Nick," Joe says. "Is everything okay? I mean, I'm sure Dem will be thrilled to know you called just to ask how she is, thus verifying her status as most important person in the world, but you could have, I don't know, called her to ask. And we're going to see you in like, a week for Thanksgiving at Kevin and Dani's."
Nick sighs. "Everything is... It's fine. It should be fine, right? I'm just having a mood."
"Are you sure? Why don't you fly out here for a few days and we'll all head down to Dallas together? Dem would like that."
"I can't," Nick says, shaking his head. "Recording with that band Kevin found, remember?"
"Not really, but that's because I know the two of you do such a good job with running everything so that I don't have to."
Nick makes himself laugh again. "Nice save. Listen, I'm going to get on the El. I'll talk to you later. Give my love to Dem."
"Okay," Joe says. "But I'm not telling her that. She might get ideas."
Nick hangs up the phone with a laugh, a real laugh this time. He heads up the steps to the tracks. It's good Thanksgiving is so soon, he thinks to himself. Maybe being around his family is just what he needs to get him out of whatever the hell mood he's in. He hopes it will.
###
The shoot wraps up two days later and her agent calls her to say that the producers are already talking about how to write her back in for more episodes this spring and all Miley can do is laugh. When the spring comes, she will not be in Wilmington. She doesn't care if she ever comes back to Wilmington again. But she can't tell her agent that, not when she hasn't even told her family her plans. So she makes vague noises that she knows are being taken for agreement if not interest and ends the call as soon as possible.
She'll be telling her agent soon enough. It's not a conversation she's looking forward to.
***
Miley flies home to Nashville the next day. She's relieved to not be going back to L.A. first thing, it's the last place in the world she wants to be right now. Maybe the last place she ever wants to be ever again.
Los Angeles makes her feel like a failure. She's tired of feeling that way. She doesn't know when she accepted that it was normal to feel that way, but she wishes she could go back in time and stop it from ever happening. She doesn't recognize who she's become.
She wants to know who she is when she looks at herself in the mirror. It's been too long since that happened.
The farm is a comforting place. It's where her best memories are; riding horses with her dad, fighting with Braison over whose turn it was to muck out stalls, baking chocolate chip cookies with her mom and Brandi, sitting on the front porch and looking up at the stars and believing her wishes would come true. Miley knows that she's lucky that they did, even if it was only for a little while.
But as she unpacks her bags in her childhood bedroom, Miley knows that the farm isn't the place for her any longer. It's a security blanket, a place that still lets her feel like the kid that she was before she wasn't. If she's going to rediscover who she is, what makes her happy, she needs to start over. Stand on her own two feet.
She needs to move out. She's not looking forward to that conversation either.
***
Her family starts trickling in to Nashville the week of Thanksgiving. Miley picks Braison up at the airport late on Tuesday evening. Their mom shows up on Wednesday morning with Noie. Brandi and her husband, Mike, get there Wednesday afternoon. Trace sneaks into the house in the middle of the night on Wednesday, setting off the alarm and waking up the whole house. Dad finally arrives on Thanksgiving, when Miley's up to her elbows in potato peels and her mom is pulling her hair out about the turkey.
With all of them in the house, it's loud and noisy and happy, and Miley can't even hear herself think. It's the best she's felt in weeks, maybe months.
When it's time to eat, they all gather around the table, Braison still sulking because Mom insisted that they follow the no football during dinner rule. Miley tries hard not to laugh at him, but sometimes he still acts like he's twelve. She takes Noah's hand on her left and Brandi's on her right while Daddy says grace. Everyone digs in and for the first few minutes, the only conversation becomes "pass the potatoes" or "can I have some more turkey, please."
Then, almost out of the blue, comes the question that Miley's been dreading for days. Her mom looks at her, bright smile on her face, and asks, "So Miles, when are you coming back to L.A.?"
Miley sets her fork down on her plate. She picks up her wine glass, takes a small drink, trying to think of what exactly she's going to say. She's had all week to think of an answer, why doesn't she have one? She's taking too long to answer, she knows she is. She can see it in the way that her mom is looking at her now, like there's a cause for concern.
"Miles?" her mom prompts, a hint of that same concern in her voice.
"I'm not going back," Miley says finally. "Not now, anyway. I don't know when."
Her mom frowns. "What does that mean, you're not going back? You live there."
"Not anymore." Miley offers a weak smile. "I'm going to move back to Nashville, isn't that great?"
Now her mom is staring at her like she's grown a second head. Everyone is staring at her like she's grown a second head. "What? But --"
Miley pushes her chair back from the table. "Excuse me." She rushes out of the room, out the front door and onto the porch. She braces her hands against the railing and doubles ochiver, trying to take deep breaths to steady herself. This must be what a panic attack feels like, she thinks.
The door opens behind her and someone steps out onto the porch. They step up next to her and lay a warm hand on her back. She looks down at their shoes and knows that it's her father. Only he would wear actual cowboy boots to Thanksgiving dinner. And only her daddy would know that the last thing she needs right now is to talk.
Miley doesn't know how long they stand there silently in the dark, but she's almost grateful when her dad finally speaks.
"Better?" he asks, the country twang in his voice giving warmth to the word.
She straightens and turns to face him. She nods. He opens his arms and she steps into them, burrowing her face in his shirt. Her father's arms have always been one of the safest places in the world for her. This is no different.
But if she wants to really be a grown up, that probably means she should act like one, and that means she can't hide out on the porch forever. She steps back and tries to give her father a smile. "How mad is mom?"
Her dad shakes his head. "Don't worry about that, darlin'." He sits down on the porch swing and pats the place next to him. "Sit."
She sits.
"What's going on, Miles?"
She bites her lip, not sure how to begin, how to explain. She's afraid that it's all going to sound ridiculous, like she's ungrateful for everything that her parents have given her. Given up for her in some ways. The things they made Braison and Noah give up.
Her father nudges her with his elbow. "Go on now, you know you can tell me anything."
She turns to look at him and half smiles, because yes. She does know that. After that, it all wooshes out of her in what seems like one breath. "It's just -- I was on set, waiting in my trailer, trying to learn my lines -- and I just knew. Knew that I wasn't happy anymore, that I didn't want to be doing that. And I made it through the shoot and then I called Demi and she made me see that I'm only really happy when I'm here, so shouldn't I be here? Where I'm happy? Instead of in L.A. where I'm not?" She looks beseechingly at her father. "Shouldn't I be where I'm happy? Shouldn't I be happy? What's wrong with me that I'm not happy, Daddy? What's wrong with me?"
"Darlin'," her father says again, and wraps his arm around her shoulders. "Of course you should be happy. And if you think that being here, being home, will make you happy, then you should do that. Did you think your mom or I wouldn't understand that?"
"I don't know." She sighs. "I'm kind of a mess."
Her dad drops a kiss on the top of her head. "So are we all, darlin'. So are we all."
They lapse back into silence, the squeaky chains of the swing the only noise in the night air.
###
Thanksgiving is exactly the kind of loud and messy distraction that Nick hoped it would be. It's hard -- almost impossible, even -- to live in your own head when there's a nephew to teach the right way to play guitar and a niece to admire and endless discussions of when Joe and Demi are finally going to get married to ignore and his mom fussing over how thin he is to put up with. It's exactly what he needs. His family and endless football. Could there be a better way to spend a long weekend? Nick doesn't think so.
He's holding Livvie on his lap watching the early football game when Joe plops down next to him on the couch. Nick gives him a sideways look and Joe grins.
"So little brother," Joe begins. "How's life in the windy city?"
Nick turns his gaze back to the football game. Goddamn, how is it possible the Lions are still this terrible? "Fine."
"Really?"
"Really." He looks at his brother, who's making faces at the baby and making her clap her hands in delight. "Here, you take her since you two have about the same emotional maturity."
Joe takes Livvie and bounces her on his knee. "I know you think I should be offended by that, but nope. Not so much. Being in touch with your inner child isn't something to be ashamed of, Nicholas."
Demi wanders in from the kitchen, biting into a carrot stick. "What is Joe not ashamed of now? Is he telling you the story about how he accidentally mooned the backer of the play, thinking it was one of his castmates? That's a good one." She perches on the arm of the couch and holds out her finger for Livvie to grab.
Joe pokes Demi in the side. "No. Aren't you supposed to be on my side here, anyway?"
Demi arches an eyebrow at him and ruffles his hair. "That depends on whether or not yours is the right side."
Joe's jaw drops. "Hey!" he sputters. "Some girlfriend you are."
Demi grins. "I'm an awesome girlfriend and you know it." She ruffles his hair one more time and gets up to take the seat on the other side of Nick. "So Nick," she says casually. "How's life?"
Nick groans. "Oh, no. You're not going to do this."
"Do what?" Joe asks in his best attempt at an innocent tone of voice. "We're not doing anything, are we, Dem?"
Demi shakes her head. "Of course not."
"You're terrible liars, both of you," Nick says, looking back and forth between them. "Seriously, what are you up to?" He turns his gaze on Demi, knowing that she's more likely to break first. She's always been a softer touch than she likes to let on.
And sure enough, she breaks right on schedule. "We're just worried about you, Nick. Joe said you sounded really, I don't know, sad, last week. Is everything okay?" He opens his mouth to answer, but Demi cuts him off. "I mean, for real. Not in Nick Jonas land where you're always okay."
"I'm fine, I promise," Nick says, patting her on the knee. "I just had a weird day. We all have weird days." He shoots his brother a look. "Some of us more than others."
