Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Ellie is seventeen, and she’s getting rejected from more record labels every day.

David must have done a hell of a job with his blacklist, after her failed multi-year contract was terminated after less than one. It was worth every fucking fine, leaving Resort Records, even if pissing off a subsidiary of a major label made her an enemy of everyone in the goddamn industry. She’ll never see a dime more from that shitty first album, no matter how many stores still stocked it and how many streams it earned on a daily basis. Her extended play, something she did own for once, is doing mediocre at best – it's as if she blinked and she missed the opportunity, because without the distribution and an actual recording studio that wasn’t a shoddily soundproofed hotel and a cheap audio setup no one seems to want to listen to her.

This whole music thing was a crapshoot in the first place, and she never should have listened to the first guy that called the crooning of a teenager special in a series of cafes in Boston. But it’s all she knows how to do -- write bad music and play guitar until her fingers bleed, and emancipated minors who once did decent record sales at sixteen have few other options for livelihood. Ellie sends her mediocre EP to every label whose address she can get her hands on, tries every old connection that has her number blocked.

David did a good job burning every bridge she ever had. It’s the only promise he’d ever kept.

-

One song does okay off the EP, gets passed around indie circles as if it’s a funny example of an almost pop-teen going existential angst that could be worse.

(Ellie’s first album was never meant to be so fucking overproduced in the first place, but what David wanted he got.)

It steadily rises on the streaming charts, gets recommended by a few young female alternative artists, gets playlisting – it doesn’t exactly pay the ever-rising bills in their entirety, but it’s something. And she gets a letter from some alternative label, a small shop run by an alternative rock band that had its biggest charts in the 2000s. She listened to them, a little, because she’s always been a little too much into what her peers deemed angsty dad rock.

Ellie swears she doesn’t give a shit about labels, not anymore. But the letter from Austin-Jackson is offering her a pretty good fucking opportunity, she gets to negotiate her terms and everything. They had some other acts on the label, mostly somewhere between indie and alternative and it’s a ballpark she’d been aiming for anyway. It’s signed by Tommy Miller himself, and a few calls later she gets on a plane to Austin. It’s not like she’s swimming in other options, but she refuses to trust it at face value and make the same mistake twice.

-

That’s how Ellie Williams, teenage songwriter and pariah of most record labels, ends up sitting across a conference table from Tommy, Joel, and their lawyer. They’re in a conference room in an office in Texas, tucked between studio spaces in a strip on the outskirts of Austin.

“How was your flight?” Tommy asks, voice pleasant. “Know it’s a bit of a ways from Boston.”

Ellie shrugs noncommittally. “So, what are your terms?”

Joel Miller, former rockstar and current producer, looks bored more than anything. Tommy, drummer turned record executive, keeps a friendly demeanor she doesn’t trust for a second. Friendly didn’t mean trustworthy, another lesson she’s internalized.

The presumed lawyer, a Black woman in her forties, clears her throat. “Do you have an attorney present, Miss Williams?”

“Lost ‘em with my last label,” Ellie replies, voice deceptively light. “Terms?”

Tommy clears his throat. “That gets negotiated here, we believe that you should determine how you want to-“

“Full rights over master recordings, I get final say over what gets published and distributed, no contracted public appearances beyond touring,” she recites the rehearsed terms she’s practiced, remembers the last shitty contract with vivid detail. She was fifteen and it’s not like a life in foster care prepped her on legal music industry jargon, but she’s learned the rules from being pummeled with them. “Those aren’t met, no deal.”

The lawyer processes that for a moment. “When you say final say over distribution-“

“Deal,” Tommy says immediately, easily. “All of our artists own their work. And we ain’t trotting you out on talk shows, nothin’ like that. Pretty sure Joel here would rather jump off a roof than do any of that shit himself.”

Joel grunts, the first sound he’s made all meeting. Clearly, his brother is the talker here.

“Tommy, let’s discuss distribution-“

He shakes his head at his lawyer, making steady eye contact with Ellie. “We’ll iron that out in a first draft of a contract, Maria. Then Ellie, you can send us your notes and we can go from there. We would recommend a lawyer, but we ain’t lookin’ to screw you over, here.”

“Heard that before,” Ellie says flatly.

Maria – the lawyer – writes something down on a legal pad, tears it off, and hands it over. “Here is the lawyer of one of our acts, you can send the contract to them and get their review. Entirely independent from us. I’m not pulling a fast one on a seventeen year old.”

Ellie furrows her eyebrows, genuinely confused. “And you’d want me to review this with one of your friends…”

Maria shakes her head. “Google them. They’re legitimate. They’ll tell you what terms their acts would like. We’ll give you the ones they’d want, anyway, but you should always get a second opinion.”

She’s pretty sure that’s a scam, looking at the piece of paper. Joel just looks at a patch on the wall, jostles his leg as if he’s forced to be here against his will. Maybe he is. Whatever. Tommy just looks carefully patient.

“We hope you decide to work with us, Ellie,” he says warmly. “We’ll send over more information and we can go from there.”

-

She does take Maria’s advice and sends the contract to a lawyer, even though she’s pretty sure it’s a bullshit gesture designed to make her feel better about her decisions. Ellie does at least fucking Google the woman first, and she does represent enough acts who keep their names out of the headlines to not completely fuck her over. But if she gets her masters, doesn’t get the kind of intervention David was so fucking prone to, then it’s better than nothing.

While she’s researching, she re-reads some old Wikipedia articles on the Miller brothers, refreshes her memory of the lore behind their band The Last of Us. Tommy’s article is light, a brief mention of a tour in Desert Storm followed by anti-war activism and some bar fights in the 90s that make him more interesting. It looks like his lawyer is his wife, which is funny to think about. Joel’s is longer, as if being the lead singer and guitarist of a rock band most popular in 1999 went hand-in-hand with a lengthy personal life section. Married in 1989, same year his kid is born. Shotgun wedding, so of course it ended with divorce in 1992. Daughter died in 2003 on his birthday, car crash. The Last of Us went on hiatus for ten years afterwards. Joel never gave any more interviews after 2003, just apparently attacked paparazzi with objects ranging from umbrellas to a cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

At least the limited appearances rule should be easy, then.

She signs the contract.

-

A perk of signing with Austin-Jackson (Wikipedia tells her the source of the label’s name comes from Joel and Tommy’s respective homes, established as a personal fuck-you to their previous label – another thing she gets) is that she gets recording space and they mostly leave her the fuck alone. Ellie has plenty of ideas of her own, executed them completely on her own in hotels and with nothing but borrowed instruments, sound equipment, and the equivalent of Garage Band. “Not bad for a sixteen year old producing an album in a basement ,” one Pitchfork reviewer said of her EP, and she took that as a compliment even if they only rated it a 5.6. A full studio and the lack of evangelical intervention should at least earn her a solid 6.

That’s at least her thought in the early stages of recording. Ellie has pages of ideas because writing music is one of the few things she knows how to do, the lyrics pour out of her easily in the margins of notebooks and abandoned notes app sketches. Melodies get brainstormed on voice memos, so she has the pieces and just needs the tools for execution. They set her up with a sound engineer, a twenty-something guy named Henry who has a sense of humor and gives a lot of affirmative nods. It’s really the best setup she could hope for.

That is, until Joel decides to be fucking nosy in the soundbooth.

He pops in and out, mostly saying nothing at all which is unnerving when you’re trying to sing and play guitar and test different keys. Then one day Joel opens his mouth, slow Southern drawl over the mic Henry usually just relays simple instruction through aiming for better sound quality. “Think it’d sound better with electric guitar instead of acoustic, something more, uh, punchy.”

She glares through the glass, pulling her headphones down. “Punchy?”

He holds up an electric guitar in the booth. “Try that chord progression on this. You’ll like it better.”

Ellie is still boring a hole into the glass with her eyes when he sets down the guitar and leaves out the back door.

“Wanna try it?” Henry offers innocently.

She would like to smash the guitar instead, as if the insinuation that she needed help needed a cathartic outlet. Instead she sighs, imagining the progression with more bite.

“Fucking fine,” the headphones clang to the ground.

(He’s right, it does sound better on electric.)

(Fuck that guy.)

-

The first song she records is about revenge.

Joel’s electric guitar comment notwithstanding, it’s pretty close to what she comes up with while writing it over voice memo. They add some drums to make it sound more distinct, less Garage Band and definitely less overproduced. They keep her vocals raw enough, and she pretends she doesn’t notice when on a later take the guitar sounds more polished than normal.

(That’s a lie, she accused Henry of fucking with her recording until he explains sometimes Joel likes to suggest riffs.)

(She points out it’s not a fucking suggestion if he just records it and puts it in there, but it does – again – sound better so she shuts the fuck up upon re-listen.)

She’s recording backing vocals when Joel waltzes in the recording booth again, coffee in hand. He waits for her to finish before speaking over the booth mic.

“Sounds good,” he grunts. Joel leaves almost immediately after the brief compliment.

Ellie tells herself she doesn’t care if one of the biggest rockstars of the aughts liked her song.

(She grins widely when she doesn’t think Henry is looking.)

-

The winning streak doesn’t last long.

Joel still stops in and out of the booth, as if earning his production credits one stiff sentence at a time. She’s got a fully developed idea, all angry riffs and big chorus, and he doesn’t seem that impressed with it. Even if Henry still looks like he’s having a good time with it.

“You’re just talkin’ about, what, the very thing you hate? More revenge?” Joel shrugs, and it’s the most he’s spoken in the booth. Of course it’s when he has something fucking negative to say. “Sounds too much like the last one, to me. Reign in the vocals on the bridge more. Do something different with the instruments, while you’re at it.”

Ellie gives him a sour expression. “It’s a different song.”

Joel gives an apathetic frown. “Prove it, then. Got that you’re angry on the last one, how is this anger different? Makes it relatable?”

“So sorry that the anger of a seventeen year old isn’t relatable to a fifty year old dude,” Ellie says flatly.

“Shouldn’t matter,” Joel insists. “Good song – should have somethin’ to work with for anyone.”

With that, he leaves the booth again. She still has more to say, more to argue about. She frowns in Henry's general direction.

“Do you think it’s too same-y?” she asks, beginning to doubt herself.

“Uh…” Henry gestures to the panel below him. “Let’s play that again and you decide what you want.”

She listens to it again and hates that Joel is right again. Ellie sighs, scribbling in a notebook. She can re-work the revenge verses, figure out how to change up the progression so it isn’t so similar to the last song. Maybe she can use more keys.

Ellie gets more specific, while she’s at it, about when she became what she hated.

-

Joel doesn’t offer a compliment on the reworked version, just a nods along with the song. It might be a compliment. She wants to throw something at the booth. Maybe tomatoes, her shoes could do. Joel leaves before she can decide what to throw. Ellie frowns, tugging off her headphones. Henry stands up to protest, but she’s already out the door.

She stops Joel before he can go back to his office.

“Did you like it?”

Joel blinks. “Now you care what I think?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she groans. “I did what you wanted, did you like it or not?”

“Did you like it? Did you do what you wanted?”

Ellie is about to have another barb locked and loaded, ready to tell him he’s being more annoying than helpful, when the TV behind him in the lounge shows a familiar face that makes her stomach turn. It’s David, accepting an award. Joel must see her face turn white, because he whips his head around to look with her.

“Your old label, huh?” Joel asks. “Surprised you came from that, seems like you aren’t so much into the teeny bopper shit.”

Ellie shoves past him to rush to the bathroom so she can vomit in peace.

-

Her hands are shaking as they hold back her hair, and she has to remind herself over and over that nothing happened. David never got to do anything, even though he’d wanted to. But she feels the ghost of hands and a sinister smile and it almost doesn't matter.

She wretches, even when there’s nothing left to come up. Her nails dig into her arm when she thinks of a hand on her thigh in a recording booth, of offers to drive her home to her foster parents, of an old man telling her she was special and different. Ellie did what she was supposed to. She told people. She fought. Maybe Ellie was supposed to know that he was bad news, maybe she was supposed to know that no one would believe her, that he’d put a spread in every paper through anonymous sources that she was some unhinged corrupted soul, the lesbian foster kid from the wrong side of the tracks he’d tried and failed to save.

Ellie knows the truth and she knows how much it doesn’t matter.

She hears a knock on the bathroom door. “Ellie?”

It’s the first time Joel has said her name. She groans. “Fuck off!”

“You alright?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

She does her best to clean herself up and washes her face in the sink. When she swings the bathroom door open, she tries her best to look more annoyed than traumatized. Judging by the look on Joel’s face, she doesn’t succeed. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it instead.

Ellie looks anywhere but at him or at the TV in the corner.

“You eaten lunch?” he asks, finally. “Good burger joint, down the road.”

She looks at him with confusion. “Uh…”

“Let’s eat lunch,” he says, and it sounds definitive. “The song sounds good, let’s talk about what you want the album to sound like.”

“I know what I want the album to sound like”

“Then you can tell me about it,” he counters,  an open offer.

-

“I want it to be darker,” she says in between bites of a cheeseburger, tucked into a counter while Joel sits beside her. He’s got his arms crossed around him, a hat as if it makes him less recognizable. He must come here enough, as the people around him leave him alone and the server doesn’t even have to ask what he wants. “The album. The first one wasn’t…wasn’t what I wanted. EP was, uh, closer. But I haven’t made an album I’m proud of yet, and I want to do that. I want it to be complex enough to be interesting, but not pretentious. Just want it to be, I don’t know, me.”

She waits for him to tell her it sounds stupid, a seventeen year old writing some kind of authentically dark album.

He just nods. “Okay. Then that’s what it’ll be.”

Joel doesn’t get in her space, doesn’t break all of the imaginary boundaries David so easily did in ways that made her always feel like she was over-reacting. He doesn’t tell her that she’s being stupid, that it would never sell and didn’t she want to be able to provide for herself . When he pushes her it’s in a direction she ends up happy with even if she resents that she does. Joel doesn’t talk about how mature she is for her age, just offers suggestions and calls it a day.

“Whole album shouldn’t be entirely pissed off though, gotta add some variety,” he adds, another suggestion.

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, man. I’ll write some gay love songs for it.”

Joel just looks nonchalant. “If it’s you, do it.”

It’s definitely not what David would have said. It’s a low bar to clear, but he does it.

“Okay,” she says with a nod and a bite of a fry.

“Okay,” he echoes.

-

Ellie still sees David when she’s re-working a song in her hotel room that night, still feels an imaginary hand on her leg. She swallows the bile that always rises when she thinks too much about it. Ellie thinks about Joel’s words about being specific, something people can relate to. She wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last. The thought makes her imagine something percussive, something that feels like rage in her veins.

The voice note is more melody than lyric, but they work themselves out when she stays up until midnight to do it. She’s angry all the time, so maybe this is her.

-

She does the main vocals in one take, then works with Tommy on the drums until she’s happy with it because Henry suggests he’d be the best bet for the beat she’s trying to think up. She layers backing vocals until it feels like catharsis, until she can drown herself in it.

Ellie tells herself she’s not waiting for Joel’s approval when he listens to it for the first time.

He listens like he’s concentrating, and he goes still at the bridge as if he’s connecting dots. It’s what she gets for being so specific about that particular fucker, and it might not be hard to draw a line from throwing up in the bathroom at a mention of a name to the lyrics she stayed up to write. His grip tightens on his coffee mug.

The song finishes, and he looks like he’s forgotten to say anything.

“Seriously?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t get anything?”

Joel seems to snap out of it. “It’s good, Ellie. It’s…it’s you.”

The corners of her lips twitch. “Okay. Good.”

-

They make a tradition of burgers a few times a week, margins of what to work on for a few different songs. Tommy is always busy helping everyone else in the studio, and Joel is the type to send notes and not interact much with artists but she insists on lunch because she can needle more.

“Seriously, I feel like I could redo that,” she insists, thinking about the song she wrote when thinking about Riley and suburban malls and hiding from cameras before she moved and Riley never responding to her letters. “The bridge needs something bigger.”

Joel looks like he’s concentrating between bites. “You sure it’s vocals?”

“What did you think?”

“Let me play around with the guitar bit, maybe we can amplify it a bit. Make it bigger.”

Her eyes light up. “Oh, you mean instead of re-recording my fucking guitar parts when you think I don’t notice?”

“I know you notice,” he says wryly. “You mistake me for someone who cares. In your contract, you could tell me to go to hell.”

“I’m not afraid to,” she insists, rapping her knuckles on the diner counter. “Just for the record.”

Joel shakes his head. “I know you ain’t. That’s what makes you good at this.”

-

Joel does indeed make the bridge bigger, one guitar flourish and a layer of keys at a time. The final cut starts restrained and ends with layers of instrumentation she wouldn't have thought up on her own. It works and it feels like her. Joel’s additions don’t overpower the idea, just emphasize it.

“Pretty sure you made a lesbian love song a banger,” Ellie notes, tugging her headphones off amused.

Joel gives her a look from the sound booth, but it’s more amused than not. “Nah. You did.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. "Since when are you humble?"

"I'm not. It's yours," he says, and it's with a slight smile. Ellie smiles back and it’s genuine, the way it scrunches her eyes and pulls at the corner of her face.

“I think I’m gonna really fucking like this album,” she says.

“I already do,” is his response.

-

After the recording session is over for the day, Ellie listens to The Last of Us’ latest albums back at her hotel on a streaming service she can’t be bothered to cancel. They’re spaced between 2014 and 2019, the result of a long hiatus after the events of 2003. She remembers the earlier stuff better, the angst and alcohol and anger driven songs that charted in 2001. She had an old Walkman in one of her foster homes, traded the early albums out with Pearl Jam and Depeche Mode, and she replayed those CDs until their scratches skipped so often they became nearly unlistenable. The newer stuff she only vaguely remembers.

When she listens to it now, she wonders if it’s who Joel is. The lyrics are overwhelmingly sad and grieving, the production either desolate and sparse or loud and overwhelming. The personal life section of his Wikipedia page and the death of his daughter distilled into abstract painful tracklisting, and she gets how that could’ve taken a decade to press record on. It feels invasive, listening to someone’s guts like this when she knows Joel isn’t even a man of many words to begin with, but she thinks of pain and music and maybe it all makes more sense. 

-

Ellie writes more songs in her hotel room, in a recording studio, on the margins of napkins at the diner while trying to sort out melodies. Joel helps finish the occasional sentence, has ideas for musical flourishes that turn feelings she has in her gut that she’s trying to express into concrete instrumentation. 

“Does he help everyone this much?” she asks Henry one day, when Joel is off to find a random instrument he thinks will sound best dialed back to the point it’ll barely be noticeable in the song.

Henry just looks at her from the soundbooth. There’s a faint smile on his lips.

“No. He doesn’t.”

Ellie raises her eyebrows. “What, so the seventeen year old can’t be trusted not to crash the label?”

Henry shakes his head. “Think it’s the opposite, he doesn’t care this much about other records.”

That should maybe concern her, the level of interest. But Joel is Joel - gruff and sometimes distant and sometimes warm and you get pieces of someone when you listen to their music, when you make music with them. Sometimes it’s ugly, their worst bits, and sometimes it feels like being understood. With Joel, it feels more like being understood.

Before she can reply to Henry, Joel is already back with a knock on the door.

“A xylophone?” Ellie asks, narrowing her eyes. “Seriously?”

Joel gives her an exaggerated sigh. “Trust me.”

So she does.

-

Ellie and Joel have lunch later that day, a tradition that only becomes more common, and linear notes are turning into a song that makes her more nervous than not. There’s vague ideas and allusions and then there’s whatever this is turning into, something specific and raw and bleeding. Ellie keeps coming back to it, even if it makes her nervous to the point of nearly feeling sick when she thinks of David and a girlhood she wants back even if it wasn’t great to start with.

“How did you write the last two albums?” she asks carefully. Her fingers tap on the counter, all nervous energy.

Joel just cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Ellie sighs, bites her lip. “I listened to them. Sounded painful, uh - and I have these ideas but they’re just…” she trails off. “Scary, the idea of putting that out there. It gets too dark. Sharing the gory details with the world.”

Joel swallows. He looks suddenly very interested in his watch, a dead clock he could have afforded to replace but didn’t. “Took me more than ten years, not sure I’m the person to ask.”

“But you did it,” she presses. “You still did it. I don’t know if I can.”

Joel looks up at her, something steeling his gaze. He looks as if he’s debating telling her something, weighing the pros and cons. She wants to push more, but it might backfire. He makes the decision before she does. “Sometimes getting it out is better than keeping it in. Starts to corrode you, after a while, like salt in a steel container. I, uh,” he puts a finger on his temple absentmindedly, a scar she’s been meaning to ask about but hasn’t had the courage to. “After Sarah…didn’t see much of a point to any of it. Getting back into music, feeling like I was keepin’ a part of her with me… kept me alive.”

She reads between the lines, can tell he’s not just talking about spiritual wellness but means it at its most literal. “Oh.”

Joel clears his throat. “If it helps, do it. You do it at seventeen and you’re braver than I was.”

She thinks of the soundbooth, of memories that might feel too hard. Ellie doesn’t know if she can do it alone, but she doesn’t think she can do it there yet either. “Can I send you, like, a voice memo? Later? I have some ideas I’m working on, but…”

“Sure,” he says instantly. “Could play with some music for it. Could leave it alone. Whatever you want.”

“You don’t have to,” she says instantly, shaking her head. “It’s stupid, I just-”

“Not stupid,” and his answer is immediate again. “Not at all.”

Ellie takes a deep breath and nods.

-

It takes a few takes.

It’s not the most sophisticated setup, a keyboard and the microphone of her phone, but it’ll have to do. The first draft is multiple pages, goes on forever, and she filters it down to its more basic components. It isn’t the most traditional song structure, an outro that builds until her throat is raw. It almost hurts to sing. It feels good to have out of her, like she’s finally letting something leave. 

