Lies and Lullabies (Rodrick Heffley x Black Fem MC!!)

Chapter 12

     The next morning Deja heads out to get some breakfast while Rodrick takes a shower. Last night keeps replaying in his head as he sings Too Sweet from his chest. The way Deja looked into his eyes as she took him was enough to make him go all night, and well into the morning if she let him, but she insisted they have "jobs" and "responsibilities" or whatever. His phone rings and snaps him out of his thoughts, and since he's been sitting under the water for several minutes, he decides to finally cut it off. He steps out of the shower and wraps his towel around him before answering, "Hello?"

     "My best friend, so nice of you to pick up the phone," Drew says sarcastically through the other line.

     Rodrick puts Drew on speaker before he turns on the faucet, "Sorry, we had our hands full earlier this week. How is it back it back home?" After asking, he starts to brush his teeth.

     There's a short hum that betrays Drew's usual confidence as he takes a moment to think, "Everything's alright, Ben and I finally came to an agreement for the fifth song. We decided to try to write a song about our past drug usage," his friend informs him in a slightly apprehensive tone. "What about you Mr. Lace and Leather? The song is doing well online, you must be proud," he adds on after an extended pause with a more relaxed tone.

     "Besides the video shoots and being around Ace, it's not all bad," Rodrick responds after he wipes his mouth and walks out of the bathroom to look through his clothes and begins to get dressed. Now more than ever he wants to impress Deja with his outfits.

     "Right... I know Ernest chewed your ass out about that interview, but it was very bold- and right- of you to do. I know Deja was smitten," Drew teases.

     Rodrick whistles low as he reminisces about last night again, "Yeah, and after that I took her on all the rides, we ate, smoked... she kissed my lips... I kissed her other lips..." the drummer drags along with a smirk as he starts to clean up all of their clothes from the floor to be laundered.

     "FINALLY!" Drew yells loud enough to make Rodrick to jump and drop one of Deja's bags that he was moving. "Congratulations! You have moved out of the friend zone!" Drew continues, but he's met by silence on the other end. "You guys did talk? Right?" he presses Rodrick further as the line goes deadly silent again.

     "Talk about what?" a clueless Rodrick asks.

     "Rodrick, if you fuck this up, we're keeping her instead of you," Drew says before hanging up.

      He rolls his eyes and picks up the bags and sees a familiar little black book that slipped out as it fell. Her Paradoxe in the bag wedged between two of the pages in the songwriting journal, and the bottle is big enough that he can make out the drawing on one side of the page and what he made out to be lyrics on the other. Tossing the bag on the bed, he picks up the book quickly.

      'Is it snooping if it was already open? Oh well,' he thinks as he flips through the pages.

     As he combs through the abandoned and rewritten lyrics and melodies, he can feel her aura in every inch of the page from the little doodles she peppered all over during her brainstorming sessions to the angrily scratched out words. Some of the songs are more personal, with snippets of thoughts about her parents' divorce or her perception of love being tainted by Ace and previous drug abuse. She mentions her heart knowing what she needs, but craving familiarity, while others vent about her frustrations with the constraints of her work and feeling no autonomy in her choices.

     There's catharsis in several songs simply named Ace with roman numerals for chronology that hold different stories and feelings about him at different turning points in their lives. Rodrick's heart squeezes slightly, but it's not his place to be mad- not for a relationship as long and close as theirs that he merely intrudes on in his more self-conscious state. Still, he can't help his throat closing up slightly after they finally went all the way last night and feeling lackluster in comparison until he flips a few more pages and sees a drawing of him that makes him stop before he starts reading through some verses and half-abandoned lines that clearly make the framework of a song about him titled The Night and the Dawn.