"Are you sure?" Demi presses. "Because with everything with Miley --" Her eyes go wide and she slaps her hand over her mouth.
Nick ignores the fact that his heart starts beating a little bit faster. "Everything with Miley what?" he asks, trying to keep his voice level. He shouldn't still worry about her like this. He knows it. But he's never been able to make himself stop. "Is she okay?"
Demi bites her lip. "I wasn't supposed to say anything."
"Kind of too late for that," Joe points out, looking up from playing peek-a-boo with Livvie. "You might as well tell him, I'm sure it'll show up in the tabs eventually."
"I guess," Demi says, still looking worried, like she's about to betray a confidence. Which, Nick guesses, she is.
"Dem, it's not like I'm going to go call Us Weekly. I'm not even going to call Miley. We haven't talked in like, two years, remember?" He's not bitter about that, not at all.
Demi sighs. "Fine. She's moving back to Nashville."
Nick frowns. "Is that all? You had me worried that she was --"
"When I say she's moving back to Nashville, I mean, she's giving up on acting, music, everything," Demi interrupts. "She's just so unhappy." Demi squeezes his forearm. "I don't want you to be that unhappy, okay?"
"I"m not," he assures her. She doesn't look convinced. "I promise."
She's about to say something else, but then they're being called into the dining room for dinner and Nick sits next to Kevin and talks business so that he doesn't have to think about whether or not he's happy and how he feels about knowing that Miley's so profoundly unhappy.
He's not unhappy. He's really not. Are there things he'd change about his life? Sure. He figures that no one has a completely perfect life. But he's got a pretty great one and it feels wrong to complain about the little things that could be different. He absolutely believes that to be true.
Just like he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the happiest he's ever been is when Miley was in his life. Part of him wonders if maybe she still feels the same way.
###
Thanksgiving ends and everyone goes back to their lives. Except her. Miley stays behind, determined to start on a new life for herself. A happier life for herself.
Her parents tried to convince her that she should stay at the farm, but she knows that she's right about needing to leave. Which means that step one of her new life plan needs to be finding a place to live.
She calls Taylor.
If any of her friends knows about living in Nashville it's Taylor, even if she's only here for half the year anymore. Taylor will be able to tell her what real estate agent to use, what the new hot neighborhood is, where to go shopping. Or Taylor would be able to tell her all of that, Miley thinks, if she would just pick up the phone.
She's about to give up hope and leave a voicemail, when Taylor's voice comes breathless through the phone.
"Hello?" Taylor says. "Miley? What's going on?"
"Hi," Miley says brightly. "I'm in town. I wanted to see if you'd want to get coffee. Talk."
"Talk?" Taylor zeroes in on that one word. "Sure. When?"
Miley looks out the kitchen window. "How's now?"
"Oh," Taylor says with surprise. "I can do now. Why don't you meet me here? That way if coffee turns into, oh, I don't know, shopping, we'll only have one car to worry about."
Miley laughs. She loves Taylor. "Absolutely. See you soon."
"Okay, bye!" Taylor trills and hangs up.
Miley tucks her phone into her purse and heads out the door. Taylor's just what she needs to get this new life underway.
***
It takes Miley thirty minutes to get to Taylor's high rise building, and another ten to make it past security and up to the penthouse condo that Taylor and John occupy. When the elevator doors open up into the condo, the first thing Miley sees is Taylor sitting in her husbands lap on a piano bench. They're kissing. It's sort of disgustingly cute. But reminders of how alone she is are not really what Miley needs right now.
"Ahem," she says.
They break apart and two heads swivel towards her in unison. "Miley!" Taylor squeals in delight, extracting herself from John's arms and coming over to give Miley a hug. "You look fabulous."
"You, too." Miley hugs Taylor back. "Married life agrees with you, Mrs. Mayer." She looks over Taylor's shoulder. "Hi, John."
John gives her a half wave. "Hello. I hear you're going to go have girl talk." He makes air quotes around the words girl talk as he says them, and Miley bites her lip to keep from laughing. She doesn't know if Taylor brings out John's dorky side of if he's really this way all the time, but it's hilarious how lame he is and how much he just doesn't care about it. Kind of nice, really.
"We are," Taylor declares, grabbing her own purse. She gives John an absent kiss goodbye. "I'll call you if I'm going to be late. Maybe you can meet us for dinner or something."
"Okay."
Taylor grins at Miley. "This is going to be so much fun!" She takes Miley's arm and drags her back into the elevator. The doors close behind them and Taylor turns to look at her. "So," Taylor says. "Where to first?"
***
First turns into shopping, both of them accumulating bags of clothes and shoes and purses. Their conversation is limited to discussions of whether that top is a good color for Taylor or whether those jeans make Miley's ass look fat. It's nice and it's relaxing, but Miley kind of wants to get to the point of why she wanted to get together with Taylor already, so it's a relief when they finally collapse at a small cafe that Taylor swears has the best lattes in all of Nashville.
A waitress comes to take their order and when she's gone, Taylor looks at Miley with an almost knowing look in her eye. "So," she says. "What's going on, Miles?"
Miley blinks. She hadn't thought she'd been that transparent. Maybe Taylor's just gotten that much better at reading people. Maybe being happy and successful and all the things that Miley should hate Taylor for does that to a person. Maybe --
"Miley?"
Miley blinks again. "Sorry," she says. "My mind wandered. That's been happening a lot lately."
Taylor nods, worry creeping into her expression. "Is everything okay? I mean, you're not --"
"I'm not sick or anything," Miley says quickly. "I promise."
"But something's wrong." The waitress comes back with their coffee and Taylor waits until she's gone to say more, leaning forward, elbows on the table, looking at Miley intently. "Right? Something's wrong?"
Miley stirs her latte and bites her lip. "Yes." She looks at Taylor. "I'm moving back to Nashville. To stay, I mean."
Taylor's face lights up. "But that's amazing! Are you getting your own place? Or are you going to stay at the farm? When are you --"
Miley can't help it, she laughs. "Whoaaa there, Taylor. One question at a time." She takes a drink of her latte. Taylor was right about how good it is. "First, yes, I am going to get my own place. That was actually one of the reasons I called." She smiles hopefully at her friend. "You can hook me up with a realtor, right?"
"Of course I can."
"And I'm here to stay. Now, I mean. I'll have to go back to L.A. to pack up the stuff I want from my place there, if I want anything, but that's really it." She sits back in her chair and eyes Taylor. "It's crazy, right? Just uprooting my entire life and moving back here? I haven't lived here full time since I was like, twelve. I'm crazy."
"No," Taylor says slowly. She flashes a quick grin. "Crazy is getting married in Vegas without telling anyone, but I wouldn't know anything about that." They both laugh, and then Taylor looks at Miley seriously. "But it is kind of, I don't know, sudden, isn't it? What brought this on?"
Miley shrugs. "I just realized that I wasn't happy with how my life in L.A. was going. That I needed a change. And this--" she says, making an expansive gesture, "is home. So what better place to make a change?"
Taylor nods. "Okay." She smiles and pulls out her phone. "So let's get started on making that happen."
***
Finding a house, moving, it all happens faster than Miley thought it would. She wasn't even sure what type of place she was looking for, but somehow despite that, the realtor that Taylor introduced her to just seemed to know and the sixth place she looks at is the one. She knows it the minute she steps inside onto the gleaming hardwood floor of the front hall and sees the bright, airy rooms just waiting for her. She knows, instantly, that this is a place that she can be happy. This is a place she will be happy.
She makes an offer for the house and spends the next few days chewing off her fingernails as she waits to hear whether the sellers have accepted. When the realtor calls to tell her that the house is hers, she actually does a happy dance, something that she's glad no one was around to see. She has some pride left, after all.
The closing is set for just after the first of the year. Suddenly Miley has more advice than she knows what to do with. Her mom wants to help her decorate; Miley turns down the offer, she wants to do this by herself. Every day there's a new message from Taylor with the name of a shop that sells great rugs or a cool new art gallery that she knows Miley will love. Her dad's concerns are more practical, making sure that Miley knows how to do things like unclog a toilet or mow her new lawn, and Miley just laughs and reminds him that she's been living on her own for years now and she's somehow managed to come through it alive.
Miley knows that what really worries him is how far away she's going to be. It worries her sometimes, too.
December comes and goes in a blur of buying Christmas presents and home inspections and everyone coming back to Franklin to celebrate en mass, and then there's New Year's, and before she knows it, Miley's signing the final papers and she's holding the keys to her brand new home.
It's a little bit scary how quickly that all happened. But it's almost a relief in a way, because now she can get on with it, with living this new life that she's still trying to figure out.
She doesn't know what's going to come next. That's the scariest thing of all.
###
Nick goes back to Chicago. He tries to bury himself in his work, scouting local bands who might be ready for the next step, finishing production on the album, trying to write for himself. It's the last one that's the most difficult. He can lie to himself, no problem, but somehow it always comes out in his music. And there are things that he's just not ready to face.
So he throws himself into getting ready for Christmas. If he can't spoil his niece and nephew at Christmas, when can he? That they're both too young to really remember it doesn't factor into it.
The whole family descends on Kevin and Danielle's again, since Paul and Livvie are still little enough to need a Christmas morning at home where Santa Claus knows to find them. They all go to church together on Christmas Eve, and after the stockings have been hung and milk and cookies and carrots laid out for Santa and his reindeer, Nick helps Kevin put the presents under the tree.