She sends it to Joel at two in the morning and gets the read receipt almost instantaneously. It makes her hold her breath, like she’s done too much or said too much. What if he doesn’t believe her, because no one ever did? What if he thinks it’s ridiculous, that she never should have sent or written anything this personal in the first place?

Five minutes go by. He’s typing.

“Ellie, you’ve done something really special here. I’ll send notes in the morning.”

She swallows. It feels like relief.

-

She’s at the studio bright and early. There’s no Henry today, just Joel sitting in the soundbooth. She opens the door and leans against the booth, looking at her shoes instead of directly at him. “So…”

“Are you okay?” Joel asks, and she realizes how sleep ruffled he looks. Fifty-something rock star in a t-shirt and sweatpants, hair sticking up in multiple directions. She probably doesn’t look much better.

Ellie shrugs. “Better, I think.”

“David…” he says, and she flinches a bit at the name. He takes a deep breath. “Did he…”

Ellie shakes her head. “Nah. Just wanted to.”

“And you were…”

“Fourteen,” Ellie says shortly. “Just like the song says.”

Joel’s hands tighten on the desk. He looks like he wants to say a lot of different things. Instead, he just says. “I’m sorry.”

She stares beyond the glass, eyes glazing. “It’s okay,” she says.

“It’s not,” he counters immediately, but his voice is soft.

“No,” Ellie agrees with a stiff nod. “It’s not.”

There’s a beat of silence between the two of them.

“But it will be, I think,” she says finally. Joel perks up, studying her face. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It will be.”

There’s another long pause between the two of them, Ellie’s converse squeaking on the floor. Joel clears his throat. “I was thinkin’, with the imagery you got goin’, we could add some drums and layer things. Make it haunting. Already feels haunting, could just scale that up. Make it sound like how you feel it.”

“Do you think,” she feels lead in her gut just thinking about it. “It’ll backfire? The dots get connected, he sends a bunch of shit after me?”

“Fuck him,” Joel says instantly, and his voice has an edge that wasn’t there before. “We got your back, Ellie. Fuck him.”

She’s had a lot of people say they had her back over the years. Very few of them actually meant it. But when Joel says it, Ellie can’t help but believe him.

-

They record the song over the course of a week. It’s one of the most exhausting five days of her life. It’s raw and she does the take until it’s perfect, over and over again even when Joel insists that she doesn’t have to. He takes over the sound engineering bit, she likes Henry just fine but this feels too personal for too many people to hear live right now. Joel gets fully perfectionistic with the details, doesn’t push her too hard but she’s pretty sure he spent at least one night in that booth judging by how she finds him sleeping in it one morning.

Ellie kicks his chair, coffee in hand, and he jerks awake.

“Morning, old man,” she says cheerily.

Joel rolls his eyes, “Wasn’t sleeping, you little shit.”

“Mhm,” she says, a smile on the corners of her lips. “Here’s your shitty coffee.”

“Just because it isn’t seventy percent oat milk doesn’t make it shitty, Ellie.”

“That’s homophobic,” she tells him, and he rolls his eyes again.

-

As penance for Joel’s homophobia (a claim he steadfastly denies, and Ellie fully takes the piss out of him when he talks about having gay friends), she makes him do backing vocals on the gayest and most gothic love song she can come up with the next week. He does it with exasperation on his face, but she grins the whole time no matter how bleak the subject matter sounds. It ends up sounding pretty fucking good, the harmony, and she wonders if this won’t be the last time they go on a song together.

Joel says it’s the only time, but he’s said a lot of things.

-

They end up with a total of fourteen songs, a crop she’s happy with. She debates pulling one of them - its most inflammatory, the most detailed and painful - but Joel talks her into keeping it and says if David tries anything he’ll light his house on fire. When Ellie asks which one - LA, Colorado, upstate New York, or Utah - he just says all of them.

“Dibs on Colorado,” she says, “I’ll soak the whole fucking thing in gasoline.”

“As you should,” Joel agrees.

-

The album gets released, a flurry of magazine interviews and she turns down every other media request or video gimmick or late night spot. It sells…a lot more than she was ever expecitng. It’s slow at first, but word of mouth helps it pick up steam. Pitchfork gives it an 8.6, calls it candid and multi-dimensional and marveled at both her pen and the production. Not fucking bad for a seventeen year old whose last entry was more insults than compliments, she does have to say. 

Joel tells her the reviews don’t matter for shit, that how she feels does. 

“I feel proud,” she tells him over the phone, in a hotel in Brooklyn after spending the day with some pretentious journalist in a record shop. She’s gone from failed child star to indie darling, more money than she knows what to do with so she just tries not to spend it because she’s not sure it’s real anyway. “I’m proud of this album. And I owe you-”

“You don’t owe me shit,” Joel says immediately. “And good. I’m proud of you, Ellie.”

Her eyes glaze and she’s suddenly very glad he can’t see her. “Yeah?” she asks, trying to pretend her voice doesn’t break on the syllable.

“Of course I am,” he says, and his voice is warm.

Suddenly she misses Austin, misses the studio and the diner, and misses Joel more than any of it.

-

One day over expensive sushi she doesn’t even like, a journalist from some online magazine asks her who one particular song is about. Of course it isn’t the gay love songs. It’s the most painful one.

“I’m not answering that,” Ellie says quickly, looking down at her plate.

“There’s been speculation about your previous label-”

Ellie cuts her off, “And I don’t have to answer speculation. It’s music. I don’t have to give you any more details.”

She leaves before the woman can get another word in. It gets published a month later anyway, because of course it does. Ellie gets an apartment in downtown Austin because she tells herself she likes the sun, even though she burns easily and hates sweating and never had such an affection for Texas before. She has a neighbor named Dina who has no idea who she is, and that’s not even one of the prettiest things about her. Tommy, Maria, and Joel invite her over for dinner at least once a week.

They start planning a tour, all small venues and a couple of manageable festivals, and Joel tells her if any of the tour managers give her shit about her hair or if any Warped Tour shenanigans happen that he knows how to dislocate kneecaps. Ellie laughs even when he looks serious about it.

-

“I’m serious,” Joel continues at the diner, as they’re sorting out tour logistics. She has a manager for this shit by now, but Joel has a long list of absolute do-nots in festival lineups of men in bands with storied histories with underaged girls. He may have gotten into fistfights with more than a few of them, back in the day. It’s a hot day in July, all Texas heat, and she rolls her eyes as he continues. “I know you can protect yourself, but these guys are bad news and you’re seventeen-”

“Joel,” Ellie says flatly. “I’m eighteen and a lesbian.”

Joel furrows his eyebrows. “You are?”

“Seriously, do I need to tattoo gay on my forehead?”

“No,” Joel shakes his head. “I mean, since when are you eighteen?”

Ellie shrugs noncommittally. “Today.”

“It’s your birthday?”

“What about it?”

“And you’re spending in here with this old man?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. It's a teasing question.

Ellie kicks him under the booth. “Maybe I wanted to spend it with this old man.”

Joel looks at her with something soft in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

-

Ellie is on tour when she gets served.

Barely eighteen in Phoneix and she already has to deal with legal proceedings, go fucking figure. She sees the name on the document, given to her when she tries to order a goddamn sandwich in an airport as if the legal team followed her tour schedule, and reads David’s name along with the word defamation, citing an interview in which she didn’t even say anything and lyrics that she never said his name in.

She calls Joel before she calls Maria.

“Fuck him,” are Joel’s first words when she explains the situation, and that’s why she called him first.

“Fucking fuck this fucking guy,” she agrees, cursing in an airport bathroom. Her voice echoes off the walls. She’s sure people can hear her, she just can’t bring herself to care.

-

She performs that night exhausted, hoping it doesn’t show that she’s thinking about a creep who is currently suing her for defamation of character, hoping she doesn’t break down on stage. Ellie doesn’t, thankfully, and it feels good to hear people sing along with songs she never thought she’d be able to get out. No one asks for songs from her first album. Thank fucking god, she’s not even sure if she has the legal right to perform them anymore even if she ever wanted to.

When she gets backstage, tired in her bones and ready to crack, Joel is there.

Ellie hugs him before she can think about it. “How - I thought you were in Austin?”

Joel squeezes her right back. “Got the first flight here I could find. You’re doing great, kid.”

She lets herself cry for the first time since she got the papers.

-

Ellie has to cancel the last leg of tour because of trial proceedings. Maria tells her it’s stupid, the way they’re dragging it out, trying it in Colorado instead of anywhere actually relevant. She’s read enough to know this judge won’t be sympathetic to her, that it doesn’t matter how good her legal team is. David has a well-oiled fucking machine, more money than God, and the picture he paints of an ungrateful brat who made up stories to sell records when she just was let go for using too many drugs and being a basketcase is persuasive enough.

Even if the hardest drug she ever did was fucking edibles, she doesn’t exactly have the proof to back up any of David’s most creepy moments. There were no witnesses to say where hands were, no recordings of the worst things he’d ever said, no proof beyond her own memory. She never even said anything, not explicitly, about him - and that’s all the case is.

Joel is there through all of it, cancels the rest of his plans even though she swears he shouldn’t. He’s supposed to tour soon himself, but he tells her it can wait and they spend an eternity in the chambers of a rural Colorado court. Tabloids love it. Indie darling and aging rock star causing a flurry in court against a music mogul, the papers write themselves.

She has to see David every single day. Ellie never speaks to him, Joel a buffer at all times, but she has nightmares every single night.

They’re waiting in the hallway during a recess one day, Ellie is trying to prepare for the next line of ridiculous questioning, Joel pacing next to her, when David walks by.

“Careful now, Joel,” David says, his voice cheery. “She might try to get you, next. Girls like that want a daddy until they don’t. Then they start crying wolf.”

Joel immediately punches him, pummeling him to the ground. His knuckles are bloody by the time the bailiff pulls him off, and David has a wide grin on his bleeding face when Joel is held in contempt of the court. Ellie closes her fist, eager to continue what Joel started, sick just looking at David and wishing more than anything she could just burn his house down with him in it and be done with it.

-

Ellie is out of the loop the next day. She hasn’t seen Joel or Tommy all day, even though Maria told her Joel was released, and there’s a flurry of constant activity around her. Her lawyer, the one licensed in Colorado, tells her to hang tight. It’s been weeks of feeling sick and seeing the face she sees in her nightmares, she’s exhausted. And when it ends, it should end well but it doesn’t. The charges are dropped. Shortly after, she gets the notification that Austin-Jackson Records has dropped her too.

When she sees Joel in the hallway, knuckles bandaged, she shoves him. “What the fuck, Joel?’

The bailiff looks ready to intervene, this time in Joel’s defense, but he waves her off. “Ellie, you’re better off this way. Trust me.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Joel,” she says, finger stabbing his chest. “You have no fucking business telling me I’m better off-”

“Ellie,” he protests again.

“No,” Ellie spits out even more vehemently. “Cut the shit, Joel. Everyone I’ve cared about has left me, everyone fucking except for you. And I get this fucking notification, not even from you, and you’re telling me I’m better off? I’ve spent the last three weeks in hell, Joel.”

“And this is how we end it, Ellie. You’re better off.”

“I’m getting the fuck out here,” she says. “We don’t ever have to fucking talk again.”

She gives him one last withering glare before she steps out. She can’t bring herself to care about the look on his face, about the fact everyone is watching her. Ellie is getting on the first flight fucking out of here. She calls her Austin apartment complex in the car, ends her lease and orders movers for all of her shit. There’s an offer from a Brooklyn record label in her inbox, led by some women in alternative music. Ellie will read it on the plane.

-

She takes the offer from the other label. Someone recognizes her on the plane. It’s a young girl, saying that her album helped her.

Ellie bites her tongue before she can say it sure as shit didn’t help her .

She makes a plan to move to Brooklyn and blocks Joel’s number.

-

Ellie is able to continue the tour, the terms of the contract still favorable even without the original label. The people at the new label are cool, leave her alone for the most part and let her do her thing. The cut they take of touring, they tell her, just goes to helping produce albums for other women in the industry. It’s something at least. She went from the angsty dad rock label to the women in music one, independent and alternative all the same. It should be a better fit. She looks for Joel in the crowd or backstage even when she tells herself she doesn't. Ellie tells herself it doesn’t hurt when she never sees him. She’s lying to herself.

-

Ellie gets booked for a festival that The Last of Us is headlining. She thinks of Joel and his warnings about other bands in a diner on her birthday, but she still ends up booked the same fucking night with the last band she wants to see. Cat, one of the other acts signed at the label with her band, is performing the same night. She must notice how Ellie avoids any shared band space like the plague, when Cat knocks on Ellie’s bus she peers through her blinds before opening the door.

“What?” Ellie asks flatly.

“You’re not normally this anti-social,” Cat says, sounding a mix of amused and concerned. “What’s the deal, Williams?”

“Who says I’m not normally anti-social?”

“Me,” Cat counters. “This about your old label?”

“Which one?” Ellie asks, voice acerbic.

“You ever think about the chances of getting dropped from one label and getting signed to another one on the same day?”

“Not really.”

“Well,” Cat says, her voice light. “Maybe you should.”

-

When Ellie does her set at dusk, Joel is backstage. He’s backed up carefully, like he’s not trying to be intrusive, like he didn’t help her with every song on the record. He watches the whole thing. She tells herself she doesn’t care. Ellie shoulder checks him when she walks back, knows how immature it is, and Joel doesn’t say anything. His band plays next, and she pretends not to hang onto every word.

She thinks of what Cat said, thinks about how long it took her to get another label between David and Austin-Jackson, and the timing of everything. The charges were dropped and she got dropped from the label on the same day. He said she’d be better off, and she had a new contract in her inbox on the same day.

Joel sings an old Tom Petty song in the middle of the setlist. It sounds like an apology. 

“When it mattered most I let her down,” and he’s right about that, at least.

He looks over at her backstage. Ellie wants to believe it’ll all work out, too.

-

Ellie finds him with a beer on the steps of a tour bus, everyone else out enjoying their night and celebrating. It’s a cold spring night in Chicago, her record sold a shit ton of copies, and she’s spent most nights since the trial on sold out shows. She missed him at all of them. 

“Why’d you drop me?” she asks, and Joel looks up at her. 

“So you wouldn’t have to keep goin’ through that trial,” he says. Her gut twists. “I made sure we’d get you somewhere else, first.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

Joel shrugs. “No, probably not with the next label. They’d have wanted to snatch you up, anyway. Great record, talented kid. It’s a no brainer.”

Ellie sits next to him on the steps. She lets out a long sigh, folds her jacket around herself. The breath from her lungs turns into clouds in the crisp night air. “I wanted to stay.”

Joel looks down at his own calloused hands, sets the beer aside. “I’ve been talkin’ to Maria. There are others, with David. Got a reporter from the New Yorker involved. They’re thinkin’ about comin’ forward. You wouldn’t have to do anything, nothin’ you didn’t-”

“I’ll do it,” Ellie says instantly. 

“You don’t have to,” he says, “You’ve done enough. Suffered enough.”

“Then it should be worth something.”

There’s silence between the two of them, for a while. Ellie pulls out her phone and unblocks his number. He laughs at her, just barely.

“I’m sorry, kid. I should’ve told you.”

“Not like I let you.”

“I could’ve found a way.”

“And you did.”

Ellie shivers. Joel just takes his jacket off and drapes it around her shoulders. She wants to protest, but she doesn’t for the same reason she liked working with Joel in the first place. It felt good to have someone in her corner, to have someone care without ulterior motive, to have someone who gave a shit. Joel cares so much it bleeds, and that means something.

-

Ellie adds her name to the piece. She’s one of a dozen, which makes her sick to think about and comforted at the same time. The charges land on David this time, not her or any of them. The writing is on the wall and the label is eager to rid themselves of bad publicity. She adds the song she never had the courage to sing live on the setlist for the rest of the tour. People scream along with it every night.

After the tour is over, she moves back to Austin. She settles back into her old apartment, gets a cat and a plant and the courage to ask Dina on a date. They hide from the paparazzi in baseball caps and convoluted routes home. She switches labels back to Austin-Jackson without the looming threat of David over her head. She gets lunch at the diner with Joel every week. They write a few songs together in the margins of old napkins, craft melodies over voice memos, get takeout in sound booths. It feels like home.

Chapter Text

When Joel first meets Ellie, seventeen years old in an oversized hoodie and puffed up with false bravado, he’s already sure he knows how this goes. Tommy pushed this more than he ever did, the label thing, and Joel was always more interested in telling big labels to go straight to hell than he was dealing with administrative pieces. Tommy took to it easily, loved the idea of taking young musicians under his wing, and Joel’s greatest contribution to Austin-Jackson got to be his name and fixing occasionally shitty production done by some twenty-five year old who swore he was hot shit.

Ellie’s isn’t the first contract negotiation he sits in on. Sometimes they’d gush about what big fans they were, talk about what an honor it was. Joel really didn’t give a shit about any of that, the green and wide-eyed kids sure this was their dream. Ellie doesn’t gush. She’s all business, direct and to the point. It’s not exactly what he was expecting from a former major-label quasi-child star, but Tommy has always insisted he has a good gut about these things.

(Tommy just likes a bandwagon even better if he gets to start it, is the truth.)

When the kid leaves, still looking like she’s itching for a fight even with the most favorable terms, Maria and Tommy talk quietly amongst themselves. Joel just sits quietly, arms crossed on the table and foot tapping on the floor.

“You aren’t worried she’s unstable , are you?” Maria’s voice is low, eyes lingering on the door. “I did some research, and…”

“Forget the research,” Tommy says immediately. His eyes flit to Joel. “If half of the shit they said about us on the internet were true, you’d still have to bail our sorry asses out of jail.”

“But I did a few times,” Maria rolls her eyes. “Remember when you backed your car into a photographer?”

“It was a gentle warning tap.”

“Or Joel’s PBR incident?”

“When they asked about Sarah-”

Joel cuts that off, swallowing. “What kinda rumors about the kid, Maria?”

Maria sighs. “Ellie Williams has a bit of a reputation of being…difficult to work with.”

“Sounds like she’d fit right in,” Tommy says cheerily.

“She’s a kid,” Joel mutters, taking a sip of the coffee on the table. “Where are her parents, anyway? Seventeen? That’s still a minor, can she even sign a contract?”

“Emancipated,” Maria answers. “She was in the foster system before. Managed to score a recording deal at fifteen under Resort Records. Got dropped. Tried to go it alone. Now she’s here.”

“We make these decisions together, Joel,” Tommy admits, leaning over the table to look at his brother. “I have a good feeling about this, but if you-”

“Nah,” Joel shakes his head. “Go ahead, sign her. I don’t give a shit about this stuff. Just leave me out of your little mentor thing, alright? Do whatever you want, I ain’t getting involved with the kid.”

That was the thing about signing young artists, Joel has learned the hard way. They’re all wide-eyed optimism, hoping for someone to take them under their wing and show them the ropes. Tommy loved that shit. Joel avoided it like the plague. No one at the label aside from Tommy and Maria even had his damn phone number. The distance with the annoying shits was always necessary, it’s not as if he had it in him to be a guiding hand or, even worse, a paternal figure.

Tommy acquiesces with a quick jerk of his head. “As always, Joel.”

-

Joel wasn’t always like this. Twenty years ago, he was the responsible father. Always brought his daughter to tours - checked in on her homework between rehearsal and showtime - and got back from the studio at a reasonable hour so he could pick her up from school. Sarah loved it. He taught her to play guitar, introduced her to more than one of her favorite pop stars, and spent more than one session in the soundbooth with her perched on his shoulders. Joel skipped afterparties to fly in for parent-teacher conferences, blew off the Grammy’s for being too close to her birthday, and everyone knew from the moment she was born he’d devote himself to her first. Her mom had said she’d had to choose, her future or their kid. She’d chosen her future. Joel chose both until he didn’t.

He was with Sarah when she died, a wreck caused by bloodthirsty photographers following too closely. They printed remorseless photos of him slick with her blood and pulling her out of a crumpled backseat, until getting sued into oblivion. Joel chose oblivion, for a while, after that. He got 5150’d, after a failed attempt with a revolver Tommy found him in the aftermath of. There was a failed stint in a mental health facility as if enough therapy and SSRIs could change the fact that his daughter was dead and he was still here.

She wouldn’t have died, he knows, if he didn’t have a career people tailed him for. In many ways, her mother did her the greater kindness by not trying and failing to do both. 

Rockstars were supposed to go to rehab, and he earned that eventually too after enough opioids made Tommy fucking panic. It’s not as if he could sleep without them, for the first few years, and by 2010 he was a reanimated corpse. Walking, talking, taking his good meds and not the bad ones, at least seven years from a suicide attempt. By forty-six, well into the washed up years, he was out of rehab and back to trying to figure out how to be a person again. He started writing music again because that’s all he knew how to do. 

Sarah’s voice lives in his head, and when he wakes up every morning it’s still burned into his memory.

-

Ellie doesn’t ask for help.

Normally, Joel has to go into hiding around new acts. They have a million questions for him, a long list of notes and they’re sure he can fix all of their problems for them. Joel makes himself scarce when they first start visiting the studio for that very reason. When he does enter, it’s either early in the morning or late at night. He goes a few weeks seeing glimpses of Ellie in the studio and making escape plans for if she has a million questions she’d like for him to answer. 

She doesn’t do that, though. Ellie just sticks with Henry in the soundbooth, comes up with her own melodies with an effortlessness. Ellie studiously ignores him, and he’s thankful for it. That’s how he works best. Joel will send notes once he gets a quasi-finished project, all through Henry, and call it a day when that’s over.

For seventeen, though, the kid is pretty damn talented. There’s one chord progression she’s been working on for a couple days now, he’s noticed when he’s been in and out. It sticks in his head, the way the best ones always do. She plays it on acoustic. He finds himself alone at the studio later that night and tries it out himself. It feels like there’s something missing, even as catchy as it is. He tries it on electric and it feels right. 

It’s something he should keep to himself, let her figure it out on her own.

