isn't it? [taylor swift]

chapter 72

Leia groaned as she flopped backwards on the couch, her hands coming up to cover her face in annoyance. 

"It's not bad," Taylor started, but Leia immediately cut her off.

"It's not exactly good either, is it?" She groaned again, "I keep going sharp on the second chorus. Every. Single. Time." 

She flattened her palms to her eyes, groaning again as Taylor reached over and gently pried her hands away. 

"It's getting there, babe. You're just overthinking it."

"Well, unless Azul and Riven's first dance is going to be to me squealing like an off-key rodent, I think we are currently fucked," Leia replied, rubbing at her eyes and kicking her feet angrily from where they were hanging over the edge of the hotel suite couch.

Taylor rolled her eyes, covering her mouth with her hand for a second as she tried to avoid Leia catching the way her lips quirked up at the dramatic actions coming from the auburn haired singer. 

The blonde, who was sitting perched crisscross at the edge of the other couch in the room, picked up her battered acoustic and absently fingered the fretboard, a half-smile curving at her mouth. The lamp on the side table made her hair look gold and liquid.

At intervals, one of the cats would leap up and skitter across the sofa back, leaving a wake of blonde fur in the interstices of every cushion. Leia watched her, the way Taylor rolled her thumb over the worn six-string, the way she always started every session with the same lazy, downward brush, never in a rush, always letting the chord bloom fully before she moved on.

Leia felt at once like a pile of nerves and a petulant child, her worst impulses not quite outgrowing her younger self. But watching Taylor's hands - lean, steady, seemingly unbothered by the disarray - sidled something like calm into her ribcage, ballast for her breathless self-loathing. She sighed, heavy as a dropped curtain.

"Let's run it from the top. I promise I'll keep my catastrophic self-loathing at bay for at least four bars," Leia said with a sardonic little salute.

Taylor exhaled a hum. 

"You think you're, like, the first person to panic about singing at a wedding? I once crashed the Maid of Honour's toast with a full-verse apology after I butchered 'Can't Help Falling In Love' for two of my contract lawyers and their deeply unimpressed extended family. Which, by the way, was recorded so lives somewhere on tape that could end up online any day."

Taylor reached over and nudged one of Leia's knees with the toe of her slipper. 

"You wanna take five or you wanna nail it on the next pass?" 

Leia rolled her head to the side, cheek pressed deep in the upholstery. She stared at the ceiling, picking at the lint of her own complaints. 

"I want to be good enough," she mumbled, and it was the kind of honesty that wasn't meant to be heard. But Taylor heard it anyway. Taylor waited, thumb still resting on the chord. 

"You already are. It's just your ears that haven't caught up yet." 

Outside, wind pressed the curtains against the glass like a shy hand. The hotel suite smelled like clean linen and espresso, the latter evidence of Riven's brief, frantic visit earlier, during which he'd spilled coffee on the rug and nearly been mauled by Tate, who didn't seem to understand when Riven was at his final straw.

They'd agreed they'd sing a duet version of Lover for Azul and Riven's first dance - something that felt so easy at the time but now felt like a curse. Taylor had sang it live almost every night for most of the year, but merging their voices was proving harder than expected - especially when it was just them, Taylor's guitar and Leia's significant bundle of nerves.