They work in companionable silence, just the sound of Christmas carols playing softly in the background. The rest of the family is scattered through the rest of the house, Danielle and their mom in the kitchen getting things ready for tomorrow's Christmas dinner, their dad, Frankie, Joe and Demi in the other room watching A Christmas Story. Dad had argued for It's a Wonderful Life, but Joe and Frankie still take glee in watching the kid get his tongue stuck to the pole. Nick sort of hopes they're done in time to see it, though he'd go to his grave denying that he likes that part.
He finishes stacking the presents on his side of the tree and crawls out from behind it to see Kevin struggling to assemble a doll swing for Livvie. He watches Kevin for just a minute. Despite the furrowed brow and look of consternation, there's an air of contentment that surrounds Kevin that Nick envies. Kevin seems so sure that he's exactly where he's supposed to be, that he's who he's supposed to be. Nick wishes he felt that way about himself.
Kevin looks up from the instructions and catches Nick staring. He raises an eyebrow. "Can I help you?" He gestures towards the pile of screws and parts on the floor. "Or better, can you help me?"
Nick laughs and scoots across the floor to sit next to his brother. He takes the instructions from Kevin and turns them over. "It might help if you were looking at them right side up."
"I tried that," Kevin sniffs. "They make more sense upside down."
"Sure they do," Nick drawls, tongue firmly in cheek. "Pass me the screw driver, would you?"
Together they work to build the swing, conversation limited to things like "give me that piece, no that other piece." Somehow, and Nick's not sure how, they end up with a finished swing at the end.
As Kevin sticks a bow on top and puts it with the rest of the gifts, Nick stretches his arms over his head. "Next year," he says, wincing as his neck cracks in ways he's pretty sure it shouldn't, "Next year, look into preassembled, would you?"
"But what's the fun in that?" Kevin steps back from the tree and looks at it with admiration on his face. "It looks pretty great, right?"
"It does."
"Well then." Kevin claps Nick on the back. "Thanks for the help, little brother. I should go see if Dani needs anything."
Nick watches Kevin start for the doorway, but something makes him call him back. "Kev, wait."
Kevin turns back around. "What?"
Now, with Kevin looking at him expectantly, Nick feels silly. He's not even sure what exactly he wants to ask his brother and he's certain whatever comes out of his mouth is going to sound ridiculous. He shakes his head. "Never mind. I-I forgot what I was going to say."
Kevin takes a step back towards him. "Are you sure? You've been kind of, well, off is the best way I can think of to put it, ever since you got here. Is everything okay?"
Nick smiles weakly. "Yeah. I think I'm just tired. It's been a long couple weeks, you know?"
Kevin grins. "You're talking to a guy with two little kids in the weeks before Christmas. Believe me, I know. I think I could sleep for a week."
"Yeah, good luck with that," Nick snorts. He nods his head towards the stairs. "I think I'm just going to call it a night. I'm sure Paul's going to be up at the crack of dawn."
"I think you can count on that."
"Good night," Nick says. He heads for the stairs and Kevin heads towards the kitchen. He pauses at the foot of them, looking back at the tree which is still alight, star glowing at the top. It's Christmas and he's with his family. He should be happy. But looking at the star on top of the tree, he knows that he's not.
He wonders what it's going to take for him to be that way again.
***
Christmas morning starts at the ungodly hour of five a.m. The sound of feet pounding down the stairs wakes him, but it's Joe flipping his lights on and off while banging on the door that makes him get out of bed to chase Joe down the stairs. Some things just can't go unpunished. Waking him up while it's still dark outside is one of them.
Nick flops down on one of the couches and gives Dani a grateful nod when she passes him a mug of coffee. As he gulps it down, he looks around the room at his family. Paul's practically bouncing up and down in front of the Christmas tree while Kevin starts to play Santa. Dani is handing Frankie a cup of coffee with a disapproving look. His mom is holding Livvie, who is staring, enraptured, at the Christmas lights. Joe's tugged Demi into his lap, and Nick watches them for just a second, before he has to look away because of the jealousy burning in his stomach. Demi's laughing and Joe's pressing a kiss to her shoulder, and it feels too intimate for anyone else to see. And Nick's happy they have it -- happy they have each other -- but he wants that for himself in the worst way.
He doesn't like feeling so small.
A present is thrust into his hands. He blinks and looks down. Paul is standing in front of him grinning like only a four-year-old on Christmas morning can.
"Merry Christmas, Uncle Nick!"
Nick can't help it, he grins back. Even with whatever mood he's in, it would take a stronger man than him to resist his nephew's smiling face. The kid is really too cute for his own good. "Merry Christmas, buddy." He sets the present aside and makes a grab for Paul, tickling his sides mercilessly. Paul shrieks with laughter and Dani shoots him a disapproving mom look.
He gives her his best sheepish look. "Sorry?" He doesn't mean it.
She sighs. "I suppose it's not like he could get any more hyper." She holds up a hand immediately, as if to ward off the thought. "Joe, that is not a dare."
"I don't know why I have this reputation," Joe protests, frowning at Demi as she starts to laugh.
Demi presses a kiss to his cheek. "You're terribly abused."
"Presents?" Kevin suggest mildly his spot next to the tree.
"Presents!" Paul squeals, scrambling down out of Nick's arms and over to his father's side.
It's as if Kevin said the magic word; the room explodes into chaos. Frankie and their Dad help Kevin pass out presents, Paul practically quivers with excitement as they pile up in front of him. Paper is torn off and gifts admired. Thank you's are shouted across the room and hugs exchanged. It takes maybe thirty minutes from start to finish. It is completely exhausting.
After, Nick helps Kevin clean up the piles of shredded wrapping paper while everyone else crowds into the kitchen to beg for the first of the traditional Christmas morning pancakes. Nick's pretty sure that Paul and Joe are competing to see who can look more pitiful to get the honors.
"Thanks for the help," Kevin says as he passes Nick a trash bag. "And thanks so much for the drum set. Really."
Nick grins. It was an inspired gift idea if he does say so himself. "You don't think Paul will like it?" he asks innocently, stuffing the remains of the brightly colored paper into his bag.
"I think you might be Paul's new favorite uncle." Kevin pauses. "I also think that you won't be welcome back in our house until next Christmas, if then. Dani is going to kill you later."
"She loves me."
"She loves her sleep more. What on earth possessed you to think that was a good idea?"
Nick shrugs, and stuffs some more paper into the bag.
"Nick," Kevin says. "Is everything okay?"
Nick looks up in surprise. "What? Why wouldn't everything be okay?"
"Because it's pretty clearly not. Everyone is worried about you. You've just been... not yourself. For weeks now."
Nick sits back on his heels and shakes his head. "I'm fine."
"You're not," Kevin says. He stands up and pats Nick on the shoulder. "When you're ready to talk about it, I'm ready to listen." He heads towards the kitchen, and Nick watches him go, still caught off guard.
He didn't realize that he was being so obvious. He never meant to worry his family, he knows he's caused them enough worry over the years; he never would add to it willingly. With a sigh, he pushes himself up off the ground and starts towards the kitchen. He's just going to have to get better at faking it until he knows what he's going to do next.
If only that weren't easier said than done.
###
It doesn't take Miley long to realize that she's not cut out for a life of leisure. She's been working more or less nonstop since she was twelve years old and somewhere along the line it became normal to have a schedule for all twenty-four hours of the day. At first she channels all her energy into the house, going through paint chips and picking out furniture, making the house into a place that can become her home. But she can only agonize over the difference between Blush and Bashful for so long before her eyes start to cross, and she doesn't really have the patience for endless deliberation between styles of couches. She's more concerned about having somewhere to sit than what her couch says about her as a person. That she had that thought at all tells her that she made the right decision in leaving Los Angeles.
So she starts exploring the city. It's one thing to live somewhere as a kid, to visit it as a teenager, and another to settle there as an adult. She takes long rambling walks with her dog, learning her neighbors names when they stop to admire him. (That her dog might be better at meeting people than she is, she ignores.) She finds a favorite coffee shop where the barrista remembers her name and her order. The first time Miley goes in and is asked if she wants the usual, she almost cries. She's home.
Despite her best efforts, she can't escape the nagging sense of boredom. Of lack of purpose. It doesn't help that her agent is calling her more often than she ever did before, wanting to know if she's gotten over whatever's wrong with her and is ready to go back to work.
Miley knows she's not ready for that. But she's ready for something. She just doesn't know what it is.
***
Taylor shows up on her doorstep on a Wednesday morning, bright smile on her face, guitar in hand. Miley just blinks at her.
"What are you doing --" is all she manages to get out before Taylor is pushing past her into the house, leaving a breezy hello in her wake. She has absolutely no idea what's going on right now. She closes the door to find Taylor settling on her couch, already pulling her guitar out of the case.
She tries again. "Taylor, it's not that I'm not happy to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?" She nods towards the guitar. "And with that?"
"Oh," Taylor says, trying to look innocent. "Didn't I tell you I was coming?"
Miley laughs and crosses her arms over her chest. "You know you didn't. And you didn't answer my second question. What's with the guitar?"
Taylor manages to look sort of sheepish. "Well, you need something to do, right? We're going to do this."
"I'm still not clear on what this is," Miley says, making air quotes around the word this. She shudders. She's been spending too much time around John. That was not really a habit she wanted to pick up.
"We're going to write together, silly," Taylor says. She pats the spot next to her on the couch. "Come on, sit down."