-

Joel lives in the same town he did when Sarah died, but not the same house. It was too big for just him, and there was never going to be anything else. In 2010 he sold all of his shit for an apartment downtown with good security and without the doorway to her bedroom that had his fingers itching for another trigger. Tommy splits his time between Austin and Jackson - he said being in Jackson helped clear his mind away from anyone who’d know who he was - but Joel has always been terrible at letting things go.

There’s a closet full of Sarah’s things in the apartment, and it stays closed.

When he gets home from the studio, he finds himself thinking of her and the old CDs still intact in a box with the rest of her favorite things. He thinks of her guitar. He thinks of another teenager, fingers calloused and working on a chord progression until it’s perfect. 

Joel will tell her about it in the morning.

-

When he does, she almost takes it as an insult until begrudgingly accepting it works. He bites back a grin listening to the final product, at how pleased she is with it. He hides it behind a coffee mug and shows himself out before she reads too much into it. The look Henry gives him, on the other hand, is more knowing than he’d like.

Joel always was a goddamn sucker for a good song. Tommy’s newest recruit may be trouble, but at least she’s talented.

-

Joel usually saves his notes on projects until the end, makes the artist come back to re-record if they even want to (and they usually do, after all this time his word usually means something). But he’s itching with curiosity to see what the kid comes up with next, if the song was a fluke or more consistent. He listened to some of her earlier stuff the other night, the first pop-rock album by a fifteen year old not exactly the marketed taste of a fifty-six year old man. Her second EP, as inconsistent as the production was, lands somewhere closer to universal. 

The second song is good, but he knows she can do better. He tells her as much, and as big as the chip on her shoulder is she seems to take the suggestion and run with it. The new version lands somewhere more complex, and she seems happy with herself when he nods along. He shouldn’t intervene any more than he already has, shouldn’t make the kid get too comfortable with him being around so much, so he leaves before he can add anything else.

She stops him in the hallway, and he balks.

“Did you like it?”

He resists the urge to laugh at her question, all five feet of her trying to look indignant. “Now you care what I think?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ellie says, and if he’s learned anything about her it’s the goddamn mouth she has on her.. “I did what you wanted, did you like it or not?”

“Did you like it? Did you do what you wanted?” 

It’s the same question he tends to ask everyone, but instead of having either acceptance or another retort ready to go she just looks sick. Joel’s gut twists at that, the way she looks like she’s been punched in the stomach. Of course he was too much of an asshole, of course he’d said something to hurt a teenager’s feelings. But her eyes aren’t on him, and he follows them to the TV screen. It’s an acceptance speech of some bigshot record label owner, some asshole named David who always recruited the young Disney kids and passed out Bibles one year at some goddamn industry event. Joel had found him insufferable.

It’s then he connects the dots from the look on Ellie’s face to the man on the screen.

“Your old label, huh?” Joel asks casually. “Surprised you came from that, seems like you aren’t so much into the teeny bopper shit.”

She rushes off before replying, shoving him in her hurry, and he feels like he’s done something wrong again. He’s out of practice with knowing how the hell to speak to teenagers, and he wonders if he’s done something to offend her. Maybe teeny bopper shit was insulting, but surely she didn’t think he’d meant that’s all she -

Joel is a few steps behind her when he hears the unmistakable sound of retching coming from the bathroom. Suddenly he knows it has nothing to do with him. He wonders what David did to cause this kind of reaction in one of his past acts. Joel suddenly wishes he didn’t have an imagination.

He knocks on the door. “Ellie?”

“Fuck off!” and at least that is a response he’s expecting. Joel frowns, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall next to the door. He’s not exactly offering to hold her hair back, not asking for any gory details of what happened before this. But she’s a kid, for fuck’s sake.

“You alright?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Again, with the mouth. She’s all teenage hurt and at least that’s something he can recognize, even at his big old age. He hears water running, and he has a million questions: about David, about what she did before this, about where she was from and what got her here and what made her want to do this if the last time around went so poorly. He tries to pick one by the time she opens the door. Joel just closes his mouth instead. She won’t even look at him. It shouldn’t sting as much as it does.

He clears his throat. “You eaten lunch? Good burger joint, down the road.”

Joel is lying. It’s a goddamn Waffle House. She agrees to come anyway.

-

Ellie is mystified by the jukebox at the Waffle House, and rather than playing anything good (or holding true to her threat and playing any of his shit) she opts to purchase Careless Whisper twenty-seven times. He wants to end it after two. A server, mercifully, resets the machine after four. She groans in disapproval, swearing her money ought to be used fair and square.

“I’d bust the damn thing if I had to listen to it a fifth,” Joel groans. “I thought it limited your choices, anyway?”

“It does if you pick the same song by the same artist. Careless Whisper, however, is one of the most covered songs ever. So I stacked the queue with Kenny G and Seether,” she says, looking proud of herself. “What makes a whisper careless, anyway?” 

Joel sighs. “Ask George Michael.”

“And what’s small, red, and whispers?”

Joel blinks in utter confusion, adjusting the ballcap on his head. It feels like a stupid disguise, more safety blanket than useful. 

“A hoarse radish,” Ellie finishes, cackling at her own joke. Joel resists the urge to slam his head against the counter repeatedly. That would cause a scene, he knows.

“Jesus,” he mutters, shaking his head instead. Ellie’s grin widens. So much for her leaving him the hell alone.

-

She talks about what she wants the album to be more cogently than a lot of adults do. Joel isn’t exactly a stranger to darker veins of music, given his head has lived in a dark place since 2003. But he’s not sure what put a teenager there, or what was it that made her sick in a bathroom at the studio. Ellie is pouring with ideas, seemingly at all times, and swears she has another one in her car when they get back to the studio.

Ellie’s beat up old Subaru is filled with more fast food receipts than should be humanly possible, but she looks bound and determined to find something in the depths of discarded bags and too many papers. “Aha!” she says, sounding victorious. “I found it, old idea. Gonna rework this.” 

Ellie holds up another receipt. Joel squints.

“That’s a Starbucks receipt, Ellie.”

Ellie frowns and flips it over. “Notes are on the back.”

“Uh huh,” Joel says, biting back a grin. He gives her a tip of his cap. “You have fun with that, then.”

“And you’ll listen to it when it’s done tomorrow.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“I’m ambitious,” she counters, sticking her tongue out.

Joel snorts. “See ya tomorrow, kid.”

Ellie just salutes at him mockingly. Joel salutes back. She flips him off. Joel just shakes his head, more amused than he’ll ever admit.

-

She keeps her promise, the song is done the next day. It’s a good song and a hard song to listen to. He thinks of David, thinks of her response, thinks of this song - and he knows that man crossed lines he never should’ve with the angry girl in the recording studio. Joel suddenly imagines the next time he sees the man, his fist connecting with his jaw with a sickly snap. He exhales.

Ellie looks at him expectantly. 

He wants to tell her if he sees David, Joel will gut him himself. Instead, he says, “It’s good, Ellie. It’s…it’s you.”

She almost smiles.

-

Joel thinks about her all the time, thinks about what she might like or might hate. An instrumental that could go in one of her songs. A novelty keychain in a gas station that looks like the damn NASA patch on her bag. Maybe he should get more involved or less involved. He shouldn’t get invested in these acts, he knows, and he’s normally so damn good about that. Henry has started saving him a seat in the sound booth. The goddamn Waffle House servers save them a booth in the corner. She writes with a blue pen, he annotates with a red one.

When their ideas pay off, she grins from ear to ear. He keeps trying for that goal, over and over again, and tells himself it’s for the label. She’s good, she’s talented, she deserves to do well here. He’s just helping that along.

Joel is usually at the studio first, black coffee in hand. She only has to give him her coffee order once, some iced lavender oat milk monstrosity that he never forgets and orders every time. Ellie beams every time he remembers. Henry and Ellie take turns making fun of him, from everything to his ‘resting bitch face’ to the way he squints and nods along to rhythm. Joel threatens to leave the studio every time they do, but he never does.

Joel chases down instruments, gives Ellie his number to trade voice memos in case she gets an idea out of the studio she wants help with that she mainly uses to send him shitty memes, and spends most of his days at the studio. He calls it babysitting when Tommy asks. His brother just grins.

-

When she asks him about the last two albums they put out, there’s a knot in his stomach and his watch feels heavier on his wrist. So much of it was for Sarah, so much of it he still can’t talk about. But there’s something vulnerable in the way she asks, and he feels like she’s braver than he is even 39 years his junior. He tells her it took a decade to write and record, which is true. Joel doesn’t tell her it took twenty to get here, tucked into a booth and laughing with a kid like he’s thirty-six again. 

“But you did it,” Ellie says, after he cites ten years between albums. “You still did it. I don’t know if I can.”

He doesn’t know the full story of David, doesn’t know what she went through in a life of foster care. He’s tempted to say she wouldn’t understand what he’s been through, wouldn’t understand all the loss he’s suffered. Maybe a few years ago and without a goddamn SSRI he would. Music was a liferaft, after a while, a better one than drugs or a loaded gun.

There’s a million stories of child stars falling apart, going through hell and then getting told they were the lucky ones when everyone called them crazy. Those stories never ended well. He didn’t break out until he was in his twenties, and with his daughter gone he would’ve only been nine years off from the twenty-seven club. Ellie’s not joining it. There were better ways to deal.

He shouldn’t tell her the gory details, but maybe he should.

“Sometimes getting it out is better than keeping it in. Starts to corrode you, after a while, like salt in a steel container. I, uh,” he rubs the scar on his temple, the evidence of what he tried to do. She looks, but she doesn’t ask. “After Sarah…didn’t see much of a point to any of it. Getting back into music, feeling like I was keepin’ a part of her with me… kept me alive.”

“Oh.”

Joel clears his throat. Maybe he did overstep. “If it helps, do it. You do it at seventeen and you’re braver than I was.”

She pauses. “Can I send you, like, a voice memo? Later? I have some ideas I’m working on, but…”

“Sure,” he says instantly. His voice is soft. You’re not alone in this , he wants to say but doesn’t in so many words. “Could play with some music for it. Could leave it alone. Whatever you want.”

“You don’t have to. It’s stupid, I just-”

“Not stupid,” he says quickly, because he can’t have her believing that for a second. “Not at all.”

She nods, and he hopes he hasn’t completely butchered it.

-

Joel stays up at the studio until he gets the message from her, a voice memo. He listens to it over tinny phone speakers and feels something sitting on his chest. If the other song was a hint, this was an alarm. His stomach turns, thinking of what she went through and how hard it sounds for her to choke out the lyrics now. He doesn’t know anything, not really, only has his imagination to work with -

Fourteen .

It’s how old Sarah was. Joel sleeps in the sound booth, after texting her then Henry to let him know he’d take over sound engineering for the next week. 

They talk about it in the morning. He’ll tell her he’s sorry until his throat is dry, pours all of it into production because that’s at least something he’s good at, something he can help with. There’s a weight off her by the end of it, a weight she should have never had to bare in the first place. He’ll make it perfect, he’ll make it whatever she wants it to be.

Ellie deserves at least that much.

-

Joel tells her he has her back, and she has no idea how much he means it. He failed to protect Sarah from the worst of this industry, her body in a backseat. He missed the opportunity to protect Ellie from that damn label in the first place. He won’t fuck it up again.

She makes him harmonize on a different one, some horribly dark sounding song because she thought it was fun. He laughs more than he has in years. When the album is done, he’s prouder of her than he’s ever been of himself. When Tommy asks about songwriting credits, he shakes his head.

“All her,” he tells him, and means it.

Tommy laughs, shakes his head. “What the hell were you spending all that time in the studio for, then?”

Joel shrugs. “Fuckin’ around on instruments, botherin’ Henry.”

“She really grew on you, didn’t she?”

Joel’s eyes soften. “Yeah. Guess you could say that.”

He knows they’re both thinking of Sarah, the way she’d harass the band in the studio and they’d laugh it off. He was shit at piano, so Tommy taught her. They always went home in time for dinner, the band always understood. 

Tommy is looking at him like he understands now, too.

-

And maybe Ellie understands it, too, in some way. That must be why she spends her eighteenth birthday with a goddamn old man in a Waffle House instead of partying like any sane eighteen year old.

Joel orders cake for the studio, eighteen candles, and calls Tommy and Maria and Henry down to blow out the damn candles with her. It’s the least she deserves, the most he can do on short notice. Tommy has an askew party hat on his head after evidently picking up a pack of them on his way, and managed to get one half-on Joel. Joel rolls his eyes, but Ellie laughs, so he leaves it on.

“Twenty-one will be a rager,” Tommy promises. 

“We’ll make sure of it,” Henry agrees.

Joel tsks. “As if this industry doesn’t have enough damn booze.”

“Says the Pabst Blue Ribbon thrower,” Ellie counters, and he lightly snaps the string of her hat until she gets offended. 

“One time,” Joel grumbles. “See if you like it when you gotta deal with ‘em everytime you go to the goddamn corner store.”

“I’ll call you,” Ellie says cheerily. “The PBR thrower. It’ll scare ‘em off.”

Joel sighs. “Alright, for your birthday you get a free call. One time only. I’ll bring whatever cans I got on hand, purely for throwing but not for drinking.”

“Hell yeah.”

Ellie looks proud of herself. Tommy snickers. Joel just takes one of the candles out of the cake and uses it to smear frosting on Ellie’s nose.

“Hey!”

“Little shit,” Joel grins as she wipes her face with her sleeve indignantly. She laughs.

-

When he talked her into keeping that song on the album, he didn’t know she’d regret it later. Defamation suits over lyrics never used to be a goddamn thing until they were, until the shittiest among them got more desperate to reclaim their own narratives. Joel isn’t sure when this twisted precedent got set, isn’t a lawyer like his sister-in-law. He wants to scream when Ellie calls him, after she tells him about getting served at a damn airport. He keeps it together for her, knowing she’s probably panicked enough as it is.

He books the next flight out. She hugs him for the first time when she sees him at the show, and a part of him sags with relief. He holds her for a moment until he feels tears soaking his shirt. It’s okay , I’ve got you, baby girl. He wants to say it but he doesn’t. They’re surrounded by people backstage, but to each other they’re still the only ones there.

The Last of Us did have a handful of tour dates planned, but Joel cancels every one of them for the length of the trial. 

-

Joel tries to keep her away from headlines. He can’t do it that well in the digital age, when everything is on a goddamn phone, but she shouldn’t have to read any of this shit. It’s bad enough she has to sit there and listen to it in the trial, he knows David does nothing but lie his ass off. Ellie is as withdrawn as he’s ever seen her - the little shit who could never stop cursing or making jokes a shell of herself - and Joel does everything he can to bring her out of it. 

He tries shitty reheated Chef Boyardee from a vending machine. Joel brings out Boggle in a courtroom hallway. He’s trying to exercise an old muscle, the one he used to keep Sarah entertained on tour buses and during long waits. It doesn’t quite work the same with an eighteen year old facing trial for daring to speak out against some predatory piece of shit. There’s a loose pipe in the courtroom, he notices it from his short-lived stint as a contractor. It must be from an old remodel. Sometimes he imagines beating David to death with it.

There’s a headline: The Last of Us’ Joel Miller Beats Record Executive to Death Mid-Trial

But Ellie is still next to him - she’s not eating, not joking, just staring blankly at a wall most of the time. So he redirects all the murderous urges towards trying to figure out how to bring her back to earth. He gives her a shitty pun book, since she seems to like them so damn much. She reads them off, he rates them on a completely made up scale. Joel takes her out of there as often as the lawyers will let them, and the longer it drags out the harder it is to get her back to earth.

He imagines killing David a million different times in hundreds of different ways. Joel is still strong enough to snap his neck, if nothing else. Instead of doing that Joel gets panic attacks in the goddamn bathroom. He never does it in front of Ellie, excuses himself before it ever gets that bad. This spotlight kills people, he knows that intimately. He won’t let it hurt her more than it already has. Joel can’t.

Then it’s David, passing by them in the hallway. “Careful now, Joel. She might try to get you, next. Girls like that want a daddy until they don’t. Then they start crying wolf.”

Joel settles for punching him until his face is bloody. The bailiff pulls him off. David just fucking smiles at him, Ellie watching the whole thing. It was his fucking plan, go figure, to get Joel out of the way.

“Get Tommy,” he instructs Ellie, as he’s pulled away in contempt of the court. “You got it, Ellie? Get Tommy.”

Ellie nods, but her eyes are on his bloodied knuckles in handcuffs.

-

When Joel gets out, he finds out David wants to make a fucked up deal.

Maria has explained enough to Joel that he knows the odds aren’t good this would settle for them in a first trial, this court and its fucked up process biased in David’s favor for no good reason. It’d take another appeal which could take years of stress, millions of dollars, and every day Ellie slinks further away from the kid he knew who could laugh about shit. David’s lawyers are getting up there every day, calling her a liar, dragging her name through the mud for nothing .

The deal, as David’s lawyers explain to theirs, is that he’ll drop all charges if Ellie is dropped from Austin-Jackson.

“Fuck no,” is Joel’s immediate response. “They think they can scare us off?”

Maria’s expression hardens as she explains the deal. “They said, specifically, Austin-Jackson. It’s part of the terms, they’ll consider it part of the defamation suit since it was published under us. I think we can work it out to make it work for Ellie, Joel.”

“You want to negotiate with that sick son of a bitch?”

“I want to get Ellie out of this,” Maria says shortly. “That’s what matters to me. Now if you’d listen to what I have to say, we can protect Ellie and figure this out.”

Joel scrubs his hand against his face. “Fine. What?”

“I’m gonna need you to call some friends.”

“I don’t have friends, Maria.”

Maria huffs. “Then make some, Joel. Talk to Tommy. Get something else lined up for her as soon as possible.”

“What is Ellie going to-”

“Joel,” and Maria’s voice is even firmer this time. “This is the best thing we can do for her. I promise. We’re not going to drag her through this for years. She won’t have to deal with it, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Then why would he offer it in the first place?”

“Because he thinks no one else will pick her up. He’s wrong, and we’re going to prove it, but after these charges are dropped and he can’t do shit about it.”

Joel thinks of Ellie, sitting in the courtroom and shrinking beside him every day. Joel looks down at his watch. He failed to protect one kid from this industry. Joel can’t do it again.

“Swear to me, Maria. Swear that we’re going to protect her in this.”

“I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think we could do it, Joel.”

He stares at the door. 

-

When Ellie finds out, she’s furious. He wants to explain, wants to spell it out, but she’s got fists flying and she swears she never wants to hear from him again. Joel wants to tell her he did it for her, wants to spell out the shitty hand they were given, and the best he can come up with is that she’s better off. Ellie’s hurt doesn’t dissipate, just grows.

“We don’t have to ever talk again,” she tells him, and it’s the last he hears from her for months.

Whenever Joel tries calling her, it goes straight to voicemail. His number is blocked. He hears she signed the contract with the other label, knows enough from Tommy that she’s in good hands. David couldn’t bring another lawsuit if he tried. She’ll be fine once the tabloids get distracted again. Ellie is still better off this way.

It’s not as if Joel has managed to handle any of this fame shit well, anyway. She deserves a better mentor in this, if he could ever even be called that. 

-

Back in the studio, before, she’d liked an old Tom Petty song. They considered putting a cover on the record until she’d struck that idea, wanted it all self-written. They shelved it for a potential bonus track. They end up doing a festival together, the same day but a few hours apart. He relearns the chords.

When she needed me, I let her down.

It’s an apology. He meets Ellie’s eyes when he sees her backstage, arms crossed. She’s cut her hair, he notes idly. 

-

She accepts it later, when she finds him on the steps of a tour bus. He gets to explain. She even unblocks his number in front of him, accepts a jacket placed around her shoulders. Joel tells her there’s a way back, if she wants it. He doesn’t tell her that he missed her. Joel doesn’t feel like he needs to, she already knows.

-

Joel helps her move back into her old Austin apartment. He and Ellie just barely make her couch fit in the narrow stairway. It’s only a few blocks away from his, the address and PIN code written on the markerboard on the fridge. Ellie rolls her eyes when he writes it in his messy scrawl, but he just tells her it’s just an easier way to break into his house.

“And is that…” Joel trails off, squinting. “A phone number? Who’s Dina?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ellie says quickly, blushing so vehemently she nearly drops the plates she’s stacking in the cabinet.

Joel grins. “Oh, a crush?”

“If you say anything, I will dismember you,” Ellie says with utmost conviction. She should know it’ll only make it worse.

Joel just grins, grabbing a marker and drawing a circle around the name and number. “Oh, you gotta keep this close then.”

“There’s a balcony, want to see it? You can take a good look before I throw you over it.”

“Y’know, ladies have a thing for rock stars…”

Ellie throws a banana at him in lieu of responding.

-

The article comes out, detailing every horrible thing David has done since 1999. It makes him sick to his stomach, reading through every section - from a twelve year old in 2004 to Ellie in 2020. Little girls locked into rooms with predatory wandering eyes. Joel has to take breaks, breaks into the Xanax bottles a psychiatrist last prescribed in 2018. He has to do all that just to read it, and she was the one that was fourteen living it and eighteen reliving it all.

“Proud of you, kid,” he texts her, because he knows his voice might break over the phone.

“Studio tomorrow?” is her response.

“You got it.”

-

Ellie is eighteen and perfectly able to look after herself.

Joel reminds himself of this, water bottle pressed to his head in miserable Florida heat in the middle of summer. Tommy booked this goddamn festival because of course he did. He has earplugs firmly wedged in, after going half-deaf from enough shows he’s not eager to get more hearing damage. They’re backstage, which is really to say they’re surrounded by sound equipment in a fucking tent. These new set ups, run by kids on shoestring budgets, never quite managed logistics the way they should.

“C’mon, lighten up,” Ellie nudges him, seated nearby on a similarly uncomfortable folding chair. “It’s like Coachella, or something.”

Tommy snorts. “Coachella for people who wear Doc Martens and are on SSRIs, maybe.”

