Fading Echoes (OCxArianaGrande) [Being Re-Written]

Chapter 4 (Re-Written)

**DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!**

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EastWest Studios
Hollywood, California
Studio One

Benny's POV

It had been a couple days since New York, and we hadn't slowed down. Not even a little. No parties, no press—just the five of us back where we belonged.

EastWest Studios, Hollywood.
You could feel the weight of every album that had been recorded here the second you stepped inside. The tall ceilings, the scattered amps, the vintage mics hanging like ghosts over the floor. Everything about it felt real. No distractions. Just the work.

We'd decided this was where we'd cut the new record—what Columbia was already calling our comeback. They wanted new. They wanted nostalgic. They wanted old songs reimagined and new ones that could hold their own next to them. So we started with a song that had been building since the night we left New York.

"Lost Cause."
Our own. Ours from the jump.

It started simple. Damon was tapping out a beat on the table with his sticks while we were still unpacking our bags. Just rhythm. No flash. A little off-tempo on purpose. And when I heard it, I looked over and said, "Don't lose that."

So we built around it.

Now he was behind the kit—centered in the middle of the studio just like the picture we snapped day one—floor toms surrounded by hanging mics and cord snakes running in every direction. He had the beat locked down now. Tense. Mechanical. Like a jaw that hadn't unclenched in weeks.

Amelia stood across from him, bass slung low, barefoot on the hardwood, eyes shut as she played through the bridge again. She'd written this riff before she had words for it—moody, sharp, just enough grit to drag the melody through the dirt. It held everything together.

"Can you make that last note hang a second longer?" she asked, barely looking up.

"Yup," Damon muttered, adjusting without missing tempo.

Fallon sat on the floor behind them, back against the wall, scribbling lyrics in one notebook while flipping through another. She'd already torn three pages out and crumpled them. The Sharpie she was using had stained her fingers black.

Bowie was on his laptop off to the side, running MIDI layers over the top and cutting in bits from the old voice memos we'd recorded on the road. Some of them were just me singing half a line into my phone in a hotel bathroom. Some were guitar parts from back in 2017 that we never used.

I was in the booth, watching it all through the glass. Mic on. Track armed. Just waiting for that perfect moment to cut in and spit the verse that had been living in my throat since New York.