Miley stays where she is. "Write together?" She shakes her head, panic starting to creep through her. "Oh no. No, no, no, no. No, we're not."
"Did you want to say no a few more times?"
"Yes. No." Miley frowns at her friend. "Why would you think I would want to do this? You know how long it's been since I wrote anything."
"I do," Taylor nods. "And that's why you need to do this."
"Maybe that makes sense in Taylor-world, but I'm going to need you to explain that."
Taylor sighs. "Miley, I'm worried about you. Demi's worried about you. Joe's worried about you. You just did this huge, life-altering thing, and you have to feel things about it, but you're not telling any of us about them." She pats the guitar. "That's what this is for."
Miley opens her mouth to answer, but Taylor holds up a hand, warding her off.
"And I know it's been years since you wrote anything. Don't you think that's maybe part of why you have so much bottled up inside? Writing is the best way to get what you're feeling out, even if you never share it with anyone else." Taylor gives her a rueful smile. "Or when you share it with the whole world. The point is to get it out. So that's what we're going to do."
"Do I get any say in this at all?"
"No," Taylor says, shaking her head. She pats the couch again. "Sit down."
Miley sits. She runs a finger tip over the curve of the guitar, taking a deep breath. She looks at Taylor. "What if I can't?"
Taylor takes her hand. Squeezes it tight. "You can."
In that moment, Miley believes her completely. She hopes that the feeling lasts. She feels certain that it won't.
***
Miley likes to tell herself there were a lot of reasons she stopped writing music. She was focusing on her acting career. She hated what the music business was becoming. She was afraid of forever being pigeon holed as Hannah Montana.
She's always known those were just excuses. She just didn't want to think about the actual reason. Or rather, the actual person.
Because as with so many other things in her life, it all comes back to him. The boy she fell all the way in love with when she was fourteen years old and never managed to completely move past.
It's unfair the kind of power someone can have over you, she thinks, even when they're not a part of your life and haven't been for years. The last time Miley spoke to Nick was at an after party the night Demi won her first Grammy. That was one year, eleven months, and thirteen days ago.
Not that she's been keeping track.
***
They settle into a routine. Twice a week, once at Miley's, once at Taylor's, they get together and write. Sometimes that means starting something from scratch, sometimes that means they're expanding on something one of them was working on by themselves. That Taylor has a lot to say is not a surprise. Taylor has always had a lot to say. But Miley's surprised by how easily the words are coming now, when they wouldn't for so many years. Now that they've started, they won't stop, and Miley finds herself writing lyrics about everything. How it feels to know that her career peaked when she was seventeen. The sense of betrayal she felt when she realized that Mandy was really only her friend because of the associated fame. Picking up the pieces of her heart all the times Nick broke it, knowing she'd never get all the pieces back. The things she does and doesn't understand about love. She writes about the fear of not knowing what comes next.
It's cathartic, just like Taylor said it would be. Miley thinks it's to her friend's credit that she doesn't say I told you so.
John's the one that brings up the idea of doing something more. They're in the living room at Taylor's, Miley at the piano and Taylor sitting on the floor with her guitar. John wanders into the room from their home studio, flops down on the floor next to his wife.
"You two should make a record," he says.
Miley snaps her head towards him, certain that he must be kidding. He has a completely serious expression on his face. She shakes her head. "No way." She looks at Taylor, who looks far too intrigued by the idea. "No."
"I don't know," Taylor says thoughtfully. "It's kind of a really good idea, don't you think?" She looks at John. "You think it could work?"
Before he can answer, Miley says, "I don't think it can work. Me, the person you've been writing the songs with. Not him."
They both ignore her.
John nods. "Maybe a digital EP or something? I know you've been wanting to do something different for awhile now." He shrugs. "This is different. And it's good."
Taylor has a faraway look in her eyes. "A digital release... Oh, I like that. Maybe a limited edition run of cds for sale at concerts or something."
"Concerts?" Miley repeats. "You've already got us doing concerts?"
Taylor finally looks at her. "Of course I do."
"Did it happen to escape your attention that I didn't agree to any of this? Not recording or selling anything or giving concerts or anything!"
"You didn't ever actually agree to write with me either," Taylor points out. "I said you had to and you kept opening the door when I showed up."
"And that was clearly a mistake!"
Taylor shakes her head. "It really wasn't. And Miles, I won't actually force you into doing something like this. Because this would be different."
"Thank heaven for small favors," Miley mutters under her breath.
Taylor ignores that and keeps going. "But we should do this. What we're working on, it's good. You have to know that. And you love to perform, even if you're pretending that part of you doesn't exist right now. Eventually you're going to want to do something like this again, and what better way than with one of your best friends by your side?"
"I'm reconsidering the 'one of my best friends' part," Miley says, trying to look mad. The thing of it is, she's not sure if she is mad. It does sort of feel like things are spinning out of her control again, like she has no say in her life, and wasn't that part of what she ran away from Los Angeles to get back? And she doesn't know if she's ready to share everything she's just figuring out with the world; it's as if the wounds of the past are finally starting to heal over, and now Taylor wants her to start picking at the scabs. She doesn't know if she wants the scars that would follow. But oh, part of it does sound fun. She does miss the rush of performing, of touching people in that way, of letting them touch her.
"I need to think about it," she says.
Taylor grins. Just for that, Miley keeps her waiting an extra two days after her decision's made. She says yes.
[Part Two]
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Disney RPF; Nick Jonas/Miley Cyrus, Joe Jonas/Demi Lovato, Kevin Jonas/Danielle Jonas, David Henrie/Selena Gomez, John Mayer/Taylor Swif
Rating: R
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Word Count:28,709
Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one, this is all for fun. This hasn't happened. Yet. Etc.
Summary: This is a story about finding yourself and then finding your way back. Set six years in the future, it is the story of Nick and Miley's separate struggles with the choices they've made and who they've become, and how the choices they make next will change the rest of their lives. The story deviates from reality somewhere in fall 2009.
Author's Notes: Written for jb_bigbang 2010. Many thanks to my brilliant artist, magic_panic, whose work can be found here and below. Many, many thanks to the people that looked at this in various stages of development, including, but not limited to the following: perfectlystill, leobrat and normative_jean. I am 100% sure that this wouldn't have been finished without your assistance and cheerleading. You can start calling in those favors any time now.
Let's all pack up and move this year
Slip the liars and disappear
Leave memories for auctioneers
And those just standing still
They'll miss the taste of wanting you
Call out your name like I still do
But they never said a word that's true
And they only hold you down
~ Matt Nathanson, Heartbreak World
I should know who I am by now
I walk the record stands somehow
Thinking of winter
Your name is the splinter inside me
~ Joshua Radin, Winter
Six days before her twenty-fourth birthday, sitting in her trailer in Wilmington, North Carolina, Miley has an epiphany. It's not a bolt of lightning from the sky or the voice of god in her ear, but it's there and it's hers. And it's so simple that she doesn't know why she didn't realize it sooner.
She's not happy.
One minute, she's reading her lines, trying to figure out if she's ever known a teenager that talks like this Capeside script reads, and the next, she's struck by the realization that if this is what she gave up her entire life to have, then maybe it wasn't worth it after all. If all the time and energy and love that she poured into building her career as a teenager led her here, to a guest spot on a spin off of a show that was at it's peak a more than a decade earlier, then what the hell did she do it for?
It's not the kind of epiphany you want to have five minutes before you're due on set and you still don't know your lines.
She's still staring blankly at her script when the curly-haired PA whose name she can never remember knocks on the door of her trailer and pokes her head inside. "Ms. Cyrus? We need you as soon as you're ready."
Miley just blinks at her. She smiles weakly. "Just give me a minute, okay? I'll be right behind you."
The PA looks hesitant, like she's debating whether or not to say something. If a PA is looking at her like that, Miley thinks, she doesn't even want to know what she looks like right now. In the end, the PA just nods and closes the door of the trailer, leaving Miley alone again.
Miley slumps down on her sofa and groans. This is going to be the day from hell, she can already tell.
***
When they break for lunch two hours later, Miley's exhausted. All she wants to do is go back to her apartment and crawl under the covers and pretend today never started.
She calls Demi instead.
Demi answers on the second ring, and Miley barely lets her say hello before she's asking the question that she's no longer certain she knows the answer to.
"Are you happy, Dem?"
There's a long pause and Miley thinks she can hear Demi wondering if she's had some sort of psychotic break. Miley's not so sure she hasn't. "Yes," Demi says finally, stretching the one syllable out to two. She waits a beat. "Are you?"
Miley lets out the breath she wasn't even aware she'd been holding and sinks down onto her couch, tucking her feet up underneath her. "I don't know. I don't think so."
"What's wrong, Miles?"
Miley laughs and the sound of it, more broken and bitter than she's ever heard before, scares her. She doesn't want to sound like that. She doesn't know who the person that could sound like that is.
"Miley?"
She blinks, bringing the room back into focus. "Sorry."
"It's okay. What's wrong, Miles?" Demi repeats. Her voice is gentle and Miley can hear the worry laced through every word.
Miley shrugs her shoulders helplessly and says, "I don't know. I just --" She breaks off and asks, "How do you know you're happy?"
Demi pauses again. "I don't know," she says haltingly. "I just -- I just do. Why do you think you're not happy?"
Miley looks out the little window of the trailer and tries to think of something that won't make her sound certifiably insane. "Have you ever just known something was true? You don't know where it came from, you don't know why you didn't realize it sooner, but all of a sudden you know and everything is different?"