“Hey,” Ellie says, swatting Tommy in mock-offense. “Those are my people you’re talking about. The gay community, if you will.”

“And straight middle-aged men,” Tommy counters. 

“It’s an interesting venn diagram,” Ellie admits. “But here we are.”

“Don’t even have functional security,” Joel mutters, alternating between swigging the water and pressing the coldness to his temple. “Stupidest goddamn gig.”

“There’s security,” Tommy says, sounding indignant. 

“The nineteen year old by the tent opening doesn’t fuckin’ count, Tommy.”

“Please,” Ellie rolls her eyes. “Like you need security.”

“Not me I’m worried about,” Joel responds. Ellie just gives him a look.

“If I need someone lobbed with a beer can, I’ll holler for you.”

Joel rolls his eyes. “Just…crowd control gets a little hectic at these things. Don’t want you gettin’ hurt.”

“Don’t worry, Joel. This eighteen year old lesbian isn’t getting between any fans and their favorite rock act from 2002.”

He thwacks her, lightly, with the water bottle. 

“Try it harder with the beer can next time, otherwise we’re going to have to get new security.”

-

Joel does panic later when the band wraps up and he can’t find her backstage.

“Tommy, is she-”

“Relax, brother,” he says, holding up his hands as if to pacify him. “Ran off with a girl. We’ve done worse.”

Joel exhales. “Right. We have.” 

“Just like you were with Sarah,” Tommy says fondly, shaking his head. “Could hardly lose sight of her at a grocery store.”

“It’s a festival with thousands of people, Tommy. Ain’t the same.”

“It is, though,” Tommy says, but it’s with a grin.

And maybe it is, a little bit.

-

Ellie gets nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Album, because of course she does - the little savant. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head that day in the studio, when Joel prints off the nominations and plops them in front of her. He might be more excited about it for her than she is for herself.

“You seriously printed these off? Do you even have a printer? What year is it, 2005?”

Joel grins, unperturbed. “I think you’ll beat us, seven-time Grammy losers.”

“Or,” Ellie grins, flipping the page. “You’ll either win one or lose an eighth time.”

Joel frowns. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”

Ellie dangles the stabled print out in her hands. “Producer of the Year, maybe?”

Joel hadn’t even bothered to check that one, just searched Ellie’s name when nominations dropped. “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

“Don’t worry,” Ellie says. “I’m gonna lose to St. Vincent. You’re gonna lose to Jack Antonoff.”

Joel raises his eyebrows. “Antonoff? Again?”

“Jack is fine,” Ellie snorts.

“Oh, you want me to add synth to all your songs now?”

“He’s nicer than you are,” she adds. 

Joel takes the paper back. “For the record, I’m rooting for you.”

“Gotta get on a Lana Del Rey album, Joel. That’ll beef up your odds.”

He rolls his eyes and taps her head with the papers.

“Maybe Taylor Swift? Any of them like old rock bands?”

“I got enough to worry about,” Joel says with a grumble. “Trust me.”

-

Both of Ellie’s predictions are right.

She loses to St. Vincent and he loses to Jack Antonoff. The whole thing is exactly the kind of pomp and circumstance they hate and Tommy pushes them into for the sake of the label. Being a minor, she goes to precisely zero afterparties. He tells her they were stupid anyways, even if the last one he went to was in 2001. Tommy still gets them a card.

“Eight time Grammy loser and first time Grammy loser,” is who it’s addressed to. Ellie cackles.

Ellie posts it to some stupid social media site, a fate he’s managed to avoid. She shows him the responses she deems funniest, the two of them camped out in a soundbooth with takeout. One of them is “Eight Time Grammy Loser Father” and “First Time Grammy Loser Daughter” annotated over some stupid red carpet photo. 

Joel tells her that one is his favorite. She grins and makes it her phone lock screen. His lips twitch every time he sees it.

Chapter Text

For a while, things are simple.

They wrap touring, both Ellie’s solo tour and a few festival circuits for The Last of Us. That means there’s finally a chance to rest, to settle in the aftermath of the chaos of travel and the trial and everything that’s happened since they first wrapped on Ellie’s album. Ellie takes to it like a fish to water, even amidst the ringer of sudden media attention and a defamation suit and laying out what happened to her in detail to a public audience.  They’re in and out of the studio, mainly when Ellie calls him and tells him she has an idea they need to record, and they keep their lunches and dinners when Maria and Tommy are in town. It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, easier than Joel was ever expecting. 

But sometimes, Joel thinks of all of the ways he can still fail her.

Ellie is eighteen, an adult who has always been able to handle herself. But he thinks of the trial, of the death threats that she laughs at, of Sarah’s body in the backseat and he wakes up in a cold sweat. There’s a spotlight on Ellie, now. Every move she makes somebody might know about - a fan or a stalker or the Davids of the world. Sometimes, when he wakes up it’s Ellie’s body in the backseat.

The simpler things are, the less he sleeps.

-

They’re at Ellie’s apartment after lunch one afternoon, he’d promised he could dust off his old contractor skills to take a look at a leaky faucet (mainly because she doesn’t think he can do it, says it doesn’t count if the last time he did was in the 80s , and he wants to prove to the little shit appliances don’t change that much in a few decades). They’re in the hallway of the building, Ellie’s keys jingling in the lock.

Joel finds something stuck to his jacket, and rolls his eyes. “Ever think you should get rid of some of these receipts?”

Ellie rolls her eyes at him, kicking the door open behind her. “Yeah, yeah, keep giving me shit old man.”

“Just sayin’. Wouldn’t kill you to clean your damn car.”

“It adds character,” Ellie mutters, turning on the light. She steps back. “Oh - fuck.”

Joel is immediately on red alert. He steps past Ellie without hesitation, getting in between her and whatever is on the other side. The apartment is trashed, couch torn into, cabinets pilfered through, drawers pulled out onto the floor. He holds a finger to his mouth, gesturing for Ellie to stay behind him.

“What are you going to do, go all John Wick on them?”

“Jesus,” Joel mutters under his breath. “What part of bein’ quiet-”

“There’s no one here,” Ellie gestures to the other side of the apartment, the bedroom door open and visible. “Must have gotten in through the balcony, scaled the fuckin’ thing. Third floor. Good for them.”

Joel sighs. He keeps carefully looking around the apartment, just in case. “You’re sayin’ they scaled to the goddamn third floor?”

“I’ve thought about whether or not I could do it,” Ellie shrugs nonchalantly, “Guess I gotta remember to lock that door.”

Joel is not reassured. “So they knew who you were, where you lived. If they wanted an easy target, they just coulda went for a first floor break-in. Or even a second. They were lookin’ for you, Ellie.”

Ellie exhales. “Lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Could probably just Google my address, these days. Maybe I should get one of those security systems or whatever. Unless you’d like to take up the armed guard lifestyle.”

Joel gives her a look, unamused. 

“What, no gun? What kind of Texan are you?”

Joel takes a look around the apartment, ignoring her attempts at joking. He crouches in the kitchen and puts the drawers back into place as Ellie hovers behind him. “This is serious. Someone was in your house.”

“I’ll lock my door,” she says, tone defensive.

“You should move,” is what Joel replies, looking up at her. “If they know where you’re livin’...”

“Absolutely not,” Ellie retorts. “They’re gonna figure out the next one, anyway, if they figure out this one. It’s inevitable, Joel. I like this apartment. I finally got the landlord to let me fuckin’ paint, Dina is down the hall, you’re nearby, and - no, I’m not moving .” 

His ears start ringing around the time she says inevitable. His chest feels like there’s a hard boot on it, his vision blurs around the edges. Joel leans forward, braces himself on the cabinets. He tries to remember how breathing works, tries to exercise the muscles that years of rehab and forces psych appointments built.

Ellie looks at him with confusion. “C’mon, dude. It’s fine.”

“No,” Joel says shortly. He regulates his breathing enough to look up at her. “It’s not, Ellie. What if you were home?”

“I wasn’t. And that’s why we have the entryway baseball bat,” she says, jerking her head to the coat closet by the front door. “So. It’s fine.”

The more casual she acts about it, like any of this is normal, the less casual Joel feels. There’s a pounding in his head that won’t let up, the pressure on his chest barely letting him breathe. He knows how this starts and how it ends, knows he dismissed the worst of it early in his career and it was Sarah that paid the price for it. 

“I have an extra bedroom,” Joel blurts.

“Seriously?”

“Just for the night. Until we get the police report sorted out, until we figure out what’s goin’ on. Alright?”

Ellie sighs. “Fine.”

-

Ellie does think he’s being dramatic.

It’s not as if she hasn’t been through worse than having her shit rifled through. Foster care wasn’t exactly full of outstanding parents, David wasn’t fun to be around in the slightest, and she spent the past year on tour with crowds of people who understood neither personal space nor how to use deodorant. She’s stayed in a lot shittier places than her nice apartment now, and now she finally has enough belongings to be worth stealing from. It’s almost a sign of success.

Joel, clearly, doesn’t see it that way.

He always had a weary energy with him. During the trial, it was almost anxious - Ellie was hardly in her body for a lot of it, but when she was Joel was there trying. He tried every day. Anything to get her to perk up, remind her of what she cared about outside of watching a man take the stand and lie. He still sucked at Boggle. Then sometimes she notices it in other ways - in the heaviness of the songs he writes, in the way he sometimes looks off and doesn’t even seem to fully be in the room, in the distance he tried so hard to maintain when they first met.

Now, it’s that paranoid, exhausted energy that she sees in him that makes her say fine, she’ll stay at his place for the night .

She’s never actually been to Joel’s, in spite of everything that’s happened in the last year. It’s got a goddamn doorman, which is a perk, and now she’s wondering if she needs a fucking doorman like it’s 1920 and she has to call for the bellhop, right away ma’am . (She really doesn’t want to move.) The apartment is spacious, well-lived in, and of course Joel makes her take her shoes off at the door.

(“I thought you were used to Texas,” he teases, and she just rolls her eyes and throws a shoe in his direction.)

There’s a piano in the corner of the living room, and it’s one of the first things she notices when she’s done throwing her shoes.

“I thought you hated piano,” Ellie grins, sidling up the bench. She puts her hands on the keys, absently fiddling with them.

Joel snorts. “I’m still shit at it, for the record. It’s no guitar, my piano is serviceable at best. Got that for Sarah. She loved it.”

Ellie’s hands pause. “Your daughter?”

She knows the answer already, but it feels rude to repeat knowledge she’s gotten from Wikipedia back at him. The corner of Joel’s mouth twitches. “Yeah. My daughter.”

Ellie starts to play again, but it’s more restrained, more hesitant. She wonders if she’s being intrusive, storming into a memory she shouldn’t. “She liked music, huh?”

“Loved it,” Joel says, moving to sit next to her on the bench. “Would listen to just about anything, even her dad’s depressing ass music. Wasn’t her favorite. But she knew every word.”

Ellie smiles, just the slightest bit. She tries to imagine a teenager, following her dad around as he made music. It’s not that hard to picture.

“She would’ve thought you were the fuckin’ coolest.”

Ellie looks up at him. “Yeah?”

Joel exhales, and it almost sounds like a laugh. “Yeah.”

Maybe she isn’t totally ruining the memory, then. She plays a little piano riff, thinking of a memory in August and a bridge built in the studio, and he grins when he recognizes the melody.

-

Joel makes dinner because he’s a nervous host. 

He has a surprising amount of anxious energy for a rockstar in his fifties, but maybe that’s what all the SSRIs he wrote about were for. Ellie rolls her eyes like she hates it, like she doesn’t remotely care for being doted on. But there’s a part of her, all feral foster kid, that lives for it a little bit. 

“Vodka sauce means I can do a shot, right?”

Joel rolls his eyes, kitchen towel draped over his shoulder and wooden spoon in hand over the stove in a display of excessive domesticity. “Trying to get you out of trouble, not into it.”

Ellie goes for the bottle. Joel swats her with the kitchen towel. She laughs.

-

By nine, there’s a police report filed and the landlord installed a security system. Turns out, having an album chart suddenly makes your landlord give a shit. They tell her they’ve got a little wooden slat to put in her sliding door to keep it shut, just in case, and enough glass breaking sensors to make her nervous about the next time she’s clumsy. 

“You should still stay the night,” Joel says, after she’s off the phone. She’s sprawled out on his couch while he sits on the armchair. There’s an old documentary on the TV. “Then we can check it out tomorrow. Make sure they know what they’re doin’.”

“What? Like a doorman?” she snorts.

“We could pay for security…”

Ellie throws a throw pillow in his direction. It hits him in the face before tumbling to the ground. He is unimpressed by her aim. “Dude. No.”

“It’s part of the deal, Ellie. People know your name, then suddenly you got more to worry about.”

“Do you have security following you everywhere?”

“At events. By the door. It’s part of the deal.”

“I’m eighteen, Joel. I don’t want security following me around forever.”

“And I want there to be a you to follow,” Joel says, and his tone says he doesn’t want to argue about it. So Ellie doesn’t. She’s eighteen, it’s not like she needs his permission anyway, it’s not like he’s - 

“Fine,” she says, but this time she doesn’t mean it.

“Fine,” he echoes. 

-

She heads back to her apartment in the morning when she wakes up before he does, even makes the guest bed like the good citizen she is. Ellie leaves a note on the table, scribbles that she’s back at her place and if she sees a security guard he’s getting stabbed, or something. She wrote it in a rush, like she was determined to prove something by being out the door first.

By the time she gets back to her place, her couch cushions still look like shit. But everything else is fine by now, cleaned up. There’s the phone number of a police officer on her island - like, this place has a fucking kitchen island in Austin’s housing market, album or no album she’s not leaving it - and she’s tempted just to text the number “ACAB” and be done with it. She shoves it in a drawer instead, rolling her eyes. The pin code of the security system is on a note nearby, and she almost trips it walking in the door.

This was fame, she guesses.

Her phone buzzes. She figures Joel has woken up, the Grammy loser father lock screen turning into a message from the man himself. 

“I could’ve made breakfast,” it says.

Ellie snorts, and shoves the phone back down in her pocket.

She can handle all of this on her own.

-

When Joel wakes up and Ellie is gone, a knock at the cracked guest bedroom door unanswered and a a push revealing an empty bed, he almost panics. Then he rationalizes with himself, takes his goddamn Lexapro, and reminds himself she’s an eighteen year old perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He should talk to Tommy about the security bit, see what they can cover as the label. They should take care of it, look after her. Ellie might laugh at death threats, at her apartment ripped at the seams, but he sure as shit didn’t.

She would be fine.

(Last night he dreamed of Ellie’s blood in the backseat of the car, of shaking hands and photographers, and he might need something stronger to forget it all.)

-

Ellie is still dismissive when he sees her next, when he knocks on her door. She swings it open, looking like she already knows what he’s about to say.

“I don’t fucking want security,” she says flatly. She taps at the keypad next to her door. “I have this thing now.”

He squints at it. “SimpliSafe is not security.”

“Tell that to every podcast.”

“It’s not enough security for a kid with an album in the charts and her name on the news and couch cushions,” he points to them, more Ikea fluff than suitable to sit on, “that got ripped apart by some asshole that scaled three stories to get into her house.”

“Joel,” she says, inhaling with her eyes rolling into the back of her head. “You don’t have to protect me.”

“I’m just tryin’ to look out for you. It’s what I always do.”

“And I’m telling you to fuck off about this, okay?”

Joel sighs. “I’m not going to. I’m worried about you, Ellie.”

She shuts the door instead of responding. It’s something he hasn’t missed about teenagers, having doors slammed in your face. Joel just scrubs at his face with his hand, toe lightly tapping against the door before his head sags against it.

“Is that Joel Miller?”

A few doors down, two twenty-somethings gossiping with a laundry hamper in hand. Joel sighs again, shakes his head. He puts the stupid hat back on, goes the opposite direction to get to the stairs. The attention wasn’t a good thing. It never was, the worst part of living this life. It killed. It put blood on his hands. If it happens again, it’s never coming off.

-

He knows he’s getting cloying, the anxiety creating a buffer between him and the rest of the world, when he can’t even get Ellie to respond to his damn text messages.

“She’s a teenager, Joel. Of course she doesn’t want anyone cramping her style, she sure as shit doesn’t want security,” is Tommy’s take, delivered over the phone from Jackson.

“I’m surprised you even fuckin’ get cell signal out there,” Joel mutters. “It’s just - I just…”

“Sarah,” Tommy says, saying the word that hangs between telephones. 

Joel exhales, an affirmative.

“I can’t do it again, Tommy.”

“I know. But you keep pushin’, you’re gonna lose her anyway.”

“I’m failing in my dreams, Tommy,” and it’s pleading, tears in his eyes, vulnerability stinging because Tommy is the only one who understands him in this state. Tommy was the one that found him with his brains spilled on the carpet, sat with him in the hospital when the doctors told him it was over and he collapsed, checked him into facility after facility until something stuck.

“I know,” Tommy says, voice softening. “You had the worst happen to you, Joel. That doesn’t mean it has to happen again.”

Joel inhales and wills himself to believe it.

-

He gives her space.

It prickles, the sensation of a hole where someone once so easily fit. If there’s no response, he won’t press. Ellie is eighteen. Ellie can handle herself, she’s safe. He repeats it to himself until he believes it, even after he never does. He distracts himself in the studio, one shitty guitar melody at a time until things start to stick and he thinks of lyrics even Ellie would find depressing. He misses having a terror in the soundbooth with him, needling him for details of past tours and ideas for new projects. Hell, he misses his brother - Tommy is in Wyoming where nobody bothers him, and maybe that would’ve been the play instead of Austin if he could will himself to leave his daughter’s hometown.

He doesn’t reach for alcohol, doesn’t return to the blank bliss of oxycodone, just holes himself up in the studio until he feels like something has been exorcized. Eventually, it feels like something productive and not just something miserable.

-

Ellie regrets snapping at Joel, for the most part.

She doesn’t mean to be an asshole, it’s just her default setting. After years in a system with people who alternated between controlling assholes or neglectful pieces of shit, then having David who was both controlling and creepy, it’s hard to recognize well-intentioned concern for what it is. She knows Joel has good intentions, but it chafes all the same. She’s gone this long looking out for herself, spent so much time fending for herself with nothing but her own mouth and wits to get herself out of hell. Ellie feels defensive about it, like it’s insinuating she can’t fucking handle herself when that’s all she’s ever done.

Ellie handled David, handled foster care, handled a torrent of hate that Joel will thankfully never see on account of being allergic to social media and not being an eighteen year old lesbian who accused a powerful man of sexual misconduct, and she’s pretty fucking sure she can handle one break in. She’s not a stupid kid, she’s been taking care of herself for longer than Joel has ever been in her life.

So she ignores his texts, his calls, and resolves instead to pretend like nothing is wrong. He stops trying after a few days. Ellie tells herself that it doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t mean anything to her. Joel is just the guy she made music with sometimes, it’s not as if most people were unhealthily attached to their producers.

She’s explaining this to Dina, who is dubious at best.

“So what, you were mad that he was too involved? And now you’re mad he stopped trying?” Dina says, tucked into a restaurant booth. They ignore someone who thinks they’re being inconspicuous with a cell phone camera, who isn’t subtle in the slightest. 

“Yeah,” Ellie says, as if it’s obvious. “What? Just like that? You’re done, now?”

“After you…ignored him for days,” Dina says, sounding more suspicious than she has a right to be.

“And what? I get dropped, just like that?”

“Ellie…” Dina trails off, sounding amused. She’s two years older than Ellie, and seems to think she’s wiser for it. As if being an art major at UT-Austin somehow gave her access to infinite wisdom. She normally wouldn’t be this snarky with her girlfriend, but they’re here. “Have you talked to him?”

“Why would I do that?” Ellie blinks.

Dina just snorts at her.

“You’re supposed to be on my side, by the way,” Ellie says, pursing her lips. Dina just sticks her tongue out at her. “Real mature.”

“I get it from you,” Dina says cheerily.

-

Ellie doesn’t call or text. She just barks at his doorman, who lets her knock on his door.

“Ellie?” Joel asks, door cracked. He swings it open when he sees her. “Hey.”

She wants to ask him if that’s all he’s got. Instead, she just echoes him. “Hey.”

“Did you want to come in?” Joel asks carefully.

“Where have you been?” Ellie asks abruptly.

Joel raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t moved.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I’ve been at the studio…” he offers, shifting his weight. It’s like he’s being deliberately obtuse.

“Not what I meant, either.”

Joel sighs. “I didn’t think you wanted to hear much from me.”

“Well…” Ellie kicks at the door jam absentmindedly. “You were wrong.”

“You could have had me fooled.”

Ellie huffs. “Forget it,” she says, turning to leave. 

Joel looks like he’s tempted to call after her. He doesn’t, though. Another stupid mark against him, in her mind. It’s as if he didn’t get it at all, that he could just accept not being in her life so easily.

-

It’s that vehement sort of indignation that brings her back to the studio, where she sees Joel’s truck parked.

“Why do you drive that stupid truck, anyway? It’s not as if you’re hauling anything,” she says in place of greeting, while Joel looks up at her from his guitar. He’s leaned over a stool. No wonder he always complains about his back hurting. She thinks of studio sessions with them both sprawled out on the floor. Joel would settle that first, said it helped his back. She followed in solidarity, made a game out of it. 

Now they’re here, and the weeks they spent without talking are the longest they’ve gone since after the trial.

“Dunno,” Joel says, setting the guitar aside. “Just Texas habit, I guess. Was handy with my brief stint as a contractor.”

“Horrible for the environment.”

“Yeah?” Joel snorts. He looks at her carefully, body language like he’s trying not to spook a skittish animal. She puffs up more, at that, resenting the implications the longer she thinks about it. She folds her arms and leans against the door of the soundbooth. 

“Where have you been?” she asks again, and this time Joel sighs before giving her an answer.

“Thought you needed some space, didn’t want me smotherin’ you.”

“I did,” Ellie says shortly.

