Chapter Text
He meets a whole new version of his girlfriend on tour. He’s seen glimpses of her in Sydney and Singapore but never fully experienced “Tour Mode Taylor” as he’s jokingly dubbed her after their binge of Girls5eva right before she left for Paris.
On tour, she’s more serious. The clear leader of the team. She’s laser-focused on show days, still puts in time at the gym, and rarely drinks. Her main objective is to provide the best possible experience for fans, and he loves her drive and dedication. She sits on the floor of the hotel room before shows trying to figure out ways to pull new stories from old songs, how to highlight the change in Tortured Poets songs between when she wrote them and now, or just find new and fun ways to combine a few songs in interesting ways people will love. Somedays, she sits by the window of the hotel room and beckons him over, and with her feet in his lap, she constructs new love songs for him out of her catalog. He sees glimpses of songwriter Taylor in these moments but it’s almost as if she’s building new worlds with the mashups. Some hers, some others, but mainly to entertain.
They are in her “season” he realizes. It’s not lost on him that the Europe leg of the tour is almost exactly as long as a football season. Australia and Singapore were the pre-season and now they’re in for the grind. Two cites a week all across the continent.
*****
Tay sleeps like the dead in tour mode. At home, he’s used to her late-night wanderings. She warned him early on in their relationship about her nocturnal nature. And while she's since told him with amusement that she sleeps more soundly now that she’s discovered the sleep cocktail of frigid bedroom and furnace boyfriend, she still sometimes roams at night when the words and melodies come to her.
But here after performing multiple nights per week, she starfishes out and doesn’t move for hours. He doesn’t dare let her know she snores the tiniest little snore and that he finds her complete abandon in sleep to the point her mouth hangs open so fucking endearing. Tree tells him through laughter about the night in Liverpool when Taylor slept through a fire alarm and Tree had her sat up and fully into her robe before she ever woke up.
Knowing she’s sleeping so soundly, he stops tiptoeing around in the mornings and finds it provides the best opportunity for him to get work done, get in a workout, or record the podcast. All with her snoozing away.
However, she nearly gives him away once, when from across the room he catches sight of her sitting up, disheveled, sleep mask pushed up, and a little dazed. He cannot help but stare at his adorable sleep disaster of a significant other. Fans easily clock him with a goofy, besotted look on his face the next day on the pod.
*****
At first, he hangs back and lets her go to the stadium alone to focus. She spends time soundchecking, a half hour warming up, and then getting ready. But they both soon realize with the limited time they have on his visits, they rather be together. Plus he’s never broken her focus just like she has never been a distraction for him during the football season.
He learns the names of all the crew members and makes friends with the band. He’s in awe of how it all works and comes together. And in the middle of all this organized chaos and sold out stadium is his girl, bringing it all to life.
Taylor gets uncharacteristically nervous on the day of her first Wembley show, even though she’s played here before. She paces the stage anxiously until he pulls her down next to him, and they lie together, looking up past the high-rise stands towards the blue sky. He tells her about playing here early in his career. They stay that way until she needs to get dressed. The crew glides around them, leaving them to take in the moment. When they get up, she kisses him in the dead center of the massive stadium on the stage she commands every night. But it feels just like kissing her in the backyard at home or a football field in Las Vegas or the pool at the house in LA. Just them, wherever they are.
“Thank you, Trav,” she says, smoothing down his shirt where she’s tugged him forward. “I…I was worried about being here again. About singing the new songs here. I’m not now.”
“I know, but, you’ve got this,” he reminds her.
“I do,” she nods. “Cause you’re right here with me.”
That night, he watches her confidently tell the audience she wants to mix things up and start with the piano. Her voice never wavers as she sings "The Black Dog," just as it won’t when she plays "So Long, London" a few days later. It’s all heart and acceptance, and he’s so proud of her, so glad to be on this journey with her. Still, he’s not prepared for her cheeky wink his way when she grabs the guitar and goes into a killer mashup of "Electric Touch" and "Everything Has Changed," her eyes constantly straying in his direction. After, before she dives, she points right at him, blows him a kiss, and then jumps as the crowd goes wild.
*****
There are the not-so-glamorous parts of the tour. The exhaustion, the upheaval every few days. The hotel staff that leak her whereabouts, leading to photographers camping out waiting for a shot. And the one he’s most familiar with himself, the pain.
They wake up the morning after the Wembley shows and she literally cannot move without pain arching up from her calves. A sports massage helps but not much. It isn’t until he asks the tour doc if they could see if Wembley has an ice water immersion tub that relief comes. Taylor finally feels the cramp in her muscles release.
“This is what you do every week?” she asks, trying to keep her mind off the cold water she’s sitting in but still shivering.
“Yeah, I used to only go to my knees but now I just sink in. The price of being an athlete,” he replies, shrugging.
She looks contemplative as he continues.
“You’re an athlete, Tay. You realize that right? Like there are guys on my team that are considered the top of their game in the league that do half the amount of training you do, let alone play time.”
“I guess I didn’t even think of that until this past year,” she says. “I never trained like I have for tours before this. It kind of sunk in one day watching you all practice. Or when I realized that when we work out together, half our routine is the same. I’m just…I still think of myself as just a songwriter who is lucky enough to sing her songs on tour sometimes.”
He shakes his head. “You are a rockstar, babe. Gotta start recovering like one too.”
She talks to her team and they rework the riders to give her and the dancers access to the water immersion tanks if they are available in the stadium training areas. And Kirk connects her with a sports physiotherapist who joins the tour.