"Yes."
"That's what happened. I was just sitting there trying to memorize my lines and all of a sudden I just knew -- knew that this isn't what I want to be doing with my life." She laughs again, and she sounds less bitter to her own ears. "It's certainly not what I planned to be doing."
"What did you think you'd be doing?"
Miley sighs and rakes her hand back through her hair before remembering that the hair dresser will probably kill her for that. She shrugs. "I don't know, I thought I'd be making movies and touring and it would all be the same forever. And it's not. I'm guest starring on a goddamn spin off of Dawson's Creek, Dem." She hears Demi start to laugh and warns, "Don't you laugh. I haven't written a song in five years. It's -- it's just not what I thought it was going to be."
"So why keep doing it?"
"My contract for one."
"That's one," Demi counters. "And I know you're filming your last episode now. Do you have anything else lined up?"
"A couple things," Miley hedges. She doesn't want to think about how little there really is. It's too depressing and she's depressed enough.
"Anything you can't get out of?"
"No," Miley says slowly. "What are you suggesting?"
"Close your eyes."
"What?" Miley splutters. "How is that --"
"Do it," Demi orders. "And make it fast, I have to get back to the studio."
Miley closes her eyes, with a sigh. "Fine."
"Think about the last time you were happy. Really happy, happy all the way down to your bones. Happy because of you, not anything else."
Miley casts her mind back. Her mind is crowded with images, with memories of things she's done and places she's been, but those aren't what Demi means. She knows what Demi means. And as she sifts through her past, she keeps coming back to the same thing. The same place. The same word.
Home.
Miley opens her eyes. "I think I know what I need to do. Where I need to go," she corrects. It's impulsive, it's probably a little crazy, but just thinking about it is making her feel lighter than she has in weeks, maybe years. If there's one thing she's learned through the years, it's that when something feels this right, it usually is.
"Where are you going, Miley?"
She smiles. "Home."
###
"Can you play that back?" Nick asks, from his seat in the booth. The sound engineer obliges and Nick listens to the vocals that the band just recorded. He frowns, considering. Something about them isn't right. He just doesn't know what it is. He leans forward, presses the button to talk to the recording booth. "Let's do that again. This time with, I don't know, more longing."
The singer nods and Nick leans back in his chair. Kevin was right about this band, Nick thinks to himself. He's just not sure Kevin was right that he should be the one producing their album. Not when all the music in his head is such a muddle. Music lives in Nick's head, it always has. But it's always been clear, focused, and it's anything but that. It makes it hard to do his job.
He makes himself concentrate on the new vocal track. He half smiles to himself, tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh. This is better. This might even be good.
When they finish and look at the booth for a verdict, Nick flashes a thumbs up. Maybe today won't have been a waste after all.
***
The session ends and Nick promises to send copies of the demos once he's finished fiddling with them. He's pretty sure that they're going to be happy with the results. He's mostly happy with them and he's never happy with something this early in the recording process.
He steps out of the studio and onto a cold, busy Chicago street. He turns up the collar of his coat and starts walking. He could have called for a car, but he's not in the mood. Part of the reason he settled in Chicago was that no one cared who he was, that he could blend in and just be a face in the crowd. He wants to be a face in the crowd right now. So he walks.
He takes his cell out of his pocket and dials Joe's number. He should probably call Kevin, give him a report on how the session went, but Nick doesn't want to think about work anymore today. He wants... well, he doesn't know what he wants. And Joe's the brother to talk to when he feels like that. He waits for Joe to pick up, ear pressed to the phone.
"Nicky!" Joe's voice comes through in a boom. A very happy boom.
"Don't call me that," Nick says reflexively. That name is something that's best left in the past. A past with someone else.
"Aw, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"
Nick laughs. "I know you're on theatre hours, Joseph, but it's afternoon. Some of us actually have to get up in the morning and do work."
"Oh, but is it really work if it's what you love?" Joe asks in his best 'I am a dramatic actor' voice. Sometimes Nick thinks acting classes were the worst thing to ever happen to his brother.
Nick changes the subject. "How's Demi?"
"She's good," Joe says, voice back to normal. "Really good."
"Good," Nick says. "That's... good."
"Yeah." There's a pause. "Nick," Joe says. "Is everything okay? I mean, I'm sure Dem will be thrilled to know you called just to ask how she is, thus verifying her status as most important person in the world, but you could have, I don't know, called her to ask. And we're going to see you in like, a week for Thanksgiving at Kevin and Dani's."
Nick sighs. "Everything is... It's fine. It should be fine, right? I'm just having a mood."
"Are you sure? Why don't you fly out here for a few days and we'll all head down to Dallas together? Dem would like that."
"I can't," Nick says, shaking his head. "Recording with that band Kevin found, remember?"
"Not really, but that's because I know the two of you do such a good job with running everything so that I don't have to."
Nick makes himself laugh again. "Nice save. Listen, I'm going to get on the El. I'll talk to you later. Give my love to Dem."
"Okay," Joe says. "But I'm not telling her that. She might get ideas."
Nick hangs up the phone with a laugh, a real laugh this time. He heads up the steps to the tracks. It's good Thanksgiving is so soon, he thinks to himself. Maybe being around his family is just what he needs to get him out of whatever the hell mood he's in. He hopes it will.
###
The shoot wraps up two days later and her agent calls her to say that the producers are already talking about how to write her back in for more episodes this spring and all Miley can do is laugh. When the spring comes, she will not be in Wilmington. She doesn't care if she ever comes back to Wilmington again. But she can't tell her agent that, not when she hasn't even told her family her plans. So she makes vague noises that she knows are being taken for agreement if not interest and ends the call as soon as possible.
She'll be telling her agent soon enough. It's not a conversation she's looking forward to.
***
Miley flies home to Nashville the next day. She's relieved to not be going back to L.A. first thing, it's the last place in the world she wants to be right now. Maybe the last place she ever wants to be ever again.
Los Angeles makes her feel like a failure. She's tired of feeling that way. She doesn't know when she accepted that it was normal to feel that way, but she wishes she could go back in time and stop it from ever happening. She doesn't recognize who she's become.
She wants to know who she is when she looks at herself in the mirror. It's been too long since that happened.
The farm is a comforting place. It's where her best memories are; riding horses with her dad, fighting with Braison over whose turn it was to muck out stalls, baking chocolate chip cookies with her mom and Brandi, sitting on the front porch and looking up at the stars and believing her wishes would come true. Miley knows that she's lucky that they did, even if it was only for a little while.
But as she unpacks her bags in her childhood bedroom, Miley knows that the farm isn't the place for her any longer. It's a security blanket, a place that still lets her feel like the kid that she was before she wasn't. If she's going to rediscover who she is, what makes her happy, she needs to start over. Stand on her own two feet.
She needs to move out. She's not looking forward to that conversation either.
***
Her family starts trickling in to Nashville the week of Thanksgiving. Miley picks Braison up at the airport late on Tuesday evening. Their mom shows up on Wednesday morning with Noie. Brandi and her husband, Mike, get there Wednesday afternoon. Trace sneaks into the house in the middle of the night on Wednesday, setting off the alarm and waking up the whole house. Dad finally arrives on Thanksgiving, when Miley's up to her elbows in potato peels and her mom is pulling her hair out about the turkey.
With all of them in the house, it's loud and noisy and happy, and Miley can't even hear herself think. It's the best she's felt in weeks, maybe months.
When it's time to eat, they all gather around the table, Braison still sulking because Mom insisted that they follow the no football during dinner rule. Miley tries hard not to laugh at him, but sometimes he still acts like he's twelve. She takes Noah's hand on her left and Brandi's on her right while Daddy says grace. Everyone digs in and for the first few minutes, the only conversation becomes "pass the potatoes" or "can I have some more turkey, please."
Then, almost out of the blue, comes the question that Miley's been dreading for days. Her mom looks at her, bright smile on her face, and asks, "So Miles, when are you coming back to L.A.?"
Miley sets her fork down on her plate. She picks up her wine glass, takes a small drink, trying to think of what exactly she's going to say. She's had all week to think of an answer, why doesn't she have one? She's taking too long to answer, she knows she is. She can see it in the way that her mom is looking at her now, like there's a cause for concern.
"Miles?" her mom prompts, a hint of that same concern in her voice.
"I'm not going back," Miley says finally. "Not now, anyway. I don't know when."
Her mom frowns. "What does that mean, you're not going back? You live there."
"Not anymore." Miley offers a weak smile. "I'm going to move back to Nashville, isn't that great?"
Now her mom is staring at her like she's grown a second head. Everyone is staring at her like she's grown a second head. "What? But --"
Miley pushes her chair back from the table. "Excuse me." She rushes out of the room, out the front door and onto the porch. She braces her hands against the railing and doubles ochiver, trying to take deep breaths to steady herself. This must be what a panic attack feels like, she thinks.
The door opens behind her and someone steps out onto the porch. They step up next to her and lay a warm hand on her back. She looks down at their shoes and knows that it's her father. Only he would wear actual cowboy boots to Thanksgiving dinner. And only her daddy would know that the last thing she needs right now is to talk.
Miley doesn't know how long they stand there silently in the dark, but she's almost grateful when her dad finally speaks.
"Better?" he asks, the country twang in his voice giving warmth to the word.
She straightens and turns to face him. She nods. He opens his arms and she steps into them, burrowing her face in his shirt. Her father's arms have always been one of the safest places in the world for her. This is no different.