Joel looks up at her, confused. “Then what’s the problem?”

“Did is past tense,” she says, as if that explains it. In her mind, it does.

“So…” Joel surmises. “Not anymore, then?”

“I just didn’t want security,” Ellie says flatly. She moves to lay on the floor out of old habit, knees pressed against the wall. “Just felt like too much, having some fuckin’ guys follow me around. I can take care of myself.”

Joel sighs. He moves to lay down next to her, the two of them splayed on the floor a few feet apart. “Couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you, kid. You know that.”

“You’re forgetting the worst things that ever happened to me happened way before you were ever in the fucking picture, Joel,” Ellie huffs, an exasperated sound. “So. I get it. You want to protect me. But do that by fucking being here . Because everyone else in my life, in case you haven’t fucking noticed, didn’t exactly stick around. Not my parents, not a single fucking foster family, not Riley, not-” she cuts herself up, tears welling in her eyes.

“Ellie-”

“Shut the fuck up, Joel. What I’m saying is you’re the person I can rely on, okay? And you can’t just take that back.”

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

There’s a silence between the two of them. Joel’s expression has softened, his head turned to face her. Ellie’s lower lip is quivering despite all of her best efforts.

“I don’t want to do this without you, okay? Any of it.”

“And I can’t,” Joel sighs, crossing his arms around his chest. He looks down at his watch. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

“Like Sarah?”

It’s a sore spot she shouldn’t poke. She does it anyway.

Joel just nods. “I’m not going through that again, Ellie. I’m not losing another…”

He trails off, the rest of the sentence lingers in the air. She should leave it alone, best to leave this kind of thing unspoken. But she’s been a foster kid all her life, never had a home in the first place, and being around Joel was the first time she felt like she had any of it - a home, family, whatever the hell came with it. Forgive her for needling, forgive her for asking more than any sane person was willing to give.

It’s not as if either of them rated highly in that category, anyway.

“Another what?”

Joel gives her a disbelieving sort of look. “You already know, kid. You know you’re a daughter to me.”

Ellie sniffs. 

“Then act like it, you dick.”

“I was,” he says, and it’s quiet when he does. “I just…hard to remember how to do this. I never got to see Sarah at eighteen.”

And well, fuck, if that doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut. There’s a beat of silence that passes between the two of them.

Ellie groans. “I’ve been an asshole.”

“That’s not new,” Joel says, but it’s layered with affection she probably doesn’t deserve. “I am one, too.”

“You are,” she agrees.

Joel props himself up on his elbows with a groan. She resists the urge to engage in more assholery, to tell him what an old man he is. “I’ve been spending some good time in this studio, y’know.”

“Yeah?” Ellie asks, following suit in propping herself up.

“Yeah,” Joel says softly. “Wanna hear some of what I got goin’?”

She agrees without hesitation.

-

It’s a side project, kind of, the songs they end up with. It’s not quite The Last of Us without Tommy or the band in the studio, and it’s not what she would usually write or put out either. It’s more like a bizarre sort of catharsis, thinking of the past year, and she can tell it might be for Joel too. It might get shelved, every song or idea. It might just be an excuse to spend more time in the studio, where the outside world doesn’t matter so much. Dina visits sometimes, mainly to drop off dinner so they don’t forget to eat, and when Joel tells her he approves Ellie elbows him in the stomach and grins at the same time.

Ellie tells him when she gets home safe every night, a quick text to an anxious old rockstar. 

She gets back a thank you , every time.

It works. 

Chapter Text

It starts with a phone call.

Ellie is in the studio with Joel, alternating between sincerely trying to make music and fucking around (she’s discovered there’s a certain key on the piano that causes him to cringe, every single time, and she cackles and he just shakes his head) - and her cell phone rings. It’s an unknown number, so it goes straight to voicemail. They’re usually a spam call about a nonexistent extended warranty, a reporter, or worse – someone who managed to find her number on the internet. The caller with a Boston area code is persistent, though, calling over and over until finally leaving a voicemail.

She picks it up out of curiosity, listens to the voicemail before deciding whether or not to block the number. Maybe Dina is in trouble, she’s not sure if they got to the emergency contact phase of things but Ellie’s going to feel like shit if Dina is in the hospital and she’s just ignoring a call because she thinks she’s so fucking important that she doesn’t have to answer phone calls. She regrets ever listening to the voicemail when she finds out its contents, and she really should just ignore all unknown numbers forever.

It’s not Dina. It’s about someone she hasn’t seen in years.

Her old foster mother from around 2018 killed herself. The funeral is in a few days. 

Joel comes back from the bathroom to find her with her phone pressed to her chest, staring blankly at a wall. She’s trying to breathe. She’s not sure she’s doing a very good job. Joel’s brow is furrowed in concern, and Ellie isn’t exactly feeling up to reassurance.

“Everything okay?” he asks, voice low.

Ellie blinks. “Fine.”

There’s a stretch of silence between the two of them. Joel is leaving space for an explanation, a line to draw to illustrate how she went from lighthearted and herself to mildly dissociative. She coughs.

“Old foster mom died,” Ellie says, voice flat. It’s the truth, stripped of any of its context.

“Oh?” Joel asks, stooping to sit next to her. Ellie’s eyes stay on a fixed point on the wall. “Were you…close?”

“No.”

Ellie’s tone is blank. That’s how she’s feeling. Very blank, a stained canvass, ringing in her ears, fingers shaking. The radius of her skull, in between her temples, feels more fuzzy than sharp. Static or white noise, it feels like its reverberation. Maybe she’s felt this feeling before, the reminder. The foster home, in a room with David, any place and time she wanted to escape from.

“You wanna talk about it?” Joel offers, tone careful. 

“No.”

There’s a finality to it. Joel accepts it with a quiet nod, a quick pat of the shoulder. Ellie presses her fingernails into her palm until it’s just on the edge of bleeding, like the sharpness might help bring her back to her own body. That is if she even wanted to come back.

-

Linda was a woman in her mid-forties, a widow with a hole in her heart that she was desperate to fill. 

Ellie had bounced around enough from foster home to foster home, at that point, and after a failed stint at a group home that ended with a biting incident and a girl named Bethany getting twelve stitches, her social worker wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. That’s what Marlene would say, anyway, tone resigned ‘I just don’t know what to do with you, Ellie. ’ It was like Ellie was a complex problem, unsolvable and unknowable. She spent most days with her headphones in her ears, drowning out the world, drawing in the margins in schools that always changed.

Riley already left the group home, at that point, had to go to Georgia and left Ellie behind. There’s a second aunt twice removed, a chance for better, and it’s not like Ellie had any power to make her stay. Maybe that’s why she acted out so fucking much at that group home, it’s not like she really saw the point anymore without Riley there.

That’s how Ellie ended up at Linda’s, her bag with everything she has to her name strapped on her shoulder, while Linda alternated between worried assurances that this time was going to be different and wanting Ellie to know she could come to her for anything. Ellie was fourteen and tired and not exactly eager to be anyone’s perfect kid, so maybe that’s why she and Linda never quite got along. Linda yearned for  a quiet, docile daughter, the little girl she’d always wanted.

Instead, the foster system had delivered Ellie.

Linda never quite seemed to forgive Ellie for squandering her chances at something better, someone better.

At first, it was fine. Linda was nice, too nice. It was like she was trying to prove something, trying to pass a character test and modeling what she needed Ellie to be. In the grand scheme of things, Ellie was fed. She went to school. From Marlene’s perspective, things were just fine. For a while, she thought it could turn out passable up until she turned eighteen and got out. Ellie could be quiet, could avoid some trouble, but the cracks just always show eventually. She started to make friends, just barely, at school. Linda didn’t like that. She thought because she was so lonely the thirteen year old she deigned to take in should be too.

( “I have nobody else,” she’d tell Ellie, and the claustrophobia would dig into Ellie's throat.)

Then it was other things. Ellie tried to walk the tightrope for the sake of just making it to eighteen but kept fucking it up. She broke a glass. Linda screamed at her until her voice was raw, and Ellie swore she understood physical violence more than whatever the fuck this was. Crying over spilled milk, holing herself in her room with her back against the wall while Linda kept going on the other side of the door. The whole thing was a mindfuck.

( “I took you in. I can put you back on the street anytime I want to,” she’d tell her, and apologize the next morning while Ellie just stood there silently. Rinse and repeat.)

Linda would scowl at the television whenever she saw something she disapproved of, like two men kissing.

“It’s not that I have a problem with gays,” she would say, in a way that implied the very opposite, “I just wish they wouldn’t shove it in our faces.”

Then other times Linda would be overflowing with kindness, asking about all of Ellie’s favorite things from meals to music and making them a reality. She’d ask about her day, vehemently defend her to teachers concerned about her performance in class, and it’s the whiplash that feels the most destabilizing. The same woman who could all at once be warm and fun turning on a dime, never leaving Ellie knowing where the fuck she stood with the woman.

Yeah. Living at Linda’s wasn’t Ellie’s favorite.

She’d rather take the fucking punches from Bethany.

Ellie tried to tell Marlene, who just sighed. Asked her if she had any bruises, if she was getting fed, if she had anything real to complain about. It’s not like she can cite the invisible eggshells that littered the floor, so she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Marlene has bigger problems. She can cross Ellie off her list.

That’s how Ellie ends up spending as much time as fucking possible in music classes, how she takes every opportunity and every bus she needs to get out. The alternative is worse - she tried running away once when she was eleven and just got dragged right back. It’s not like she wanted to spend time at fucking Linda’s. That’s how she ends up passing around demos she locks herself up in her room to make with a shitty keyboard and a guitar with broken strings. Someone eventually takes notice. David likes taking chances on vulnerable kids, and it’s not like she ever wanted to spend time on her own. David doesn’t yell until later, hands don’t go creeping until she feels like she can trust him.

By fifteen, she’s an emancipated minor who can get her own place with money she’s made from music. Linda gets a cut of it before the emancipation goes through, but she wants more than Ellie can ever give. David is a creep, but at least she thinks she’s free until she isn’t. 

-

After hearing the news, Ellie stares at her ceiling after waking up from a nightmare where she’s packing her bags and trying to leave Linda’s before she notices, before she gets home. At first, when she got emancipated thanks to David pulling strings (because she was mature for her age , and she thought it was a good thing until it wasn’t) she’d get letters from her. Phone calls. Gifts delivered to an address she found before she moved again (and moving got old really fucking quick). Linda would threaten to do something to herself if Ellie didn’t respond, and the anxiety of that was a boot on her neck until she started burning the letters.

She’d had a lot of bad foster homes. Ellie isn’t sure why she thinks about Linda the most of all of her foster parents, David not included in the list.

The phone call rattles her, a promise made and kept even if it did ultimately have nothing to do with her, and her chest gets tight every time she sees another notification on her phone. Even if it’s just a message from Joel or Dina or Tommy or – the relief isn’t as sharp as the anxiety. She’s dead. It’s not as if she can keep prodding, it’s not as if they’ve spoken in years before then anyway. Ellie blocks the number of Linda’s sister, tries to put the funeral details out of her mind. She’s been dead to Ellie for longer, anyway.

She’s not going. She’s not going to let that door open a fucking crack. She’ll barricade herself in if she has to. She’s still packing a bag in her head, trying to get out of something she never quite did.

Ellie doesn’t really sleep.

Eventually she starts writing.

-

Joel finds her in the studio when he walks in at 8 AM, well before the time Ellie would usually be known to the world. She’s hunched over the piano, oversized hoodie and a loose ponytail with her lips pressed together in concentration. Joel clears his throat. Ellie jolts to meet his eyes, more reactive than she’d normally be.

“What are you doin’ up at this hour?” he asks, trying for levity.

Ellie shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Been here since five.”

“ Jesus ,” Joel mutters, under his breath. “Can I get you coffee, then? Wasn’t expecting you ‘til closer to eleven.”

“I’m usually ten-thirty, thanks,” she says. Ellie aims for her usual levity, but it’s not quite reaching her eyes.

Joel swallows and nods, jerking his head to the door.

“I’ll be right back,” and he hopes it comes across as the promise he means it as.

Ellie just nods.

He thinks about yesterday, the phone call, and wonders if she was closer to an old foster mother than she let on. Or if it was the reverse, if the experience left her so badly scarred that even thinking about it hurt. It’s not the first time that he wishes that he’d met her sooner – maybe she would’ve never stepped foot in a studio with David, maybe she’d never have to live through the gory details published in a newspaper to clear her name when that piece of shit was the one who should’ve been marred by it first – but it sticks in his head. Ellie was born in 2005. Two years after Sarah died. It’s not as if he would’ve been much help to her then, anyway.

But maybe that’d still be better.

-

Joel discovers it’s the latter feeling of her former foster mother, when Ellie is carefully pouring over the piano and her voice is ringing through the studio. It doesn’t sound like regret. It just sounds like catharsis. She doesn’t have to explain.

Joel just hands over her coffee. Ellie accepts it with a quick nod, swinging her legs around the piano bench to look up at him.

“There’s a funeral on Saturday,” she tells him, and she doesn’t have to give him context. He’s able to put enough of the pieces together on his own. “I’m not going.”

Joel nods. “Need anything?”

“Are you gonna tell me I’ll regret it?” she asks, eyes boring into his.

Joel just shakes his head. “No. I won’t.”

Ellie goes back to the piano. “Got any ideas for this one, then?”

He coughs, clearing his throat. “Walk me through it again, kid.”

-

By Saturday, the day of the funeral, the song is mostly done. It’s not as piano based as what Ellie started out with, more eerie and she likes it better that way because it’s more of how it feels. There’s a bass line and they layer vocals until they get the desired effect. The piano is still quiet in the background. Joel was always big on that, music sounding how it felt, and it’s easy to speak in the same language there. He doesn’t pry, because maybe the song says enough. 

“Is it fucked up that I’m glad it’s over?” she asks finally, exhaling.

“I’m the last person to judge what’s fucked up,” is what he tells her.

Ellie accepts that with a quick exhale through her nose, almost a laugh. 

-

Joel finds himself in the studio alone, after Ellie has gone home. Tommy is still in Wyoming, and Ellie seems to have a weight off her shoulders once the song is done. His isn’t quite gone, but his feelings were hardly the pressing ones at hand.

He thinks of Ellie with the world on her shoulders, not for the first time or the last. It’s not like he could shelter her from it, even if he tried. She wouldn’t want it anyway, if the security conversation was any indication. Joel remembers the trial, knows she’s been through more than any eighteen year old should be. Maybe he and Ellie are too alike if both of their answers are to start writing. 

At least she knows she can come to him with this kind of thing. That feels like progress for both of them.

-

On Sunday, she breathes a sigh of relief. There are no nightmares. It feels like it’s over until Wednesday, when it’s not. Joel always told her to never read the trashy fucking tabloids, and she never did. They’d go digging around and make up shit when they couldn’t find anything, he’d told her, and that was usually right. Unless they have a primary source, someone willing to make a quick buck. 

She used to be afraid of Linda being one of those people (and she’s pretty sure she was, once) or another foster family or a girl at her group home (she’s personally been betting on Bethany). But instead, on Wednesday it’s Linda’s sister. The same one that left the voicemail. The same one whose phone number she’d blocked.

She hardly ever spoke to Linda's sister. Ellie was with Linda for maybe two years. Her sister was sometimes fighting with her, sometimes not, their relationship as confusing as Linda herself was. 

Ellie Williams Drove Her Foster Mother to Suicide, though. What a headline.

That’s a fucking doozy. Apparently, she’d be so selfish to abandon the one person who looked out for her when she was a maladjusted foster kid no one cared about. Once she got rich and famous, she had no use for her poor mother (a stretch of a word, in the first place). Another example of a spoiled, ungrateful brat. Her and David should share notes. Maybe they did, with the aside about Ellie throwing away anyone who tried to help her the moment they stopped being useful.

She doesn’t mean to fucking read it, but she does.

“I hope you’re not listening to this shit,” Joel says, peering at her phone in the studio. She locks it, defensively. “There’s always people saying something nasty. You can’t listen to it.”

“I’m not,” Ellie says defensively, at first. “It’s all made up, anyway.”

“You’re a good kid, Ellie,” Joel says, his voice softening. “Just had a hard start to it, is all. Harder than you ever should have. It’s not on you.”

For some reason, this is what makes her face crumple and her eyes glaze over. Of everything, it’s Joel telling her it’s not her fault that makes her break. Joel folds her into a hug instantly, and she feels pathetic when she clings to him all the same.

“First it’s David,” she says, and it’s a humiliating hiccup because she went this fucking long without breaking down. “Well, not even first really. Now it’s this shit and it’s just - I’m eighteen! I shouldn’t have this much shit! Like, logically, this shouldn’t even be possible. I should be done!”

“I know, baby girl,” Joel murmurs, hand on her hair. “I know. It’ll be over soon, I promise.”

It’s a promise he can’t hope to keep. But he does it anyway.

-

It’s embarrassing to be so tear-stained and puffy, and after her outburst she tries to look normal. She goes to the bathroom sink in the studio, splashes her face with cold water,  and pretends that’s just like hititng a reset button. Joel asks her for her phone, just so she can stop looking at this shit. She scowls at first, but hands it over all the same.

He tucks it into a drawer, eyebrows raised in a manner that says it’s the closest equivalent of it being locked up.

“It’s just hurtin’ yourself, at this point,” he tells her. He’s not wrong. Ellie reluctantly cedes phone custody for the rest of the afternoon, just tells him to tell her if Dina calls. Joel snorts and agrees to her terms.

-

Later, after takeout is ordered and finished because she absolutely does not want to be in public, even if public is a Waffle House, Joel is strumming his guitar with something contemplative in his eyes.

“I’ve been working on a song, too,” he says, and Ellie almost laughs.

“Of course you have. You spend more time at this studio than you do at your apartment.”

“You’re one to talk, you little shit,” Joel retorts with a light tug on her ponytail. Ellie shakes her head so her hair falls out of reach. He settles for flicking her forehead. “You wanna hear it or not?”

Ellie gives a quick nod. He starts strumming, his low voice comforting.

It might be the kindest song Joel has ever written.

When he finishes, she just rests her head on his shoulder. It’s a wordless thank you. Joel leans his head over hers, and maybe he gets it. It’s different than anything she’s ever had before. She doesn’t have to question if Joel will be there, if any of this is conditional, if she’s going to fuck it all up and end up alone again. Joel is just there. 

-

She gets her phone back by the time she gets home. Joel tells her if she reads the Daily Mail again he’s going to burn their stupid headquarters down himself. She asks if that’s a promise, and he shakes his head with affection. Ellie hasn’t missed much in terms of notifications when she settles into her car and gets ready to go home, but there’s something.

A text, but this time from a number that’s not so unknown.

“Hope you’re doing okay, Ellie.”

Riley. Wonderful timing.

-

Riley was her best friend before she was something else. At the group home, pre-Linda and pre-David and all of it, they were thick as thieves. Sometimes that involved actual theft. For the most part, though, it involved inside jokes and Riley standing up for her and the first time Ellie felt like someone was hers. And then Riley moved to Atlanta and Ellie pursued music and she didn’t hear from Riley again until she was fifteen and on the precipice of an album release.

Riley was seventeen and taller, somehow, and being emancipated meant Ellie could visit her whenever the fuck she wanted. It started with an email, escalated to phone calls and getting back to old habits, and Riley hasn’t changed too much from when she left. It feels like home, exchanging shitty puns over the telephone, and Riley’s laugh feels right when nothing else really does. David’s eyes loom over in the studio, and when that feeling prickles too much she can go home and call Riley and pretend like everything is okay.

When the album is finished and before she starts getting fucking obligations like interviews and radio stations and promotions, she goes to Atlanta. She sneaks around with Riley like old times, group homes long behind them. Ellie can be the cool mature one now, all emancipated and she has a living ahead of her far away from the foster system and everything else. Maybe now she can be the cool one, but Riley was always more clever than she was anyway.

They spend two months of summer when Riley is out of school driving around Atlanta suburbs, getting into shit they shouldn’t. It feels like freedom, being around Riley again, and friendship turns into what she always wanted it to turn into. They sneak around in the back of Riley’s foster parents’ car, giggling on the side of a random road and it feels like nothing can ever find them there. When Ellie leaves Atlanta, it’s with the promise of coming back. 

When she gets back to New York for promotion, she sees David dead silent. That means he’s furious, she’s discovered the hard way, and in between prep for a radio station he just holds up a photo. It’s her and Riley, kissing in the suburbs. Sneaking around like teenagers, because that’s what they were.

“We can’t have this,” he tells her, tone sharp. “Y’know, mothers don’t want their little girls getting corrupted by this kind of thing. You understand, right Ellie?”

“Go to hell,” she tells him, and the slap is quick.

It stings, when she holds her jaw in place with a glare.

“I say the word, and all of this is over,” David tells her, a clear threat. “You’ll never speak to that girl again or I’ll make both of you regret it.”

She wants to hit back. Ellie wants to tell him to go fuck himself, wants to tell him he shouldn’t be so invested in the dating life of a little girl, wants to defend Riley. But music is her way out. This is the only way out, it feels like, the walls are closing in on her at any second. She’s heard enough nightmare stories about kids in the system. Not everyone gets this kind of chance.

She can’t call Riley again. And when she tries to, once she’s booted from David’s label once and for all because she’s tired of living under his rules and under a predatory glare, Riley never responds. It’s only fair, all things considered. She tries a dozen different apologies, a million different ways. None of them get her anywhere, there’s no returning to summer in Atlanta when things felt simpler.

Ellie fucked it all up. Of course Riley didn’t want to hear from her.

-

Now Ellie is eighteen and dating someone and Riley is twenty and she hasn’t heard from her in years, the girl that shaped her more than almost anyone. She gnaws at her lip, staring at the text. Ghosts always have a way of catching up with her, even the friendlier variation. A pang of guilt hits when she thinks about Dina, and she wonders if it’s shitty to talk to her ex when she has a new kind of girlfriend but they’ve never even fully had that talk and –

Fuck.