*****
Their days between shows often remind him of the days she would fly into Kansas City only now he’s on the other end of it. The difference is they tend to roam around late. He’s never catching up on jet lag (no it isn’t a choice, babe) and she’s always exhausted and sleeping in after a show. They find they actually enjoy it. Fewer people to deal with, city lights, and late dinners that they can duck into easily fill their time. Their afternoons are left to rest or lounging on sunny pool decks. Still, it does feel like a holding pattern more than KC in season ever does. There, she became a part of his life in ways they can't manage while constantly traveling., But, experiencing her in her element makes a nomadic summer worthwhile.
That’s not to say they don’t have adventures. They spend lushish days in Lake Como, soaking up the beauty and each other. They have two perfect days in the Ibiza sun. They wander London one morning, reclaiming her favorite spots with kisses wherever she wants. And then there are the two nights in a castle in Ireland with Kylie and Jason in tow. The castle that they are all sure is fucking haunted. He’s never seen Jason so freaked out. One sunny day in Zurich, he snags a friendship bracelet from a group of fans to give to her, marking a year since the Kansas City show he attended.
And he kisses her and misses her before he's even gone, the day he walks onto the plane in Germany and away from her for nearly a month. They've made memories all over Europe. From late-night pasta in Italy to grainy FaceTimes in Madrid, they've spent the summer growing closer as she takes the world by storm.
*****
It’s not all perfect. No matter how much she loves doing the tour or being with the fans, that much time wears on her, wears on them. When training camp starts, they realize a lot of their overlapping time awake is eaten up with work, making it hard to connect.
It's lonely in ways he hasn't felt since before he knew her. They don't fight, but they’re short with each other a couple of times, more frustrated with missing each other than with any real issue.
One day, she mentions sending Aaron a voice memo of a piano solo, which gives him an idea. That night, he lies in bed and records a voice memo, rambling about his day, the goofy thing Chris did at lunch, and how Jason is already goading him about the mustache. Everything he normally tells her when lying beside her at home or wherever they might be. He feels slightly silly with his phone propped up on his extra pillow where she'd normally be as he talks, but for the first time in days, he feels less unmoored. He snaps a selfie from the same angle and, without overthinking it, sends both to her before turning in for the night.
He wakes up to messages of his own. He runs his thumb across the mess of sleep-crazed curly hair in her photo as he listens to her talk about the weird dream she had where she was being chased by a human-sized version of the duck from Friends and how she really misses baking right now.
At the end of her voice memo, she pauses, and he hears a tiny sniff. “I miss you so fucking much, Trav. I missed this version of us. Everyday us talking about random shit.”
They still call, text, and FaceTime, but in between, there are voice memos—love letters to their everyday life that they’ll return to soon.
*****
The night before the last Wembley show in August, she gets serious on their goodnight call.
“You know, you gave it back to me, right?” she asks out of nowhere.
He’s confused, “What?”
“My sparkling summer.”
Travis recalls the song he’s heard countless times now. And the line that gutted him the first time she played it for him.
“Tay, you made that happen yourself.”
“I know. But you were here, cheerleading me on. You may not know how big that is. But I do.”
“It’s what you do for me too,” he reminds her.
“I like that about us. I like that we support each other,” she returns. “Let’s always do that.”
“You already know we will,” he promises.
*****
The day Taylor flies home, he heads out of practice the minute they’re released. She stopped in New York yesterday on her way back from the UK to have a few meetings and to pick up Olivia and Meredith (Benji has been with him since July) so he’s been counting down the minutes until she’s back on Missouri soil.
She snuck home for the Super Bowl ring ceremony for a whirlwind 24 hours so it isn’t the longest they’ve been apart. Yet it feels like it. He’s out the door and in the yard to meet her the second the SUV pulls up. He holds her tight and though they know the random Daily Mail pap is probably lurking, they are beyond caring. Besides, their embrace is nothing new at this point.
“Missed you, girl,” he says into her neck. He feels his mustache brush against her skin and even though he’s already growing it back out, it reminds him of last summer so much he has to pull her even closer. Those fraught early days of last August feel close even though they’ve come so far.
But then she pulls back to look at him. Runs her hand across his newly shorn hair. Her eyes convey all the love and experience that have grown between them over the last year, reminding him they are so much more now.
“I’m home,” she says with relief in her voice. Even though they still have months of the tour left, the hard part between them is over. And it turns out, it didn’t end up being too hard at all.
“You’re home,” he agrees, before joking. “Though, I’m going to miss Tour Mode Taylor. I like you bossy.”
She arches an eyebrow at him and snarks, “I think I can still give you plenty of bossy anytime you want, babe.” The sass he loves so much shining through.
*****
Months later, he grabs a pair of pants he hasn’t worn in a while, and as he steps out of the closet into the bedroom to change, random items tumble from his pockets onto the floor. Bending down to pick them up, he discovers guitar picks, friendship bracelets, and a matchbook from Taylor’s favorite pub in London—mementos from last summer.
“Hon, can you zip me up?” Taylor asks coming round the corner from the hall. “Oh, whatcha got there?”
He reaches up, depositing a multicolored bracelet in her hand. “Relics of the tour.”
“Awww, the First Gentleman of the Eras Tour’s accoutrements,” she jokes.
“You’re not wrong,” he laughs, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, realizing something he thought he’d misplaced was probably there. He pulls out a sparkly band of sequins. “Alright nah, I thought this was lost.”
She grabs the garter from his hand as she rolls her eyes.
“Easy there killer, we have a dinner to get to,” she retorts, snapping the elastic at him.
“Okay but what about after?” he posits with mock innocence as he spins her to zip her dress.
She lays the garter on his shoulder, runs her hand across his cheek, and saunters out, calling behind her.
“Wouldn’t want Tour Mode Taylor to get rusty, better get in some practice.”