But if she wants to really be a grown up, that probably means she should act like one, and that means she can't hide out on the porch forever. She steps back and tries to give her father a smile. "How mad is mom?"
Her dad shakes his head. "Don't worry about that, darlin'." He sits down on the porch swing and pats the place next to him. "Sit."
She sits.
"What's going on, Miles?"
She bites her lip, not sure how to begin, how to explain. She's afraid that it's all going to sound ridiculous, like she's ungrateful for everything that her parents have given her. Given up for her in some ways. The things they made Braison and Noah give up.
Her father nudges her with his elbow. "Go on now, you know you can tell me anything."
She turns to look at him and half smiles, because yes. She does know that. After that, it all wooshes out of her in what seems like one breath. "It's just -- I was on set, waiting in my trailer, trying to learn my lines -- and I just knew. Knew that I wasn't happy anymore, that I didn't want to be doing that. And I made it through the shoot and then I called Demi and she made me see that I'm only really happy when I'm here, so shouldn't I be here? Where I'm happy? Instead of in L.A. where I'm not?" She looks beseechingly at her father. "Shouldn't I be where I'm happy? Shouldn't I be happy? What's wrong with me that I'm not happy, Daddy? What's wrong with me?"
"Darlin'," her father says again, and wraps his arm around her shoulders. "Of course you should be happy. And if you think that being here, being home, will make you happy, then you should do that. Did you think your mom or I wouldn't understand that?"
"I don't know." She sighs. "I'm kind of a mess."
Her dad drops a kiss on the top of her head. "So are we all, darlin'. So are we all."
They lapse back into silence, the squeaky chains of the swing the only noise in the night air.
###
Thanksgiving is exactly the kind of loud and messy distraction that Nick hoped it would be. It's hard -- almost impossible, even -- to live in your own head when there's a nephew to teach the right way to play guitar and a niece to admire and endless discussions of when Joe and Demi are finally going to get married to ignore and his mom fussing over how thin he is to put up with. It's exactly what he needs. His family and endless football. Could there be a better way to spend a long weekend? Nick doesn't think so.
He's holding Livvie on his lap watching the early football game when Joe plops down next to him on the couch. Nick gives him a sideways look and Joe grins.
"So little brother," Joe begins. "How's life in the windy city?"
Nick turns his gaze back to the football game. Goddamn, how is it possible the Lions are still this terrible? "Fine."
"Really?"
"Really." He looks at his brother, who's making faces at the baby and making her clap her hands in delight. "Here, you take her since you two have about the same emotional maturity."
Joe takes Livvie and bounces her on his knee. "I know you think I should be offended by that, but nope. Not so much. Being in touch with your inner child isn't something to be ashamed of, Nicholas."
Demi wanders in from the kitchen, biting into a carrot stick. "What is Joe not ashamed of now? Is he telling you the story about how he accidentally mooned the backer of the play, thinking it was one of his castmates? That's a good one." She perches on the arm of the couch and holds out her finger for Livvie to grab.
Joe pokes Demi in the side. "No. Aren't you supposed to be on my side here, anyway?"
Demi arches an eyebrow at him and ruffles his hair. "That depends on whether or not yours is the right side."
Joe's jaw drops. "Hey!" he sputters. "Some girlfriend you are."
Demi grins. "I'm an awesome girlfriend and you know it." She ruffles his hair one more time and gets up to take the seat on the other side of Nick. "So Nick," she says casually. "How's life?"
Nick groans. "Oh, no. You're not going to do this."
"Do what?" Joe asks in his best attempt at an innocent tone of voice. "We're not doing anything, are we, Dem?"
Demi shakes her head. "Of course not."
"You're terrible liars, both of you," Nick says, looking back and forth between them. "Seriously, what are you up to?" He turns his gaze on Demi, knowing that she's more likely to break first. She's always been a softer touch than she likes to let on.
And sure enough, she breaks right on schedule. "We're just worried about you, Nick. Joe said you sounded really, I don't know, sad, last week. Is everything okay?" He opens his mouth to answer, but Demi cuts him off. "I mean, for real. Not in Nick Jonas land where you're always okay."
"I'm fine, I promise," Nick says, patting her on the knee. "I just had a weird day. We all have weird days." He shoots his brother a look. "Some of us more than others."
"Are you sure?" Demi presses. "Because with everything with Miley --" Her eyes go wide and she slaps her hand over her mouth.
Nick ignores the fact that his heart starts beating a little bit faster. "Everything with Miley what?" he asks, trying to keep his voice level. He shouldn't still worry about her like this. He knows it. But he's never been able to make himself stop. "Is she okay?"
Demi bites her lip. "I wasn't supposed to say anything."
"Kind of too late for that," Joe points out, looking up from playing peek-a-boo with Livvie. "You might as well tell him, I'm sure it'll show up in the tabs eventually."
"I guess," Demi says, still looking worried, like she's about to betray a confidence. Which, Nick guesses, she is.
"Dem, it's not like I'm going to go call Us Weekly. I'm not even going to call Miley. We haven't talked in like, two years, remember?" He's not bitter about that, not at all.
Demi sighs. "Fine. She's moving back to Nashville."
Nick frowns. "Is that all? You had me worried that she was --"
"When I say she's moving back to Nashville, I mean, she's giving up on acting, music, everything," Demi interrupts. "She's just so unhappy." Demi squeezes his forearm. "I don't want you to be that unhappy, okay?"
"I"m not," he assures her. She doesn't look convinced. "I promise."
She's about to say something else, but then they're being called into the dining room for dinner and Nick sits next to Kevin and talks business so that he doesn't have to think about whether or not he's happy and how he feels about knowing that Miley's so profoundly unhappy.
He's not unhappy. He's really not. Are there things he'd change about his life? Sure. He figures that no one has a completely perfect life. But he's got a pretty great one and it feels wrong to complain about the little things that could be different. He absolutely believes that to be true.
Just like he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the happiest he's ever been is when Miley was in his life. Part of him wonders if maybe she still feels the same way.
###
Thanksgiving ends and everyone goes back to their lives. Except her. Miley stays behind, determined to start on a new life for herself. A happier life for herself.
Her parents tried to convince her that she should stay at the farm, but she knows that she's right about needing to leave. Which means that step one of her new life plan needs to be finding a place to live.
She calls Taylor.
If any of her friends knows about living in Nashville it's Taylor, even if she's only here for half the year anymore. Taylor will be able to tell her what real estate agent to use, what the new hot neighborhood is, where to go shopping. Or Taylor would be able to tell her all of that, Miley thinks, if she would just pick up the phone.
She's about to give up hope and leave a voicemail, when Taylor's voice comes breathless through the phone.
"Hello?" Taylor says. "Miley? What's going on?"
"Hi," Miley says brightly. "I'm in town. I wanted to see if you'd want to get coffee. Talk."
"Talk?" Taylor zeroes in on that one word. "Sure. When?"
Miley looks out the kitchen window. "How's now?"
"Oh," Taylor says with surprise. "I can do now. Why don't you meet me here? That way if coffee turns into, oh, I don't know, shopping, we'll only have one car to worry about."
Miley laughs. She loves Taylor. "Absolutely. See you soon."
"Okay, bye!" Taylor trills and hangs up.
Miley tucks her phone into her purse and heads out the door. Taylor's just what she needs to get this new life underway.
***
It takes Miley thirty minutes to get to Taylor's high rise building, and another ten to make it past security and up to the penthouse condo that Taylor and John occupy. When the elevator doors open up into the condo, the first thing Miley sees is Taylor sitting in her husbands lap on a piano bench. They're kissing. It's sort of disgustingly cute. But reminders of how alone she is are not really what Miley needs right now.
"Ahem," she says.
They break apart and two heads swivel towards her in unison. "Miley!" Taylor squeals in delight, extracting herself from John's arms and coming over to give Miley a hug. "You look fabulous."
"You, too." Miley hugs Taylor back. "Married life agrees with you, Mrs. Mayer." She looks over Taylor's shoulder. "Hi, John."
John gives her a half wave. "Hello. I hear you're going to go have girl talk." He makes air quotes around the words girl talk as he says them, and Miley bites her lip to keep from laughing. She doesn't know if Taylor brings out John's dorky side of if he's really this way all the time, but it's hilarious how lame he is and how much he just doesn't care about it. Kind of nice, really.
"We are," Taylor declares, grabbing her own purse. She gives John an absent kiss goodbye. "I'll call you if I'm going to be late. Maybe you can meet us for dinner or something."
"Okay."
Taylor grins at Miley. "This is going to be so much fun!" She takes Miley's arm and drags her back into the elevator. The doors close behind them and Taylor turns to look at her. "So," Taylor says. "Where to first?"
***
First turns into shopping, both of them accumulating bags of clothes and shoes and purses. Their conversation is limited to discussions of whether that top is a good color for Taylor or whether those jeans make Miley's ass look fat. It's nice and it's relaxing, but Miley kind of wants to get to the point of why she wanted to get together with Taylor already, so it's a relief when they finally collapse at a small cafe that Taylor swears has the best lattes in all of Nashville.
A waitress comes to take their order and when she's gone, Taylor looks at Miley with an almost knowing look in her eye. "So," she says. "What's going on, Miles?"
Miley blinks. She hadn't thought she'd been that transparent. Maybe Taylor's just gotten that much better at reading people. Maybe being happy and successful and all the things that Miley should hate Taylor for does that to a person. Maybe --
"Miley?"