She peels out of the studio parking lot and resolves that talking to Dina is probably the right thing to do. Look at her, being all mature.

-

She knocks on Dina’s door and she lets her in without question, their routine an easy rhythm. Dina asks about the studio, Ellie asks about class, and they’re both avoiding any elephants in the room.

“You’ve been quiet, lately,” is what Dina says, tone patient in a way that Ellie doesn’t entirely deserve.

“It’s been a lot,” Ellie offers quietly. She’s sprawled on Dina’s couch, Dina hunched over an armchair in a way that says she’s listening. “With all the…foster mom stuff.”

“Yeah,” Dina acknowledges. “You can always, y’know. Talk about it. If you want to.”

Her favorite thing, talking about her feelings – Ellie snorts and it comes out more dismissive than she means it. “I don’t think I ever told you about Riley.”

“Riley?”

“First girlfriend. Ended it because of, well, David mostly. Not well. Heard from her for the first time today. Is – this is awkward.”

Ellie trails off, and she’s pretty sure she’s just making it worse.

“Well,” Dina says, a smile on the edges of her lips. “You can tell her you have a girlfriend now, if you want. I know the indie rockstar thing makes you popular, but don’t forget about the girl down the hall.”

The confirmation feels better than it should. Ellie grins, in spite of herself. “I’d never, first of all.”

“You’d better not.”

Dina’s eyes are light and knowing and this feels easier than almost anything. 

-

She does text Riley back, eventually.

“I’m doing okay. I hope you’re doing well.”

Ellie hopes it sounds mature, that it sounds like she’s grown up. Part of her still wonders what Riley thinks about her, if she’s another headline waiting to happen about the closeted child star who threw another person under the bus. That one would hurt. But Riley is texting her first, and maybe that’s worth something.

“Wishing you the best,” Riley texts back, and it’s at once forgiveness and a goodbye. She recognizes it for what it is, the bittersweetness feeling like complex relief. She thinks of her girlfriend down the hall, of the girl who helped her find herself in August, about the girl she is now. Maybe it’s a messy narrative. But maybe it’s an okay one, at the end of the day.

-

Ellie starts getting questions about her former foster mother’s death, about the headlines.

It starts with an interview for some fucking indie rock podcast, what was supposed to be a little safer of a place to land. Her tongue feels like lead when the interviewer asks about the rumors, about her life before all of this.

“I mean, I know child stars always have a little bit of a fucked up history,” the guy says. She takes a deep breath and resolves not to fucking punch him.

“You could say that,” she tries. “I don’t really, uh, like talking about it. Here for the music, man.”

Her smile feels weak. But he seems to accept it so he doesn’t get blacklisted, at least, and at least pissing off Joel is a valid enough fear if pissing her off wasn’t. Yet. Maybe she’d get the scary reputation of Joel. Maybe she should fucking cultivate that more.

Ellie gets a long-winded apology over text message from the interviewer later. It probably means that Joel reamed him a new asshole. 

‘I sincerely hope this doesn’t affect our relationship with you or any of the Austin-Jackson acts,’ is what the text ends on, and that’s as big of a tell as any.

Joel doesn’t say anything about it when Ellie walks into the studio the next day, just pretends like nothing is amiss. 

“How do I make these fucking interviewers as scared of me as they are you?” she asks, propping her hip against the soundbooth. 

Joel doesn’t miss a beat. “Throw shit at them sometimes.”

Ellie gives a salute in response. “That’s it. Got it. Violence is the answer.”

“Depends on the question,” Joel says idly. “You’ve taken enough of their shit.”

Maria is in the back of her mind, the lawyer probably losing her mind if she ever heard this conversation. Ellie thinks about liability and the label PR and she laughs because they have their hands full with the two of them.

“I’m bein’ serious about one thing,” Joel emphasizes, “They come to you with any shit, tell me. I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”

Ellie gives his arm a punch. “Thanks, dad .”

Joel’s mustache twitches. It’s a little more than a joke.

-

The headlines around Ellie finally change when David gets arraigned. It’s been a long time coming. At least she didn’t have to fucking testify this time around. There’s a groupchat with some of the other girls, and it’s a mix of excitement and dread for when the verdict comes. It’s a shitty club, but they’re all trying their best. At least this isn’t a battle she has to be in alone. He was pretty fucking good at making them feel alone.

She’s sick of the headlines being about all of this shit and not her music, so one day in the studio she tells Joel it’s time to get serious.

“About what?” he asks, propped over the guitar.

“Album number two,” she says from the piano, holding up what could either be the number or a peace sign. “Let’s fucking go, man. I want to put something out.”

“Keepin’ the songs we’ve done already, right?” Joel asks, but he’s just asking for confirmation of what he already knows.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” she says, because she’d rather put out a hundred more songs as explanation than ever do another stupid interview. Let them talk about something more fucking interesting than David or her foster past or any of the other shit. She can tour again, they can live in the studio, she can do whatever the fuck she wants.

At the very least, Ellie is free. This time it feels real.

Chapter Text

The Sad Dads of the National 

If you haven’t heard of Ellie Williams, quasi-child star turned alternative indie rock darling, you might be living under a rock. At the very least, you’re not living in the proximity of women under the age of thirty-five, anyone who might identify as LGBTQ+, or some middle-aged men with an affection for her producer turned mentor. Joel Miller, frontman of rock band the Last of Us, is a piece of that puzzle – albeit, both would say, not the most interesting piece. 

With Williams’ yet-named second studio album under Austin-Jackson Records – a passion project of The Last of Us drummer and Joel’s brother, Tommy – due for a release early next year, you would think it would be easy for a magazine to schedule an interview for the album’s promotion cycle with the act in question. You would be mistaken, as I learned the hard way. Typically, with musicians, there’s a straightforward path to an interview – you reach out to a publicist, a manager, anyone on their team who might decide that you fit what their act is looking for in promoting their newest project. For me, that turned into a lengthy game of telephone that mostly went nowhere.

It wasn’t always this hard to reach Williams – but maybe after having her name in the headlines for items unrelated to her current musical projects ( a public and drawn out lawsuit with the head of her former label , her family history turned into gossip fodder ) it might be reasonable to be hesitant about media inquiries. That’s what Tommy prepares me with when I give him a call, the closest friendly relationship I have in proximity to the act in question.

“Ellie has been through a lot,” Tommy tells me over the phone. He and I are on a first-name basis, we talk enough about Austin-Jackson’s other acts that we talk somewhat regularly. He’s in an airport heading back to Austin from his home in Wyoming, he tells me. “Of course we’re protective over her, wouldn’t you be?”

By some miracle, this conversation leads to a formal interview request being accepted. I get on a plane to Austin the next day from my home in L.A. I have a sit down booked with Williams in her hometown, at a coffee shop of her choosing. The eighteen year old has more control over her bookings than most industry veterans, and a part of me is at once annoyed with how hard it’s making my job and respects it. At the very least, Williams is no one’s over-rehearsed child star.

When I meet her for the first time, she’s tucked into a table in the corner wearing an oversized t-shirt and chestnut hair cut to her shoulder blades. Williams gives me a little wave, but doesn’t smile. Even the baristas seem to eye me with suspicion, as if everyone in Williams’ orbit has some degree of protectiveness over her. Given what we know about David Smith, the music mogul turned “exposed predator” that claimed he kickstarted WIlliams’ career , you might find that fair. 

Williams has written about the horror of enclosed spaces, feminine rage, and a desire for karmic revenge, and they’re themes too many women have found themselves resonating with. Her lyrics are at once vivid and relatable, and that may be a large part of her appeal. At once, so many women are finding the permission to scream the way a girl does in songs she recorded when she was seventeen. 

“Interviews have not always gone well for me,” she tells me, after pleasantries are exchanged. Williams has always had a reputation for candor.  “I mean, it’s like the second you become a little bit famous everyone suddenly thinks they have every right to know every detail of your private life. I’m just a person who likes making music, man.”

I ask her to tell me about what got her into making music, and a part of her lights up.

“I always loved music. Always. I spent so much time growing up with a Walkman and then a beat up old iPod and then whatever I could get my hands on,” she laughs. “And I loved everything. Pearl Jam, The Stones, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, even listened to a hell of a lot of Britney and - dude, I could go on about music for ages.”

“You ever listen to The Last of Us?” I ask her, meaning it to be tongue in cheek.

She laughs. “A little, yeah. Part of me has always loved the sad dad rock shit.”

“What was it like going from listening to bands like that to working with them?”

Williams just seems amused by my question, like she already knows where I’m going with it. “Well, I’m not working with Radiohead. I assume you’re asking about Joel?”

It’s hard to talk about Williams these days without also talking about her mentor. Joel Miller shows up in the producing and some songwriting credits of her first album, the two have had more pap shots in baseball caps at Waffle House than some pop stars have had walking photos, and Miller has gained a reputation of being famously protective of Williams. During the length of Smith’s defamation lawsuit against Williams, Miller had a constant presence at her side. There’s even grainy footage of him punching Smith in the face in a courthouse hallway that went viral. Some have set the clip to music.

Many find their musical collaboration and personal relationship perplexing – a burgeoning female indie alternative star who identifies as a lesbian teaming up with a rock star nearly forty years her senior who has been described more than once as ‘curmudgeonly”. Others in their orbit say it makes sense for both of them more than anything else ever has, and the success of their collaboration is only proof of that. Miller receded from public life after the untimely death of his only daughter in 2003. Williams grew up in the foster system. For some, it’s not hard to see how the two found working with each other cathartic.

“I am asking about Joel,” I confirm to her. Williams is no-nonsense, and I figure she’d respect the truth more than politeness.

“I wasn’t ever planning on working with Joel a ton when I signed to Austin-Jackson,” Ellie snorts. She fiddles with rings on her fingers, takes intermittent sips of her oat milk latte. “It just kinda happened. I thought he was an asshole and then he was in the soundbooth giving suggestions that didn’t totally suck.”

The words are said with clear affection.

“Anyway, that just started happening more. I’d write a song, he’d have ideas for instrumentation, and we just kept going from there. It wasn’t like I went in there thinking I’d work with Joel, I went in there thinking at least I’d have a fucking studio to work in and put shit out from, which is more than I had before.”

Williams is referencing her extended-play “Space and Time” , released between her record deal with Smith’s Resort Records and her eventual deal with Austin-Jackson. It was done entirely by Williams herself, from instruments to recording to mastering, and the effort involved by a sixteen year old is nothing short of laudable. Critically mixed and commercially largely unsuccessful, it set her apart from her first ventures into music as someone who was in it for love of the craft.

“What was it like to transition from working under Resort Records to self-releasing to working with Austin Jackson?” I ask her.

Williams sighs and it sounds like one of relief. “Dude. I feel free for the first time in my life, I think. Feels fucking great.”

“Why didn’t you stay with Women in Music?” is my next question, referencing a brief stint she had with a women-led alternative label in the aftermath of the Resort Records trial. Whatever the terms of the contract were, she was only signed to it for two months before returning to Austin-Jackson.

Ellie shrugs. “It was stupid trial shit. They’re great. I have nothing but nice things to say about them, they’re fuckin’ rad. But they weren’t…” she trails off with a shrug, going back to drinking her coffee.

“They weren’t like working with Joel Miller?” I ask.

“They weren’t like working with Joel,” Williams confirms. “Working with Joel is like the easiest thing in the world. I have an idea and he knows exactly what I mean, y’know? The intent, what I’m trying to do – have you ever seen a fifty-six year old man drag in a xylophone into a studio from his fucking pickup truck?”

I laugh. “No. I haven’t.”

“Well, I have,” Williams says, her voice amused. “Joel would do shit like that all the time. We could just lay on the floor of the studio and make shitty jokes until they turned into a song. I’m pretty sure Henry [Burrell, sound engineer for Austin-Jackson] was so fucking sick of us being the worst by the end of the first album. But it’s easy. I’ve felt safer in that studio making songs with Joel than I have anywhere else, and that’s worth…I mean, a shit ton.”

“How would you describe your relationship?”

“Well, I’m gay,” Williams says flatly.

I’m immediately shaking my head. “Not what I meant.”

Williams shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you have to describe everything?”

“No, I guess not,” is what I tell her. My genuine curiosity and I’m sure the curiosity of the readers will have to be sated in other ways. I ask her about what the next album is about.

“Your classics,” she tells me with a grin. “Depression, anxiety, the opposite of missing someone, existential dread, falling in love with your girlfriend.”

“That’s a headline,” I tell her.

“There you go,” she lifts her coffee cup to me in cheers. 

-

Tommy Miller is a bit easier to sit down with. The Last of Us drummer and Austin-Jackson co-owner has always been the friendlier face of the Miller brothers. If Joel is the one holed up in the studio, only coming out for live shows, Tommy is the one that’s willing to spend a little time in the Texas sunlight. He has an easy charm to him, with a grown out mustache and long hair tucked behind his ears. He gives me a grin and a firm handshake as soon as I greet him.

“Ellie is seriously underselling herself,” Tommy tells me with a laugh, tucked into a Mexican restaurant in Austin’s downtown. “She went in there and knew exactly what she wanted. I’m pretty sure she told us she was getting her masters or we could go fuck ourselves. She was seventeen and acted like she could take on the world, and you believed she could.”

(Confirmation from Williams over text message: “I don’t think I said go fuck yourself, I think that was more implied.”)

“What made you want to sign [Williams]?” I ask.

“We’re normally not in the business of signing teenagers. But she’s talented, has a hell of a work ethic. Joel always likes to say somethin’ about how I like bandwagons. He’s wrong,” Tommy has a slow, wide grin. “I like bein’ ahead of the bandwagon. And whaddya know – I was.”

He’s right, Williams’ sales are nothing to laugh at. At some point, her first album with Austin-Jackson spent weeks at number one on the alternative charts. If he was looking for a good bet to place, Williams assuredly became that.

“Did you know that Ellie and Joel would develop the kind of collaborative partnership they have now?”

Tommy chuckles. “No. Not at all. Joel normally doesn’t like getting involved in production except to put finishin’ touches on. Ellie was the first act he really invested in, I think. Something really special came out of that and will keep comin’, I think.”

“Why do you think she was the first act he really invested in?” I ask him.

“Ellie’s a special kid,” Tommy tells me, popping a tortilla chip in his mouth. “And to be honest with you, the two of them working together is the happiest I’ve seen Joel in years.”

For a frontman of a band that is described by many as ‘depression rock’,  Joel Miller has fit that bill with exaction for decades.  If Williams writes about feminine rage, Miller writes about the alienation that comes with middle-aged desolation and agonizing self-consciousness. After enormous personal tragedies, mental health struggles detailed in song lyrics and nowhere else, Joel and his music have always felt like the manifestation of heavy grief. For many of the band’s fans, this is cathartic.Joel Miller doesn’t cultivate a fanbase, just releases music and does shows. The rest happens by happenstance. There are no social media profiles aside from publicist-run band pages, no in-depth interviews, and no elaborate PR sympathy strategies. There’s just Joel and a guitar, oozing melancholia in recordings and on stage. 

On stage, his hair is grey-streaked and his typical button-down and jeans combination sun-bleached. He avoids questions about everything from his personal life to Chilean representation in music to questions about the music itself. Really, he just avoids any media attention. In the early days, before his daughter’s death, fans described him as “a lot more fun and a lot less sad”. Interviews were certainly more common. 

If getting an interview with Ellie Williams is difficult, getting one with Joel Miller may require several hail marys. The Last of Us frontman is notoriously private, rarely doing interviews or so much as public appearances with a few exceptions ( music festival circuits , last year’s Grammy awards , and press releases regarding whichever altercation with paparazzi outside of his home that was the most recent ). Joel Miller does not have a great working relationship with the media, to say the least.

Tommy laughs when I ask him about it at the end of our conversation, “If you get Joel to do an interview, let me know. I have some hell to check, maybe it froze over.”

It’s not the most promising exchange. I told my editor it was a long shot, the idea of sitting down with Joel Miller, and she at once agreed with me and asked me to give it my best regardless. If Joel’s brother isn’t enough of an in, I manage to try another avenue. When I ask Williams about the potential of sitting down with Joel Miller over text, she initially sends me this:

“lol”

I’m ready to give up on the entire endeavor, knowing that interviews with Williams and his brother Tommy are the closest I’m likely to get to America’s alternative music recluse, when I get another message from Williams.

“let me ask him – I’ll increase your odds”

Miraculously, she does just that. I have an interview scheduled with Joel Miller the next day. I text my editor about it in disbelief, and she asks me to clarify it’s not just a prank. I’m not sure it isn’t until I see the man in question, Joel Miller with a baseball cap pulled over his hair in a booth at a local Austin restaurant. There’s a tattered ‘Keep Austin Weird’ poster hanging on the wall, and it might be one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever done as a music journalist.

“What’s your angle?” is Miller’s first question, gruff as to be expected from his reputation.

“Curiosity,” I tell him, again aiming for honesty. “I think readers are really curious about your process.”

“And Ellie?”

“And Ellie’s process,” I continue. At some point in journalism school, I had a professor that instructed me to keep a calm cadence no matter what, to never let the subject see you sweat. Somehow, as a thirty-five year old journalist with over a decade of experience, this becomes harder when it’s Joel Miller sitting across from you acting as a mercurial papa bear. 

“And you talked to Ellie,” he says, nodding as if seeking confirmation.

“Yes. I talked to her and your brother, Tommy. So, I would like to say I really appreciate this opportunity to sit down with you today. I know it’s a rare one.”

“Yeah,” Miller agrees flatly. “It is.”

For a man who famously performs vulnerability in aching specifics, it’s almost funny to see him as gruff Texan rockstar with short answers. 

“Ellie is really talented,” I offer.

“Yeah,” and his voice is softer this time. “She is.”

The conversation is slow to start, but it picks up steam eventually. Joel starts with short answers to straightforward questions. Yes, a new The Last of Us album is coming in a year or two. Yes, they will tour South America again soon. No, he hasn’t listened to Bleachers – the principal project of Jack Antonoff, whom he recently lost his first Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year to. People were surprised he showed up to the Grammy’s at all, and when I ask him about it he just says:

“Oh, I hate the whole thing. But it was Ellie’s first Grammy’s – I had to be there for that.”

(For the record, I did catch a glimpse of Williams’ phone lock screen during our conversation at that coffee shop. Someone on Twitter is going to be very happy to know that their annotated meme of a Grammy’s picture of Williams and Miller made it to the artist’s phone wallpaper – I saw it briefly enough to recognize the words “Grammy Loser Daughter” and “Grammy Loser Father”.)

“What do you think makes that collaboration between the two of you – on her album, on some of your side projects – work so well?” I ask him.

“Sometimes, it’s a mystery to me,” he says, tugging off his cap and running his fingers through his hair. “Doesn’t make much sense on paper, does it? Fifty year old washed up rockstar, eighteen year old with enough energy to power a damn steam plant. She’s a hell of a songwriter, we manage to speak the same language. Ellie comes up with songs quicker than music industry veterans do, she just doesn’t have that filter on her like the rest of us do. No reason it should work so damn well. But it does, doesn’t it?”

I agree with him that it does. It’s not quite an answer. He gestures for the check before too long, and I become very quickly aware that this is the closest to an answer I think we or any other publication will get. Joel Miller is cordial, but clearly hasn’t gained any affection for the media in the past few years. He has, however, clearly gained a fatherly affection for an eighteen year old star. He nearly smiles every time I bring her up during the interview. 

The sad dad of the music industry may be a little less sad, these days.

Chapter Text

The first time he sees Tess again, Joel hides.

He wouldn’t call it hiding, necessarily, it’s just when you see a former live sound engineer that’s also your ex-girlfriend there’s nothing else to do but duck into the next room as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re fifty-six or sixteen, the habit gets ingrained at some point to avoid tension. It wasn’t as if things had ended terribly, with an explosion. The thing between them died a slow death, its eventual termination a kindness. 

Joel was half-here, half-dead – Tess spent too much time trying to put together a body that was half-corpse. They met on tour, she ran the crew and he was just barely getting out of a string of Tommy’s interventions. Tess was kinder than he deserved, and the thing between them always felt easy until it wasn’t. Tess wanted more than he was capable of giving, and that signed the death knell for whatever it could be. Eventually, she chose herself. It was the wise decision, the one Joel was too weak to make. 

Tess sees him before he can hide, as she tended to do before.

“Joel?”

He curses under his breath, then aims for appearing casual. He knows he’s failing. “Tess,” he says finally, turning to face her. They were bound to cross paths again in their respective work, it was only a matter of time before he’d see her at a show running a tight ship for another band. They’re in California, and Joel’s head is anywhere else.

“Hey,” she says, stopping to look at him for a second as the crew continues to run past them.

“Hey,” he offers. Joel’s hand comes up to scratch the base of his neck. “How have you, uh, been?”

Tess holds up her left hand, ring on the right finger. “Married, these days.”

“Ah,” Joel hangs his head, shuffles his feet. “Congratulations, Tess. I know that’s what you wanted.”

‘It’s what I couldn’t give you’ is left unsaid.

“And you’re doing…” Tess looks at him, looks over at Ellie excitedly talking to some pop rock act named Jesse, an overenthusiastic twenty-something that for once matches her chaotic energy. It’s a crowded festival circuit and a busy backstage. “Better. I hear.”

Joel looks over his shoulder, at Ellie, for a moment. He didn’t talk about Sarah, not around Tess. Not around anyone but Tommy, really. Tess knew the way everyone did, though, it must’ve been part of why she gave him more slack than he’d earned. She deserved better in a lot of ways. Too many ways. 

He clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m doing better.”

“Wins for both of us, then,” Tess says, makes it simple and straightforward. 

Joel opens his mouth, tries to get the words out. He’s never been so good at that, not with her. Tess cuts him off before he even gets there.

