TNT Short Fics

I just want you (1/2)

(This references the last chapter)

The studio is dim in that way she's come to love. Lamps instead of overhead lights. A soft glow over the console. The quiet hum of equipment that never really turns off.

Stockholm feels far away from everything else. From home. From the tour. Like a little pocket world she escapes to between the bright lights and grueling schedule.

It's late. Or early. She's stopped keeping track. She's trying to finish this song before she heads back to the States tomorrow, knowing she won't be able to slip away as often.

Max is in the other room, talking quietly with Johan, something about levels or timing or something she trusts them to handle. For once, she's not thinking about structure or production or what's missing.

She's thinking about a line. One she's not even sure matters.

Her notebook is open in front of her, pen resting between her fingers, tapping lightly against the page.

I want...

She huffs out a quiet laugh, shaking her head.

"Groundbreaking," she mutters to herself.

But she doesn't cross it out. Something keeps pulling her back to it.

Instead, she writes it again.

I want...

It's not how she usually starts. Stripped back. Almost too simple. Not layered in metaphor or built out of a backbeat.

Just... honest.

She leans back in her chair, staring at the words like they might rearrange themselves into something better if she gives them time.

They don't.

But something about them feels... right.

Simple in a way that makes her chest tighten. Like the answer is just a word or two away.

She thinks, briefly, of the last time she sat like this. All those weeks ago, cross-legged in a quiet hotel room, circling Crazier, realizing for the first time that maybe all those songs hadn't been for nothing. They'd just been waiting for the right person.

Just needed the right timing.

Her phone sits beside her on the table. Dark screen. Thousands of miles away from the person she's come to rely on to listen while she paces and rambles on during a bout of writer's block.

She can already hear his voice in her head.

Come on, Tay, whatcha got?

She smiles to herself.

"Not yet," she murmurs, like he can hear her. "It's not ready yet."

Because it isn't. Not quite.

But it's close in a way that feels different from everything else.

Just like all those songs before... a prayer.

She leans forward again, pen moving this time without hesitation.

Not chasing something. Not trying to be clever or new or bigger than the last thing.

Just writing it down.

What she wants.

Not in the abstract. Not in the way she used to, when it felt like describing something just out of reach.

I just want you.

Grounded. Specific. Real.

A life that looks like mornings that start slow. Like twirls and laughter in the kitchen, and someone walking through the door at the end of the day.