Miley blinks again. "Sorry," she says. "My mind wandered. That's been happening a lot lately."
Taylor nods, worry creeping into her expression. "Is everything okay? I mean, you're not --"
"I'm not sick or anything," Miley says quickly. "I promise."
"But something's wrong." The waitress comes back with their coffee and Taylor waits until she's gone to say more, leaning forward, elbows on the table, looking at Miley intently. "Right? Something's wrong?"
Miley stirs her latte and bites her lip. "Yes." She looks at Taylor. "I'm moving back to Nashville. To stay, I mean."
Taylor's face lights up. "But that's amazing! Are you getting your own place? Or are you going to stay at the farm? When are you --"
Miley can't help it, she laughs. "Whoaaa there, Taylor. One question at a time." She takes a drink of her latte. Taylor was right about how good it is. "First, yes, I am going to get my own place. That was actually one of the reasons I called." She smiles hopefully at her friend. "You can hook me up with a realtor, right?"
"Of course I can."
"And I'm here to stay. Now, I mean. I'll have to go back to L.A. to pack up the stuff I want from my place there, if I want anything, but that's really it." She sits back in her chair and eyes Taylor. "It's crazy, right? Just uprooting my entire life and moving back here? I haven't lived here full time since I was like, twelve. I'm crazy."
"No," Taylor says slowly. She flashes a quick grin. "Crazy is getting married in Vegas without telling anyone, but I wouldn't know anything about that." They both laugh, and then Taylor looks at Miley seriously. "But it is kind of, I don't know, sudden, isn't it? What brought this on?"
Miley shrugs. "I just realized that I wasn't happy with how my life in L.A. was going. That I needed a change. And this--" she says, making an expansive gesture, "is home. So what better place to make a change?"
Taylor nods. "Okay." She smiles and pulls out her phone. "So let's get started on making that happen."
***
Finding a house, moving, it all happens faster than Miley thought it would. She wasn't even sure what type of place she was looking for, but somehow despite that, the realtor that Taylor introduced her to just seemed to know and the sixth place she looks at is the one. She knows it the minute she steps inside onto the gleaming hardwood floor of the front hall and sees the bright, airy rooms just waiting for her. She knows, instantly, that this is a place that she can be happy. This is a place she will be happy.
She makes an offer for the house and spends the next few days chewing off her fingernails as she waits to hear whether the sellers have accepted. When the realtor calls to tell her that the house is hers, she actually does a happy dance, something that she's glad no one was around to see. She has some pride left, after all.
The closing is set for just after the first of the year. Suddenly Miley has more advice than she knows what to do with. Her mom wants to help her decorate; Miley turns down the offer, she wants to do this by herself. Every day there's a new message from Taylor with the name of a shop that sells great rugs or a cool new art gallery that she knows Miley will love. Her dad's concerns are more practical, making sure that Miley knows how to do things like unclog a toilet or mow her new lawn, and Miley just laughs and reminds him that she's been living on her own for years now and she's somehow managed to come through it alive.
Miley knows that what really worries him is how far away she's going to be. It worries her sometimes, too.
December comes and goes in a blur of buying Christmas presents and home inspections and everyone coming back to Franklin to celebrate en mass, and then there's New Year's, and before she knows it, Miley's signing the final papers and she's holding the keys to her brand new home.
It's a little bit scary how quickly that all happened. But it's almost a relief in a way, because now she can get on with it, with living this new life that she's still trying to figure out.
She doesn't know what's going to come next. That's the scariest thing of all.
###
Nick goes back to Chicago. He tries to bury himself in his work, scouting local bands who might be ready for the next step, finishing production on the album, trying to write for himself. It's the last one that's the most difficult. He can lie to himself, no problem, but somehow it always comes out in his music. And there are things that he's just not ready to face.
So he throws himself into getting ready for Christmas. If he can't spoil his niece and nephew at Christmas, when can he? That they're both too young to really remember it doesn't factor into it.
The whole family descends on Kevin and Danielle's again, since Paul and Livvie are still little enough to need a Christmas morning at home where Santa Claus knows to find them. They all go to church together on Christmas Eve, and after the stockings have been hung and milk and cookies and carrots laid out for Santa and his reindeer, Nick helps Kevin put the presents under the tree.
They work in companionable silence, just the sound of Christmas carols playing softly in the background. The rest of the family is scattered through the rest of the house, Danielle and their mom in the kitchen getting things ready for tomorrow's Christmas dinner, their dad, Frankie, Joe and Demi in the other room watching A Christmas Story. Dad had argued for It's a Wonderful Life, but Joe and Frankie still take glee in watching the kid get his tongue stuck to the pole. Nick sort of hopes they're done in time to see it, though he'd go to his grave denying that he likes that part.
He finishes stacking the presents on his side of the tree and crawls out from behind it to see Kevin struggling to assemble a doll swing for Livvie. He watches Kevin for just a minute. Despite the furrowed brow and look of consternation, there's an air of contentment that surrounds Kevin that Nick envies. Kevin seems so sure that he's exactly where he's supposed to be, that he's who he's supposed to be. Nick wishes he felt that way about himself.
Kevin looks up from the instructions and catches Nick staring. He raises an eyebrow. "Can I help you?" He gestures towards the pile of screws and parts on the floor. "Or better, can you help me?"
Nick laughs and scoots across the floor to sit next to his brother. He takes the instructions from Kevin and turns them over. "It might help if you were looking at them right side up."
"I tried that," Kevin sniffs. "They make more sense upside down."
"Sure they do," Nick drawls, tongue firmly in cheek. "Pass me the screw driver, would you?"
Together they work to build the swing, conversation limited to things like "give me that piece, no that other piece." Somehow, and Nick's not sure how, they end up with a finished swing at the end.
As Kevin sticks a bow on top and puts it with the rest of the gifts, Nick stretches his arms over his head. "Next year," he says, wincing as his neck cracks in ways he's pretty sure it shouldn't, "Next year, look into preassembled, would you?"
"But what's the fun in that?" Kevin steps back from the tree and looks at it with admiration on his face. "It looks pretty great, right?"
"It does."
"Well then." Kevin claps Nick on the back. "Thanks for the help, little brother. I should go see if Dani needs anything."
Nick watches Kevin start for the doorway, but something makes him call him back. "Kev, wait."
Kevin turns back around. "What?"
Now, with Kevin looking at him expectantly, Nick feels silly. He's not even sure what exactly he wants to ask his brother and he's certain whatever comes out of his mouth is going to sound ridiculous. He shakes his head. "Never mind. I-I forgot what I was going to say."
Kevin takes a step back towards him. "Are you sure? You've been kind of, well, off is the best way I can think of to put it, ever since you got here. Is everything okay?"
Nick smiles weakly. "Yeah. I think I'm just tired. It's been a long couple weeks, you know?"
Kevin grins. "You're talking to a guy with two little kids in the weeks before Christmas. Believe me, I know. I think I could sleep for a week."
"Yeah, good luck with that," Nick snorts. He nods his head towards the stairs. "I think I'm just going to call it a night. I'm sure Paul's going to be up at the crack of dawn."
"I think you can count on that."
"Good night," Nick says. He heads for the stairs and Kevin heads towards the kitchen. He pauses at the foot of them, looking back at the tree which is still alight, star glowing at the top. It's Christmas and he's with his family. He should be happy. But looking at the star on top of the tree, he knows that he's not.
He wonders what it's going to take for him to be that way again.
***
Christmas morning starts at the ungodly hour of five a.m. The sound of feet pounding down the stairs wakes him, but it's Joe flipping his lights on and off while banging on the door that makes him get out of bed to chase Joe down the stairs. Some things just can't go unpunished. Waking him up while it's still dark outside is one of them.
Nick flops down on one of the couches and gives Dani a grateful nod when she passes him a mug of coffee. As he gulps it down, he looks around the room at his family. Paul's practically bouncing up and down in front of the Christmas tree while Kevin starts to play Santa. Dani is handing Frankie a cup of coffee with a disapproving look. His mom is holding Livvie, who is staring, enraptured, at the Christmas lights. Joe's tugged Demi into his lap, and Nick watches them for just a second, before he has to look away because of the jealousy burning in his stomach. Demi's laughing and Joe's pressing a kiss to her shoulder, and it feels too intimate for anyone else to see. And Nick's happy they have it -- happy they have each other -- but he wants that for himself in the worst way.
He doesn't like feeling so small.
A present is thrust into his hands. He blinks and looks down. Paul is standing in front of him grinning like only a four-year-old on Christmas morning can.
"Merry Christmas, Uncle Nick!"
Nick can't help it, he grins back. Even with whatever mood he's in, it would take a stronger man than him to resist his nephew's smiling face. The kid is really too cute for his own good. "Merry Christmas, buddy." He sets the present aside and makes a grab for Paul, tickling his sides mercilessly. Paul shrieks with laughter and Dani shoots him a disapproving mom look.
He gives her his best sheepish look. "Sorry?" He doesn't mean it.
She sighs. "I suppose it's not like he could get any more hyper." She holds up a hand immediately, as if to ward off the thought. "Joe, that is not a dare."
"I don't know why I have this reputation," Joe protests, frowning at Demi as she starts to laugh.
Demi presses a kiss to his cheek. "You're terribly abused."
"Presents?" Kevin suggest mildly his spot next to the tree.
"Presents!" Paul squeals, scrambling down out of Nick's arms and over to his father's side.