“I don’t want your apology, Joel,” Tess says, and she’s honest and clear-eyed in the way she always is.

Joel grunts. It’s more acknowledgement than agreement. “For what it’s worth, I’m still sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” Tess shrugs. “Maybe sometimes things work out the way they do. We both needed something the other couldn’t give. Or something, fuck if I know.”

Joel swallows, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I guess they do.”

Tess gives him a tight-lipped smile. “I better be going. See you around, Joel. Take care of yourself.”

“See you around,” he returns – by the time he does, he’s just talking to air.

–

Ellie picks up on it, because of course she does. Her set was done an hour beforehand, the chaos backstage continuing around them. It’s an outdoor festival, all warm Southern California air. She finds him camped out somewhere behind an abundance of sound equipment.  “Who was that?”

“Onstage?” Joel asks, feigning ignorance. “Dunno, could look at the lineup.”

Ellie rolls her eyes, taking a chug of a water bottle. “Who were you talking to earlier? The woman?”

“No one,” Joel says immediately. “Just checking sound, is all.”

Ellie narrows her eyes. “Yeah, I know I get all fuckin’ serious and contemplative and weird after just having a chat with a sound engineer.”

“Well,” Joel groans, relenting. “Maybe you would if the sound engineer was your ex-girlfriend, you little shit.”

Ellie’s eyebrows raise. “Really? I mean, good for you man, she’s hot.”

His hand is already coming to rub at his temple. The migraine is setting in.

“And she’s married now,” Joel says, hoping it ends the conversation. 

“Damn,” Ellie mutters, scuffing her converse against the floor. The water bottle crinkles when she grips it – empty. 

“It was a while ago. Mutual.”

“Mhm,” Ellie nods. “That’s why every love song you’ve ever written has been depressing as fuck. All the mutual-ness.”

Joel sighs. He scrubs at his face with his hand. By the end of this, he’s going to look like utter shit.

“Sorry,” Ellie says, looking genuinely remorseful. “Probably mean to fuck with you, right now.”

“At least it’s normal for you.”

“Totally what I was going for.”

–

He thinks about Tess from time to time, but he has a long list of ghosts to look after. Sometimes she wasn't at the top of that list, and maybe that was always the problem for them. Joel does his set, doesn’t see her for the rest of the night, and gets a flight back home the next morning. 

“You look like reheated shit,” Ellie tells him, on one side of him. She called the window seat. “Like, someone left you in the microwave for too long. Or plastic melted in there."

Joel rolls his eyes.

Tommy agrees on the other side of him. “Didn’t sleep at all, huh? Time zones always get you, old man.”

“I think sittin’ on the outside of the plane would be better than sittin’ next to the either one of you,” he tells them. 

“Room on the wing,” Ellie tells him chipperly. “I’ll ask the flight attendant. Think your hair would look better after that than it does now.”

He flicks the side of her head. She just ruffles his hair more. Joel sighs.

“Kids,” Tommy says, shaking his head with affection.

“Tell that to this one,” Joel retorts. 

“I feel like as the youngest one in this little row, I get a pass more than either of you.”

–

A few weeks later Ellie is off on her own promotional circuit with a lineup of shows for her new album. Joel, Tommy, and the band are left in the studio alone with their own damn thoughts. An outline of an album is lingering somewhere, one unfinished song at a time. None of it comes to him easily – there’s no easy catharsis to be had or anything interesting to say. Joel feels a bit guilty, leaving them hanging when they could be exploring their own projects.

“I’m stuck,” is what Joel tells Ellie over the phone, when it’s 2 AM in Austin and 8 AM in London when she calls him first thing and asks how the album is coming along.

“Is that possible?” Ellie asks, surprised. He snickers in spite of himself.

“Happens all the time. Can’t all be little savants like you, kid.”

The scoff comes clearly over the phone. As does the ‘ow, fuck’ . “Ran into this fuckin’ hotel dresser,” she mutters before he can ask. “Never thought I’d miss my own bed. You still feeding Ron?”

“The cat?” Joel asks flatly. “Yeah, I’m feeding the little shit. Why don’t you ask your girlfriend who lives down the hall to do it?”

“Ron likes you more,” Ellie says, a lie. “And it’s exam season, I don’t want to bother Dina.”

“So you bother me?”

“Duh,” she says immediately. “You like being needed.”

Joel rolls his eyes and grins all the same. “Dreary as shit over there, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, they’re real sticks up asses. I keep making jokes about King Charles being next and no one thinks I’m being funny.”

“Don’t get arrested by the Royal Guard or whatever they call it over there.”

“You did once.”

“That’s because their tabloids are even worse than ours. Real pieces of work. Don’t get arrested. Maria won’t like bailing you out from abroad.”

“So I shouldn't vandalize Buckingham Palace?” she snickers. “I already have the paint. Real edgy anti-monarchist thing. Build London rock cred. Give you something to write about.”

“Who am I, the fuckin’ Sex Pistols?”

Ellie laughs again. Then groans. “Fuck, I gotta be up for this stupid interview.”

“If anyone-”

“Is an asshole, just leave,” Ellie repeats dully. “Don’t worry, good ol’ publicist Trina tells me they’re fine. Feels so pretentious talking about a fucking publicist.”

“She’s there to protect you,” he reminds her.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Call me when you have an album, old man!” she tells him, but it’s with affection. “Bye, Joel.”

“Be safe,” he responds, and the line clicks. Joel shakes his head. He looks at the piano in the corner and sighs. 

Guitar just wasn’t doing the trick, he guesses. 

–

Album writing is slow, so slow Ellie is back stateside before it’s even close to done. It’s a marathon, not a sprint as Tommy loves to remind him. He wants to tell his brother to shove it, but then Tommy gets the news from Maria that she’s a few months pregnant and he’s going to be a father and Joel is going to be an uncle and – it shouldn’t sting, after everything, after Tommy was an uncle once. So Joel grins and bears it, tells his brother what he needs to hear, and becomes aware of the timer over his head for this damn album to get done so Maria and Tommy can have the damn baby in Jackson.

Ellie might be able to tell he’s getting more restless (might be able to, as if he isn’t a ball of anxiety at any point in time). So, she offers, “You should come to some tour dates, man. Get a change of scenery. Red Rocks next weekend?”

Joel squints. “Are you trying to babysit me?”

“Like you’d be one to talk.”

“If I was, it’d make a hell of a lot more sense given I’m nearly forty years older than you, kid,” he snorts. 

“You should come,” she says again.

So Joel sighs heavily, says he should stay in Austin, and then goes anyway.

–

So of course when he’s in a hotel bar in Denver, nursing a whiskey while Ellie retires after her show to her hotel room, he sees another ghost. The silhouette of a woman he hasn’t seen in years, the woman who he most associated with leaving out the door. It’s hard to believe, so he doesn’t, a half-laugh escaping him as he hangs his head near the bar counter.

“Joel?” his ex-wife’s voice is asking, because of course she does. 

He hasn’t seen Rebecca in years and years, not since Sarah. She showed at the funeral, he heard from Tommy. Joel was a little preoccupied with an involuntary commitment to notice. At least Sarah’s mother showed for her one time, even if she did it when it was too late. One of her parents there for her funeral, the other one there for her life. It’s an awful symmetry.

And now, he took an offer to follow Ellie to Denver, and Rebecca had to follow him here too.

“Rebecca,” Joel says shortly, finishing the rest of the glass in one gulp. 

“You look-” she starts, and he shakes his head.

“No. Let’s not do this,” he says. It’s hard to look at her, she looks so much like Sarah. He stares at his glass instead. “I should leave.”

“I’ll leave first,” she says. There’s a bitter joke in there, somewhere. “We don’t have to. I’m not – I’m going back to Spain, I’m not –”

“I don’t need to know,” Joel says, his voice a murmur. He still can’t bring himself to meet her eyes, the reflection of Sarah – the little girl she left that will never get old. The little girl she left behind, the little girl they buried.

“Then I’ll just say this, because I doubt I’ll ever get another chance. I’m sorry for the way things turned out. I’m sorry I didn’t realize this life wasn’t for me earlier. I’m not sorry you and Sarah had each other, at the end of the day. You were a good dad. I wasn’t a good mother.”

Joel closes his eyes and chokes on her words. 

“Alright,” he says, finally.

“Okay,” she says softly. There’s a hand on his shoulder, clasping fingers there and gone. He hears the sound of her walking away, not for the first time.

Joel opens his eyes to his glass, turning it over in his hand contemplatively.

“Alright,” he murmurs again, this time to no one.

The odds of running into his ex-wife tonight when he wasn’t planning on being here, when she’s been out of the country in some capacity since 1990, aren’t lost on him. He doesn’t think of her words, not really, just of the air that’s been knocked out of him.

Joel goes back to his hotel room. The dam breaks. He stays up all night writing, wearing familiar callouses into his fingers with his guitar. 

–

There’s a knock on his door around 10 AM. When he opens the door to his hotel room, exhausted, Ellie has coffee in her hands. 

“Surprised you didn’t – holy shit, Joel, did you sleep?”

“No,” Joel says flatly, accepting the coffee with a heavy swig. “Think I got an album, though.”

“No shit,” Ellie says, bouncing on her heels as she follows him in the room. “Really? Can I hear it? Did Colorado air just possess you, or something?”

“Something like that,” Joel says. “Was it you that said I make the most music when I’m miserable?”

“Me and literally everyone else. Was the show that bad?”

He shakes his head. “Not every day you see your ex-wife in the hotel bar, is all.”

“Holy shit,” Ellie mutters, voice going up and down an octave as if she’s remembered that she shouldn’t be so loud about it. “Fuckin’ crazy, man, running into all your exes lately.”

“Yeah,” Joel shakes his head. “Guess so.”

“And people say lesbians always see their exes everywhere, damn,” she blinks. “Are you like…okay?”

Joel furrows his eyebrows. “Now, you don’t gotta worry if I’m okay. That’s not your job.”

“Sorry, did you want me to call Tommy?” Ellie asks sarcastically. “Now what depressing shit did you write last night?”

“It’s not all…” Joel starts, then stops. He just sighs. “Did you want to hear it, or not?”

Ellie mimes zipping her lips. Joel picks up the guitar. He pretends to drop it just to watch Ellie’s face turn colors. He grins, just a bit, and she cackles.

–

Later, when the album is nearly finished and Ellie wraps touring for at least another few months, she asks him about it:

“What happened with your ex-wife, anyway?”

They’re in the studio again, just putting the finishing touches on with Ellie adding some backing vocals here and there before Tommy heads back to Jackson with a promise from Joel that they’ll come visit. They’re sitting in the sound booth, as if they’re ever anywhere else.

Joel sighs. Sometimes it feels like that’s all he ever does, render sighs of exasperation in between chasing Ellie around somewhere or writing something down. “Left when Sarah was a year old.”

Ellie nods, then pauses. “She give a reason?”

Joel shrugs. “This life wasn’t for her.”

“The whole fame thing?”

Joel shakes his head. “No. The whole parent thing. Said I didn’t get it, that I acted like I was born to be a dad. I was twenty-two and had no idea what I was doin’, we were still so much in the early stages of everything.”

Ellie seems to consider this for a moment. “She was right about one thing, y’know.”

Joel looks over to meet her eyes. “What?”

“You do just have a lot of dad energy.”

Joel snorts. “Pretty sure when you say that, you’re just insultin‘ me half the time.”

“Not an insult,” Ellie says, her tone defensive. “At least, I don’t mean it like that. I dunno. Nice to have around when you never grew up around it.”

Joel’s expression softens. Ellie moves over to the piano, absentmindedly plucking away. 

“Wish you did,” he tells her.

“Have it now,” she says, not even looking up. “That’s something. Why didn’t you ever do the whole re-marrying thing?”

Joel exhales. “Didn’t really see the point, I guess.”

“Don’t tell me you’re Catholic,” Ellie retorts, and Joel just rolls his eyes.

“Parents were, you little shit. But I didn’t…wasn’t exactly eager to put anyone else into this life. My record is hardly winnin’.”

Joel thinks of a backseat, cameras, the life he wanted until he didn’t and would’ve traded it all away. 

“You do kind of have to be insane to go into this,” Ellie acknowledges. She inhales, slowly, and exhales all in one go with the next sentence. “Dina and I are doing a whole break thing.”

Joel’s eyebrows raise. “What happened?”

“Think it just,” Ellie bites her lip, the piano making an anguished sort of sound. “Got to be too much. The whole thing. I’m never home. Cameras all the time. She’s trying to do her own thing while everything else is just…fucking crazy half the time. Just said she needed time to think.”

Joel frowns. “Sorry, kid.”

“And somehow we do it anyway,” she mutters, chin to her chest.

“You’re still young,” Joel reminds her. “Plenty of people figure it out. I’m just a cranky old man, probably shouldn’t listen to me.”

Ellie shakes her head. “At the end of the day, you get it though. You’re still, y’know. Here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells her, a promise he’ll make as many times as he needs to. “I swear.”

Ellie nods silently. Another exhale. “Jesus. No wonder musicians are so fucking miserable, right?”

“Could talk to her, y’know,” he says, jerking his head towards the door. He remembers Dina walking through it enough times, dropping off takeout until Ellie blushed to her ears. “Might change her mind.”

Ellie groans. “Oh, man, you know how much I fucking love talking about this shit. I’m just so,” another clunk on a piano key, “good at that.”

“Learn from my mistakes, then,” Joel snorts, shaking his head. “Be better at it. Lot of the time, just showin’ up for someone is better than nothin’.”

“Wait,” Ellie pauses, turning around to face him again. “Are you seriously giving me dating advice, right now?”

“I’m a horrible source for it,” Joel groans. “Let’s pretend this never happened, then.”

“Let’s,” Ellie agrees, turning back to the piano. Her lips are pursed together in concentration. “I’m gonna…” she trails off, looking to the door.

“Go,” he finishes for her, gesturing to the exit with a nod of his head again. “People make it work all the time, Ellie.”

She nods, and she’s out of the studio with a scattered ‘bye!’ and a swing of the door. Joel can’t help but chuckle, left alone in the studio again. There were ways, after all, to be happy enough in the chaos. The bittersweetness did occasionally render itself closer to the sweet, and after a few decades of misery sitting in the sun every once in a while still feels strange and foreign. The reminders of before and during it still stung, piercing in all the familiar ways. Pain has been his friend for so long, sometimes it’s hard to identify that absence of it.

This is the kind of shit that gets him called melodramatic, he guesses.

–

His phone vibrates on the nightstand later that night. Joel groans, bleary eyed, adjusting to the brightness. It’s Ellie.

“Let it be said Joel Miller occasionally gives not shitty advice.”

It takes him at least five times reading it through to understand what the hell she’s saying. He squints at the time. 4 AM. He doesn’t want to know. Joel falls back asleep with a chuckle, shaking his head on his pillow.

–

He and Ellie do fly to Jackson, once they get news that Tommy and Maria’s baby is close. Joel cancels his plans – not that there were very many of them – and is more surprised when Ellie follows suit to do so.

“What?” she asks, when he gives her a second look when she tells him she postponed some tour dates. There’s a camera pointed in their direction on the plane, but she ignores it easily. She’s gotten good at it by now. “It’s family, right?”

Joel gives her a misty sort of grin. “Yeah. Family.”

“You think it’s gonna be a boy or girl or are we done with all the gender binary bullshit?” Ellie asks, moving on as she buckles herself into the seat. 

“I’m betting a girl,” Joel responds fondly. “Let her give Tommy absolute hell.”

“That’s what Dina said,” Ellie rolls her eyes. “Gonna be weird, suddenly having a baby around.”

“It’s not so bad,” Joel replies. “Maybe then you won’t be the shortest person in the room for a few years.”

She punches his arm. He laughs so hard it’s nearly a wheeze, and gets a dirty look from the person in the seat in front of him. Ellie dissolves completely into laughter while he does a valiant job of holding it back.

It’s not all miserable all the time.

–

Tommy is sweating when Joel sees him, nearly pacing a hole in the floor. Maria has escalated to every spicy food under the sun, eager to get labor over with. Joel has his hands on his brother’s shoulders outside of their house in Jackson, recognizing a near panic attack when he sees one.

“You’re gonna be fine, Tommy,” is what he tells him.

“You and Maria have done this before,” Tommy says, finally. “I have no idea what I’m doing. What if I fuck this up, Joel?”

“Bein’ a dad is a lot like bein’ an uncle, just less fun,” Joel says dryly. “More responsible. Gotta make sure they don’t do stupid shit. You’ll do great.”

“If I do, it’s because I spent all this time lookin’ up to you, Joel.”

And the words might make Joel’s eyes glassy, thinking of all the times Tommy saw him at his lowest. Every horrible version of himself, Tommy has helped drag him from. Tommy dragged Joel off a bloody floor of his own making, in and out of outpatient and inpatient facilities alike, got him back into one of the few things that made him feel alive again. 

“You could’ve used a better model,” Joel says, finally.

“No,” Tommy says, shaking his head. “No, you’ve spent so much of your life being a damn good dad, Joel. To Sarah. To Ellie.”

A tear drops in earnest, at that.

“You’re the best damn dad I know, Joel,” Tommy tells him, and when Joel’s hands slip Tommy’s come to his shoulders. It’s yet another role reversal. “Trust me. I ain’t lookin’ anywhere else.”

–

The baby takes a solid seven hours to be born. Ellie and Joel sit in the waiting room for at least that long, Ellie half-heartedly either scrolling through her phone anxiously or stopping and starting at least two different books. Joel, for his part, remains studiously focused on the hallway, waiting for Tommy to emerge at any moment. His leg shakes, an old restless habit he’s never quite broken, 

“What was it like when Sarah was born?” Ellie asks.

Joel feels a pang. He pushes through it. “Was a lot more nervous when it was my kid, that’s for damn sure.”

“Twenty-two seems…” Ellie trails off. “Yeah. Fuckin’ scary, man.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “No idea what I was doin’, really. Parents were gone by that point. Just me and Tommy and Sarah’s mom. Got through it somehow. Nothing scarier than feeling like you’re gonna let your kid down, feel it before they’re even born.”

There’s a beat of silence between the two of them.

“You should put that one song you wrote on the album, the one when I was writing my last album.”

Joel snorts. “You thinkin’ about that now?”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, voice soft. “I am. Have an idea for something for Dina, too, with that half-written song you had if you got any room."

Before they can continue the conversation, Tommy is grinning in the hallway. Joel and Ellie move to stand immediately.

“It’s a girl,” Tommy says with a wide grin.

Ellie curses, and Joel’s eyes widen to chastise her.

“Dina won the bet,” she says quickly, as if the explanation warrants her response. “Anyway, congrats man!”

Joel can’t help but chuckle and shake his head. He follows Ellie towards Maria and the baby’s room. “You’re gonna have your hands full, Tommy.”

“If she’s anything like yours have been, I’m doomed,” Tommy agrees.

“I can fucking hear both of you.”

“Please do not make their child’s first word fuck,” Joel mutters. Tommy grins.

The lights are dialed down in the room, Tommy and Maria looking at their new baby with something like wonder. Before he knows it, there’s a bundle in his arms, tiny fist curled around his finger.

“Are you crying?” Ellie asks.

Joel blinks, sniffles. “No.”

“You can drop the whole toxic masculinity thing.”

Maria and Tommy both laugh. She’s almost got a full head of hair on her, the baby. Just like Sarah. He wonders for a minute if Ellie did. He’ll never know, just like he’ll never know what Sarah would’ve grown up to be.

But he gets to watch his niece grow up, gets to see Ellie grow into herself more every day, and at least that’s something if nothing else. Joel thinks of the scar on his forehead, suddenly feeling an overwhelming gratitude for his brother dragging him off the floor, for himself for flinching, for his brother again for signing a mouthy teenager to a label he thought up and for him and Maria for bringing them both here.

Joel cries in earnest, but the tears aren’t sad.

Chapter Text

Hotel, Downtown Boston, 11:15 A.M.

Ellie is supposed to perform in Boston tonight.

‘Supposed to’ as in, it was scheduled to happen and it’s the next show on the tour and it’s going to be canceled any second now. There’s a thunderstorm watch that’s supposed to turn into a warning right at showtime and the show is outdoors. All of these things should warrant cancellations. 

But Ellie is bound and determined to make it happen. It’s been a week since the article – the one where she got into the gory details about David, the one published months after the trial, the one that’s made more news cameras and paparazzi follow her around like it’s a competitive sport. It’s been exhausting, doing nonstop shows in the midst of all of it. She has CNN fucking asking her for comment nonstop and a magazine detailing the worst moments of her life slapped in front of her for an autograph when she tries to go to a goddamn store.

Even at Dunkin. It’s as if people didn’t respect the sacredness of a Dunkin in Boston. 

This is her first time performing in Boston since – well, since she wasn’t under fucking David . David owned her life in Boston, watched her every fucking move. He won’t do that tonight. He can’t. And now there’s a thunderstorm forecasted for the rest of the night, and she’s left with her band anxiously pacing in a hotel because they can’t even get into the outdoor venue to rehearse.

Showtime is seven.

“You can reschedule” is what Joel tells her over text, when she tells him the touring manager is suggesting cancelling like a ‘fucking loser’. “I’ve done it before. Doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Ellie doesn’t respond to him because the insinuation of rescheduling pisses her off. It’s Boston, her home-fucking-town, and enough of her life has been interrupted. Here’s her chance to say she’s better than ever, and canceling a show seems a lot like giving up.

Tommy calls her next.

“Hey, kid, you know rescheduling isn’t giving up–”

“Fuck off,” she tells him, and hangs up the phone.

Maybe she’s being a little unreasonable.

–

Hotel Conference Room, Downtown Boston, 12:21 P.M.

It’s quiet, eerily quiet insulated in a windowless room tucked into the corner of the hotel she and the band are staying in. The conference room has shit acoustics, but it’ll have to do. Ellie is in one corner, guitar splayed over her lap. The rest of the band is fiddling with their instruments in a makeshift rehearsal, and the tour manager is too busy being annoying than actually being fucking useful.

