AT LEAST IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU // Dream X Reader

23

The flat tire was fixed a while later, and you were back on the road to L.A in no time. The drivers had assured everyone that you would still make it in time for the show, and you had piled back into the buses, settling in for the drive. 

You would have plenty of time to analyze and re-analyze everything Clay had said before and after he had shotgunned you. 

Your phone sat open in your hand as you watched the countryside roll by outside the window, displaying the sloppy makings of that song - complete with new additions that you had added as soon as you had gotten back to the bus. You could still feel the ghost of his lips over yours, and the way he had held your jaw in place - gentle, but firm.

You closed your eyes and let the giddiness wash over you - sure, you had coughed and ruined the moment, but if anything, that shotgun had confirmed that Clay was at least a little into you, or willing to be. It felt a little strange, to have someone that you had admired for a while suddenly turn around and be dropping hints to you, but you weren't really complaining. 

You squeezed your phone in your hand, adding that thought to the list. 

You read through the entirety of the running journal again - it had grown quite large, over the weeks. There was definitely enough raw material here (there was probably enough raw material from the rambling you had done about the shotgun alone, but that was another story), the question now was what to do with it all. 

This next bit would require some outside help.

"Myra?" You leaned back into the couch and called out, waiting for a reply.

"Yeah?" Her voice floated up to you from the bunks, where she had holed up for a while, working on her own new songs. Every now and again you would hear her humming, or singing a few words. 

"Do you have a minute?" You asked. 

There was a pause, and then shuffling, as you heard Myra unwind herself from her cocoon of blankets and pad towards the front of the bus. When she came into vision, she was stretching her arms up over her head. "I was starting to get a headache from sitting in front of my laptop anyway." She said. "What's up?"

"So this is going to sound a little weird," You led in. "But I was hoping you could give me some tips on how to write a song?"

Myra raised an eyebrow, plopping down on the couch beside you. "You want to write a song?"

"I think so." You said. "I've been keeping, kind of a journal type thing, about the tour, and it's all short phrases that kind of look like lyrics, so I thought that it could lend itself nicely-"

"Can I see?" Myra asked, holding a hand out for your phone. 

You hesitated - no one had looked at it besides you until now, and there was a part of it that was a little embarrassing, like someone reading your diary where you ranted about your crush - but then you remembered that Myra hadn't even batted an eye at your crush on Clay in the first place and plopped your phone in her hand, letting her take a look over the note.

You watched her scroll back up to the top, her eyes scanning over the words and a slow smile growing on her lips. It was strange, watching her react to it all - an eyebrow raised here, a little laugh there - but as she read on your apprehension faded away. When she finished, she handed the phone back to you, letting out a low whistle. 

"So you've got it bad, bad." Myra said. "And you didn't tell me you got him to shotgun you - when was that?"

"Maybe an hour ago." You said, smiling sheepishly.

Myra punched you playfully. "Dude, you're supposed to tell me this stuff!" She said. "I'm your sister!"

"Well, I'm telling you now!" You retorted. "You just read all my deepest darkest secrets, I think that's pretty important."

Myra hummed. "I guess you have a point." She conceded. "So you want to turn that into a song?"

"Yeah," You said, nodding. "I just don't know how to do that, really."

Myra nodded, a pensive sort of look coming over her face. "The way I think about it, it's kind of like writing poetry, right?" She said. "It all has to flow together - I wouldn't worry about rhyming so much, but it has to have a rhythm to it, or it'll just sound choppy and bad. You definitely have some good stuff to work with though."

Myra leaned over, scrolling through your note again. "That one part about the fourth of July, where you talked about the stars and the fireworks, I really liked that..."

And so it went - Myra pulling pieces that worked well together, helping you shape them so that they fit together like puzzle pieces, tweaking, cutting, and mashing everything together until you had a cohesive verse and a half. It was harder than you thought it would be - you had to say all the lines out loud to make sure they fit together, and getting what you wanted while still making it sound good required a lot of thought. Out of all the weeks of journaling, you only used a few of the phrases verbatim - the rest became shorter or longer or something else entirely.

When you were done though, you had the beginnings of a real song in your hand.

You looked down at the verse and a half in a new note. "You do this for a living?"

Myra laughed, getting up off the couch. "Yeah, I know. Harder than it seems, right?"

"Yeah." You said, closing your phone. "All that, and I got about eight lines of a song out of it. Eight really good lines, but still."

Myra shrugged. "Quality, not quantity. And there's some real feeling in those lines - whatever you plan to do with the rest of that song, I know it's going to be good."