It's as if Kevin said the magic word; the room explodes into chaos. Frankie and their Dad help Kevin pass out presents, Paul practically quivers with excitement as they pile up in front of him. Paper is torn off and gifts admired. Thank you's are shouted across the room and hugs exchanged. It takes maybe thirty minutes from start to finish. It is completely exhausting.
After, Nick helps Kevin clean up the piles of shredded wrapping paper while everyone else crowds into the kitchen to beg for the first of the traditional Christmas morning pancakes. Nick's pretty sure that Paul and Joe are competing to see who can look more pitiful to get the honors.
"Thanks for the help," Kevin says as he passes Nick a trash bag. "And thanks so much for the drum set. Really."
Nick grins. It was an inspired gift idea if he does say so himself. "You don't think Paul will like it?" he asks innocently, stuffing the remains of the brightly colored paper into his bag.
"I think you might be Paul's new favorite uncle." Kevin pauses. "I also think that you won't be welcome back in our house until next Christmas, if then. Dani is going to kill you later."
"She loves me."
"She loves her sleep more. What on earth possessed you to think that was a good idea?"
Nick shrugs, and stuffs some more paper into the bag.
"Nick," Kevin says. "Is everything okay?"
Nick looks up in surprise. "What? Why wouldn't everything be okay?"
"Because it's pretty clearly not. Everyone is worried about you. You've just been... not yourself. For weeks now."
Nick sits back on his heels and shakes his head. "I'm fine."
"You're not," Kevin says. He stands up and pats Nick on the shoulder. "When you're ready to talk about it, I'm ready to listen." He heads towards the kitchen, and Nick watches him go, still caught off guard.
He didn't realize that he was being so obvious. He never meant to worry his family, he knows he's caused them enough worry over the years; he never would add to it willingly. With a sigh, he pushes himself up off the ground and starts towards the kitchen. He's just going to have to get better at faking it until he knows what he's going to do next.
If only that weren't easier said than done.
###
It doesn't take Miley long to realize that she's not cut out for a life of leisure. She's been working more or less nonstop since she was twelve years old and somewhere along the line it became normal to have a schedule for all twenty-four hours of the day. At first she channels all her energy into the house, going through paint chips and picking out furniture, making the house into a place that can become her home. But she can only agonize over the difference between Blush and Bashful for so long before her eyes start to cross, and she doesn't really have the patience for endless deliberation between styles of couches. She's more concerned about having somewhere to sit than what her couch says about her as a person. That she had that thought at all tells her that she made the right decision in leaving Los Angeles.
So she starts exploring the city. It's one thing to live somewhere as a kid, to visit it as a teenager, and another to settle there as an adult. She takes long rambling walks with her dog, learning her neighbors names when they stop to admire him. (That her dog might be better at meeting people than she is, she ignores.) She finds a favorite coffee shop where the barrista remembers her name and her order. The first time Miley goes in and is asked if she wants the usual, she almost cries. She's home.
Despite her best efforts, she can't escape the nagging sense of boredom. Of lack of purpose. It doesn't help that her agent is calling her more often than she ever did before, wanting to know if she's gotten over whatever's wrong with her and is ready to go back to work.
Miley knows she's not ready for that. But she's ready for something. She just doesn't know what it is.
***
Taylor shows up on her doorstep on a Wednesday morning, bright smile on her face, guitar in hand. Miley just blinks at her.
"What are you doing --" is all she manages to get out before Taylor is pushing past her into the house, leaving a breezy hello in her wake. She has absolutely no idea what's going on right now. She closes the door to find Taylor settling on her couch, already pulling her guitar out of the case.
She tries again. "Taylor, it's not that I'm not happy to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?" She nods towards the guitar. "And with that?"
"Oh," Taylor says, trying to look innocent. "Didn't I tell you I was coming?"
Miley laughs and crosses her arms over her chest. "You know you didn't. And you didn't answer my second question. What's with the guitar?"
Taylor manages to look sort of sheepish. "Well, you need something to do, right? We're going to do this."
"I'm still not clear on what this is," Miley says, making air quotes around the word this. She shudders. She's been spending too much time around John. That was not really a habit she wanted to pick up.
"We're going to write together, silly," Taylor says. She pats the spot next to her on the couch. "Come on, sit down."
Miley stays where she is. "Write together?" She shakes her head, panic starting to creep through her. "Oh no. No, no, no, no. No, we're not."
"Did you want to say no a few more times?"
"Yes. No." Miley frowns at her friend. "Why would you think I would want to do this? You know how long it's been since I wrote anything."
"I do," Taylor nods. "And that's why you need to do this."
"Maybe that makes sense in Taylor-world, but I'm going to need you to explain that."
Taylor sighs. "Miley, I'm worried about you. Demi's worried about you. Joe's worried about you. You just did this huge, life-altering thing, and you have to feel things about it, but you're not telling any of us about them." She pats the guitar. "That's what this is for."
Miley opens her mouth to answer, but Taylor holds up a hand, warding her off.
"And I know it's been years since you wrote anything. Don't you think that's maybe part of why you have so much bottled up inside? Writing is the best way to get what you're feeling out, even if you never share it with anyone else." Taylor gives her a rueful smile. "Or when you share it with the whole world. The point is to get it out. So that's what we're going to do."
"Do I get any say in this at all?"
"No," Taylor says, shaking her head. She pats the couch again. "Sit down."
Miley sits. She runs a finger tip over the curve of the guitar, taking a deep breath. She looks at Taylor. "What if I can't?"
Taylor takes her hand. Squeezes it tight. "You can."
In that moment, Miley believes her completely. She hopes that the feeling lasts. She feels certain that it won't.
***
Miley likes to tell herself there were a lot of reasons she stopped writing music. She was focusing on her acting career. She hated what the music business was becoming. She was afraid of forever being pigeon holed as Hannah Montana.
She's always known those were just excuses. She just didn't want to think about the actual reason. Or rather, the actual person.
Because as with so many other things in her life, it all comes back to him. The boy she fell all the way in love with when she was fourteen years old and never managed to completely move past.
It's unfair the kind of power someone can have over you, she thinks, even when they're not a part of your life and haven't been for years. The last time Miley spoke to Nick was at an after party the night Demi won her first Grammy. That was one year, eleven months, and thirteen days ago.
Not that she's been keeping track.
***
They settle into a routine. Twice a week, once at Miley's, once at Taylor's, they get together and write. Sometimes that means starting something from scratch, sometimes that means they're expanding on something one of them was working on by themselves. That Taylor has a lot to say is not a surprise. Taylor has always had a lot to say. But Miley's surprised by how easily the words are coming now, when they wouldn't for so many years. Now that they've started, they won't stop, and Miley finds herself writing lyrics about everything. How it feels to know that her career peaked when she was seventeen. The sense of betrayal she felt when she realized that Mandy was really only her friend because of the associated fame. Picking up the pieces of her heart all the times Nick broke it, knowing she'd never get all the pieces back. The things she does and doesn't understand about love. She writes about the fear of not knowing what comes next.
It's cathartic, just like Taylor said it would be. Miley thinks it's to her friend's credit that she doesn't say I told you so.
John's the one that brings up the idea of doing something more. They're in the living room at Taylor's, Miley at the piano and Taylor sitting on the floor with her guitar. John wanders into the room from their home studio, flops down on the floor next to his wife.
"You two should make a record," he says.
Miley snaps her head towards him, certain that he must be kidding. He has a completely serious expression on his face. She shakes her head. "No way." She looks at Taylor, who looks far too intrigued by the idea. "No."
"I don't know," Taylor says thoughtfully. "It's kind of a really good idea, don't you think?" She looks at John. "You think it could work?"
Before he can answer, Miley says, "I don't think it can work. Me, the person you've been writing the songs with. Not him."
They both ignore her.
John nods. "Maybe a digital EP or something? I know you've been wanting to do something different for awhile now." He shrugs. "This is different. And it's good."
Taylor has a faraway look in her eyes. "A digital release... Oh, I like that. Maybe a limited edition run of cds for sale at concerts or something."
"Concerts?" Miley repeats. "You've already got us doing concerts?"
Taylor finally looks at her. "Of course I do."
"Did it happen to escape your attention that I didn't agree to any of this? Not recording or selling anything or giving concerts or anything!"
"You didn't ever actually agree to write with me either," Taylor points out. "I said you had to and you kept opening the door when I showed up."
"And that was clearly a mistake!"
Taylor shakes her head. "It really wasn't. And Miles, I won't actually force you into doing something like this. Because this would be different."
"Thank heaven for small favors," Miley mutters under her breath.
Taylor ignores that and keeps going. "But we should do this. What we're working on, it's good. You have to know that. And you love to perform, even if you're pretending that part of you doesn't exist right now. Eventually you're going to want to do something like this again, and what better way than with one of your best friends by your side?"
"I'm reconsidering the 'one of my best friends' part," Miley says, trying to look mad. The thing of it is, she's not sure if she is mad. It does sort of feel like things are spinning out of her control again, like she has no say in her life, and wasn't that part of what she ran away from Los Angeles to get back? And she doesn't know if she's ready to share everything she's just figuring out with the world; it's as if the wounds of the past are finally starting to heal over, and now Taylor wants her to start picking at the scabs. She doesn't know if she wants the scars that would follow. But oh, part of it does sound fun. She does miss the rush of performing, of touching people in that way, of letting them touch her.
"I need to think about it," she says.
Taylor grins. Just for that, Miley keeps her waiting an extra two days after her decision's made. She says yes.
[Part Two]