“Severe thunderstorm watch until midnight tonight,” the tour manager – a man in his forties named Matt – tells her. It’s not like she asked for a weather report. She’s been refreshing it just fine herself.

Ellie glares at him instead of replying.

“The openers canceled,” he continues, not even acknowledging her visible and growing annoyance. “Y’know, I respect the work ethic and all. I do. I’ve seen acts cancel because they stubbed their toe, you’re the real deal and all, but there’s –”

“We’re playing tonight,” she tells him, crossing her arms. “We’re going to figure it out. It might rain. If people come, we’ll be there.”

As if on cue, her guitarist rushes past her. Ellie looks, alarmed, then follows him with a jog outside of the door.

“Hey, Grant, are you–”

He’s in the bathroom, and it definitely sounds like he’s throwing up.

“ Grant .”

After a few minutes Grant comes out of the bathroom a distinct shade of green.

“Are you pregnant?” Ellie asks, her voice flat.

“Very funny, Williams,” Grant rolls his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Something just probably disagreed with me, is all.”

“Uh huh,” Ellie mutters, eyes narrowing. “Well. Take a Pepto Bismol, or something.”

Grant gives her a sarcastic little thumbs up. “Don’t worry, I’ll be pissing pink boss .”

Ellie watches his back as he leaves, baffled.

“Pissing…that doesn’t even make any fucking sense , man.”

When they both get back in the room, Matt is bickering with a hotel employee. 

“I had the room reserved, I don’t care how much they’re paying you–”

“Sir, we had you scheduled to be out of here by the afternoon, and we have guests–”

“Are we not guests?”

“Hey!” Ellie interjects, stepping between Matt and the employee. “Okay, we’re out. The weather isn’t bad yet. The venue will just have to let us in, it’s not even raining.”

“That implies there’s a show tonight–”

“Which there is, Matt,” Ellie groans. “How many fucking times do I have to say it? You think I’m fucking scared of rain?”

“Maybe you should be scared of getting struck by lightning.”

“Then maybe I’ll get superpowers,” Ellie counters, rolling her eyes. “Grow up. Bring the bus around. We’re going.”

-

Boston Mechanic, Downtown Boston, 1:15 PM

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ellie says with a groan.

The front of the bus is smoking, in a sign that probably means the engine is fucked. It’s not what the driver says – his version is “It’ll just be a quick fix, maybe a few hours” – but she knows that means it’s fucked between now and showtime. 

“Some people would take this as a sign,” Matt tells her as they wait inside. He offers her a Cheeto procured from the vending machine. 

“I’m not taking your bribe,” she says, gesturing to the bag of chips. “Show is still on.

“You think a Cheeto is a bribe? Shit, kid, are they not paying you?”

Grant is rushing off to the bathroom. Her keyboardist, Sharon, sighs loudly with her boots propped up on a nearby chair.

“He’s sick as shit, isn’t he?” Ellie asks, meeting her eyes with a groan. 

“He smells like it,” Sharon says dryly.

“See?” Matt offers.

“Cut Ellie a break,” Marcus, her drummer, interjects. He carries on the long tradition of drummers being the most level-fucking-headed members of any given band. “I’ve always wanted to do a rain show.”

Fiona, her bassist, nods in agreement. “Nothing beats a rain show.”

“You want Grant to throw up on you, too?” Sharon counters.

Ellie is about to argue more with all of them, but her phone rings. It’s another reporter. She throws it across the floor with a frustrated groan. She hears the screen crack, the result of refusing to get a phone case, and she can’t even bring herself to care.

“Are you sick too?” Sharon asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Sick of us,” Matt says dryly.

Ellie resists the urge to freak out. Her fists tighten at her sides, one of them coming up to her temple in an exasperated motion. The walls at the mechanic are so thin she can hear Grant throw up. “Do you know somewhere I can scream?”

Fiona gives her a little two fingered wave. “I saw a nice dumpster out back.”

“That’ll do.”

-

Dumpster lot behind Boston Mechanic, 1:30 PM

“Jesus fuck,” someone shouts in a nearby building, after Ellie lets out a scaled back version of a bloodcurling scream. “Are the feral cats fucking again?”

“Yes,” Ellie shouts back.

She’s greeted with silence. Ellie shrugs, walking over the broken glass near the bright green of the dumpster. It makes a satisfying crunching sound. She’s in her Doc Martens, the ones Tommy called her a stereotype for wearing so often until she called him homophobic and he turned so red he never said it again.

(“I meant it as, like, a rocker chick thing, like girls in line for rock shows–”

“Uh huh,” Ellie says with mock sageness. “That definitely sounds like you weren’t insulting the lesbian community.”

Joel hides his laugh behind his hands and fails at it miserably.)

Ellie thinks about how the fuck to pull this off, between the storm and a broken down bus and a sick guitarist. Ellie is playing tonight, she just doesn’t quite now how yet. But Ellie has done more with less. She starts to make a plan from there. She always did plan best after catharsis. Break a few eggs, shatter a few windshields, something productive always happened from there.

The feral-cat-fucking scream would just have to do.

-

Boston Mechanic, 1:45 PM

“Here’s what we’re doing,” Ellie says, before Matt can get in another smartass comment. She points at her guitarist, who is still looking sick as shit. “Grant, go the fuck home.”

“Hey,” Grant interjects. He’s sweating, and fooling absolutely no one. “You need a guitarist, Ellie.”

“I’ll cover your parts. I will see you when you feel better, alright?” Ellie says, her tone leaving no room for argument. She points to Matt next. 

He raises his hands in mock-persecution. “You sending me home too now, Williams?”

“No,” Ellie shakes her head. “You’re going to go ahead of us, let the venue know we’re going as soon as it’s safe. Pay them overtime. I don’t care–”

“They charge by the–”

“I said, I don’t care,” Ellie says pointedly. “Take it out of my cut, okay? I don’t give a shit if I don’t make any money on this stop. Matter of fact, buy some goddamn rain ponchos for people with my cut. I don’t care.”

Matt raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really,” Ellie responds. She jerks her head to the door. “Get a fuckin’ Uber man, I don’t care. We’ll get a couple for us and our gear. Just what we need. Nothing crazy.”

“I know a guy in Boston with a van,” Marcus offers. At that, Matt sighs and heads out the door, shaking his head.

“Of course you do,” Sharon says dryly. “He sell weed, too?”

“Weed is legal in Boston, Sharon. Grow up.”

“How soon can the van-weed man get here and does he have space for gear?” is Ellie’s question.

Marcus gives a shrug and a nod. “Lives nearby, I bet thirty minutes if I make it worth his time.”

“Okay, so van for us and the gear, Matt goes ahead, Grant goes home,” Ellie starts listing them off, holding up a finger for each item ticked off the list. Grant doesn’t even give a feeble protest, just tugs out his phone to hail a ride with a muffled grunt. “Everyone else, are you in?”

Marcus and Fiona both signal with a thumbs up. Sharon gives them a sideways look, then looks directly at Ellie.

“It’s been a really long fucking week,” Ellie sighs. “If you don’t like, feel safe or –”

“I’ll do it,” Sharon says with a wry smile and a nod. “You little badass. Gotta see what you get up to tonight.”

Ellie smiles back at her. “Okay, then we’re doing this.”

“We’re doing this,” Marcus says, fist in the air. “My drums are gonna get wet as hell.”

A long beat of silence passes. Ellie opens and closes her mouth, unsure of what to say.

It’s Sharon who breaks the quiet with all of her usual delicacy. “What the actual fuck, Marcus.”

-

Boston Music Venue - Backstage, 2:45 PM

By the time they finally get to the venue, there’s already a line outside. It’s started to rain, but if the crowd is deterred by it they’re not showing it. She spots Matt with a stack of rain ponchos while jogging over to the backstage area, and almost says a sincere thank you before he cuts her off.

“You’re lucky they’re all as fuckin’ insane as you are, Williams.”

Ellie cocks her head to the side. “Fine. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You’re soaked,” he observes, tone wry. Matt throws a poncho in her direction. She whacks it away on instinct. He rolls his eyes. “Worse than Joel.”

“I’m definitely taking that as a compliment.”

Ellie’s phone buzzes again. It’s the same journalist from earlier, this time they left a voicemail.

“Hey Ellie, this is Jared with the Reporter – I’d love to hear more of what you have to say about David’s recent denials–”

She glares at the cracked phone screen, spends so much time staring at it unblinkingly tears start to form in her eyes. Matt takes the phone from her hands before she can protest.

“Fuck ‘em,” he offers. He jerks his head towards backstage. “Go rehearse, it’ll all be here when you’re done.”

“So you admit a show is happening tonight?” Ellie counters.

Matt walks backwards, flinging a rain poncho over his head. It’s starting to come down even harder now. “Your fans said fuck the weather, Williams. Let’s go.”

–

Boston Music Venue - Backstage, 4:00 PM

Ellie looks out at the weather with a frown, watching the line huddle under awnings as the weather doesn’t get any better. Thunder claps in earnest, and the downpour renders the grass a muddy sea. Maybe she shouldn’t be so determined to do a show in her hometown just to prove a point. That’s how her keyboardist finds her, frowning at the scene with her arms crossed.

“The venue has some interior space they’ll move people into,” Sharon tells her, gesturing to a concessions area. “It’s starting to get worse, they’ll have to. Maybe we delay, hour or two.”

“You seriously think we can delay?” Ellie asks, looking over to her. Sharon is older than her, everyone is. She’s twenty-seven to Ellie’s eighteen, and carries herself with the confidence of someone who’s been doing this for much longer. 

Sharon gives her a shrug, “Well, that’s just rock and roll isn’t it?”

Ellie snorts. Sharon lifts a hand, and –

“I swear to God if you ruffle my hair, I’ll kill you.”

Sharon smirks, raising her hand away, and walks back to join the others backstage. “Your fault for being so short, Williams. Can’t help it.”

Ellie sticks out her tongue.

“Have you heard from Joel?” Sharon pauses, looking over her shoulder.

“No, Matt the Ass took my phone,” Ellie says with an exaggerated sigh. “I think he was in the rescheduling camp. Why?”

“Took your phone?” Sharon asks, eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

“Reporters.”

“Ah. Maybe we can just throw it into the storm, then.”

“Why’d you ask about Joel?”

Sharon bites back a grin, just noticeable enough. “No reason.”

“Sharon–”

“I’m rehearsing, Williams, please don’t interrupt my process,” Sharon holds a hand to her heart in mock-offense. “I’ll see you back there.”

-

Boston Music Venue - Backstage, 6:00 PM

It’s touch and go on whether or not they’ll be able to pull this off.

If they do, it’ll be later. The thunderstorm watch turned into a fully-fledged thunderstorm warning that expires at 9 PM and the venue staff have moved the still-growing crowd into indoor spaces. At this point, Ellie might feel more guilty continuing then cancelling, but somehow people are still fucking coming.

Matt is the one that points it out, dorky clear poncho sticking to wet hair.

“Doesn’t seem like they’re eager to go home, hm?”

Ellie frowns. “Guess not.”

“Looks like we’re not going home either then,” Marcus says cheerfully. “Showtime at 9?”

He holds up a hand for an invitation to a high-five. No one goes for it. He’s about to sadly put it down until Fiona slaps it, late, and almost misses and hits his face instead.

“Well, I’ll tell the venue,” Matt says, clapping his hands together and cringing at the squelch of water in his shoes when he steps back. 

Ellie looks around at all of them, the band she’s had since her first album released that stuck with her through all of it and that’s sticking with her now through a literal goddamn storm, and feels a surge of gratitude. Tommy had called them all as a favor, touring acts like usually bounced from artist to artist. Looking at them now, she thinks he really knew what the fuck he was talking about.

“Don’t get all sappy, Wiliams,” Sharon tells her, but it’s with a cheerful grin. “It’ll be a right great fuckin’ show. Let’s make it worth all of those miserable little wet kittens’ time.”

-

Boston Music Venue - Backstage, 8:30 PM

It’s Sharon’s words that linger in her head, the idea of doing something to make it worth it for everyone here. She thinks of the past week, the constant questions even after she’s said all that she thinks she needs to and more than she ever should have had to. The court of public opinion seems fine, but even still it’s constant and it’s never-ending. She keeps coming back to a drumbeat, one she things of ever since Tommy recorded it for a song she couldn’t keep in, and stops Marcus.

“I don’t think I’m gonna do it, but – you know –”

“I know the song,” Marcus says, voice warm. He knows what she’s going to say before she even asks it. “You wanna do it, just let us know.”

“Well, I don’t–” Ellie sighs, expression twisting. “I don’t know that I want – it’s just a lot, the song, and that’s why I never – fuck.”

“You decide,” Marcus emphasizes. “We’ll be here. All of us know it. For what it’s worth, I think it’d sound sick in a rain show.” 

Elloe chews on her lip. “You think?”

Marcus gives her a wide, toothy grin. He’s always been all long-hair and warm demeanor. “Hell yeah.”

Ellie gives him a small smile at the thought. She sobers, thinking of the subject matter. A fan favorite or not, it’s also the song that got her in all of this trouble in the first place. “You don’t think, after everything this week…”

“Fuck him,” Sharon says, interjecting after eavesdropping with a guzzle of bottled water. She settles on a stool, making herself comfortable.

“Fuck him,” Marcus agrees. “You do whatever the fuck you want to do, Ellie. That’s the point.”

-

Boston Music Venue - Stage, 9:15 PM

It’s still raining by the time they take the stage, but the storm risk is low. No one should get flooded or struck by lightning or blown away by a gust and cost them a hefty insurance settlement. That's how Matt puts it, ever the pragmatist. Ellie and the band take the stage, she has the guitar in her hands, and it’s a pretty big fucking crowd for a late and nearly rained out show. A lot of them are wearing ponchos, probably courtesy of Matt. 

“Let’s fucking do this, Boston,” Ellie tells them, and they scream back with fists in the air.

She grins.

-

Boston Music Venue - Stage, 9:28 PM

Ellie gets through three songs on the setlist when there’s another guitar that joins in. The crowd roars, and she whips around in confusion. She’s half-expecting Grant to be back. Instead, it’s Joel.

Ellie can’t help it, she beams. Joel grins back, a chord progression serving as a hello. He’s soaking wet, just like the rest of them. The crowd is nearly as pleased about the development as Ellie is. 

“You were in Austin,” Ellie says, hand over the mic. “How the fuck did you–”

“Four hour flight,” Joel says with a grin. “Annoying part is just security, really. Once you didn’t reply to my goddamn message, I knew you’d do it anyway. Figure I’d see how you do with a rain show.”

“Well,” she shrugs, shaking out her wet hair from its ponytail. “How am I doing?”

Joel takes a microphone from Sharon with a grin. “Well, Boston, how’s Ellie’s first rain show going?”

The crowd is so loud it might shake the goddamn stage.

Ellie shakes her head with a smile.

-

Boston Music Venue - Stage, 10:34 PM

Ellie decides she’s going to end the show on the song.

“I think we should do something special tonight,” she tells the crowd, “since it’s been such a shitshow, I know, I just couldn’t cancel on my hometown.”

She gestures up at the sky, the rain still pouring. It’s almost slick on stage, the sound equipment that’s not waterproof thankfully sheltered by the stage even if she isn’t. The crowd doesn’t seem too bothered, all things considered.

Ellie meets Sharon’s eyes. “I think we should do something to make it worth your time, tonight.”

People request the song constantly. Magazines highlighted it as the best song on the album, Joel said it’s his favorite song they’ve ever made together, Tommy says it’s one of the drum beats he’s proudest of, and even fucking Pitchfork called it her best vocal performance. Streaming wise, it only came second to singles from the album. It’s one of her best songs. She never sings it.

She hasn’t done the song live since she recorded it, the angry catharsis of it too much. Ellie reasoned she was too much of a coward for it. But maybe a coward would’ve canceled the show early. Someone braver could’ve done the song earlier, included it in every setlist. While there may have been a million signs to cancel, Joel being here is all the sign she needs that she can do it tonight. It is a sign, really, another guitarist showing up to fill in for the one that called out sick. The one person who could give her the courage to do it. It’s her hometown. David can choke and die.

She should do the song tonight.

Ellie jerks her head in Marcus’ direction to tip him off, then starts with a familiar guitar riff. Joel catches on instantly, and if he’s surprised he doesn’t show it. The rest of the band follow suit, and once the crowd realizes what song is playing it all feels pretty fucking worth it. They get more excited for it than any single, an album-only song buried in the tracklisting.

They never rehearsed it together, not once. The only person who has played this song with her is Joel, right next to her.

It’s bound to go terribly.

She sings, and it’s the most in sync the band has been all night.

Marcus puts his all into the drums, not missing a beat. Fiona doesn’t even blink on the bass lines. Sharon manages the backing vocals and keys with all of the ease of a seasoned professional. Joel picks up the other guitar riff effortlessly, like he never forgot any of it since it was recorded months ago. The crowd screams every single line of the song back to her. The escalation of the song feels more like catharsis than screaming next to a dumpster. 

There are thousands of people. She has a band that gets it. Joel is here, just like he’s been through all of this.

Ellie has never felt less alone.

-

Boston Music Venue - Backstage, 10:41 PM

When the show is done, she hugs Joel. There’s the discomforting sound of the squealching of wet jackets, but he just chuckles and puts a hand in her soaking hair.

“I don’t know how the hell you even got here,” she tells him breathlessly, arms around his shoulders. 

“They invented these things called planes.”

“Did you poison Grant?”

“Poison - wait, where’s Grant?”

He pulls back to look at her with a puzzled expression, but she just laughs.

“Got so fucking sick he was puking his guts out. How’d you –”

“I was wonderin’ where Grant was…” he trails off. “Huh. Worked out then, didn’t it? Rain and all?”

Ellie beams. She can’t help it. “Maybe it was like, a sign.”

Joel rolls his eyes. “Ain’t no such thing as signs, kid. You just forced nature to your will, s’all.”

“Seems like a sign to me,” she says.

Joel laughs, ruffling her hair. Sharon walks by and does the same. Ellie scowls, making a valiant attempt at both correcting her sopping wet hair and cursing Sharon, when Fiona does the same. Marcus is next, and she swats at his hand before he can even get near her.

“I wasn’t – fine, I was. Everybody else can?” is said with a huff, but Marcus gives her a good-natured grin all the same. “That was fuckin’ sick, Williams.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, smile still on her lips. “It was.”

Marcus takes his leave with the rest of the band, saying something about how Matt got the bus fixed. Ellie pauses before following them.

“You got a good crew here,” Joel says, looking over to where the band exited. “Was skeptical, when Tommy suggested a bunch of twenty-somethings…”

“I’m eighteen, Joel.”

“Exactly.”

Ellie narrows her eyes, another retort ready, before Joel continues his line of thought.

“You’re doin’ real good here, kiddo. You don’t need me to say it, but –”

“Thank you,” Ellie tells him. It’s more earnest than she usually goes for. Maybe she’s just vulnerable to signs. “For being here.”

Joel looks at her, sincerity in his eyes. “ ‘Course, kid. You know I’d drop everything for you if you needed it.”

Ellie tells herself she won’t cry, at that. She does a good job, only sniffles a little bit and that could easily be written off because of rain. “Well. Just so you know, I don’t think I could’ve done that without you.”

“You were goin’ just fine without me.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Ellie tells him. He should know what she means. This is all of it – the song, the tour, not buckling under all of it, finding a home that means she doesn’t have to be scared of ghosts all of the time. 

Joel’s lips twitch. “I think you could. But I’m glad. Glad I get to be here.”

“Me too.”

-

Boston Hotel, Downtown Boston, 8:42 A.M.

Ellie finds Joel and Grant slumped over coffee together in the Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel. Grant looks about as miserable as he did yesterday, and Joel looks like he got hit by at least a medium-sized bus.

“Damn,” she mutters. “I know why Grant looks like shit, but why do you Joel?”

“Hey,” Grant mutters in offense, eyes closed as he sips coffee. “Why are you being so loud?”

“It’s called being fifty-six and performing in a goddamn rainstorm,” Joel says, sounding about as miserable. “Can’t do shit like that like I did in my twenties for some fuckin’ reason.”

“I can’t believe you did –” a loud blender whirrs, and Grant cringes as the sound. “--without me. I love that song.”

“Add it to the setlist then,” Ellie tells him, with a pat on the back Grant cringes at. “We’ll do it every other show as soon as you don’t look like reheated–”

“You reuse that one too much,” Joel grumbles.

“All the fucking time,” Grant adds.

Ellie scoffs, and is about to walk away to find the rest of the band, before Joel stops her.

“Hey,” he says, eyes sincere even if slightly bloodshot. Joel sniffles, a cold clearly forming. “Proud of you, kid.”

Her lips twitch. “Are you gonna die from pneumonia?”

“Jesus.”

“Like, a very dramatic death – like consumption in old movies. Y’know, an old fashioned disease for someone 500 years old. Did my rain show kill you?”

Joel puts his head in his hands. “Flight leaves at three, you little shit. See if I come to another one of yours, hm?”

Her phone pings. She sighs, pulling it out of her jacket and expecting another media fucking request. Instead it’s a message from Dina:

“Why did one of my classmates tweet this?”

Ellie pauses and waits for the next message to load. It’s hard to make out, at first, with all of the cracks on her screen. 

“ [Image Description] Twitter, user inordinary_williams: “ELLIE PLAYED IT AND I WASN’T THERE I AM GOING TO TIE MYSELF TO FUCKING TRAIN TRACKSSSSSSSS AND JOEL? SURPRISE JOEL? AT THE RAIN SHOW. AND I WASN’T THERE. WHAT THE FUCK. SHE IS SO SICK AND TWISTED FOR THIS!!!!!!!’ “

Dina sends another message.

“I think that’s a good thing?”

Ellie laughs. 

Joel does come to other shows.

She plays the song at every date left on that tour.