Work Text:
El inspects her nails like she’s nonchalant, like she doesn’t have a creeping feeling that this interview’s gonna be Really, Really Big. It’s a lovely manicure, actually - nude, which she hasn’t done in a while, but she felt like going for something a bit more understated this time. Classy. Professional, you might say, if you thought a woman having neon pink nails detracted from her work somehow. The only way her profession’s ever impacted El’s nails is that she keeps them short enough to tap a keyboard.
Not that Tiny Desk are particularly going to care if El looks unprofessional; their whole vibe is messy indie jams that have recently taken the internet by storm due to their unique model of livestreaming their concerts on Twitch. They’d started in an office and since upgraded to a proper studio, but every few weeks they’d play another set for an adoring crowd of first a few dozen viewers, then a few hundred, and now tens of thousands of people worldwide tune in to hear these three (sometimes more, if any one of their rotating cast of mates drop in to back them up on guitar) rocking out. Now, they’ve got an EP in the works, and El was the lucky bastard at Supreme to bag the interview.
Pure chance, really. Pris is probably pissed off that El got it. That or she’s coping, telling herself that Tiny Desk are just a passing fad anyway.
They’re meeting her in public, just to make sure she’s not a serial killer, but it’s the kind of pseudo-public where they’ve booked out the whole top floor of the bar so they can have privacy and pub chips while they talk. El introduces herself awkwardly at the bar, says she’s with the group upstairs, and is pleasantly surprised to learn she actually got there before they did. They let her up to wait, after she’s bought herself a lemonade to sort of feel like she’s earned her presence in the room, even though she’s definitely already been paid for.
In her nerves, El spends a couple of minutes tapping the table, tapping her feet, tapping her phone to make sure “Tiny Desk killed in triple-homicide on their way to interview with rando journalist” isn’t trending on Twitter. Her nails make a really good tap. That’s probably the best thing about these manicures – ASMR YouTube could be a solid backup career if all this falls through.
The stairs creak. Fuck. El finds herself fumbling, about to put her phone away even though she needs it, a lifetime of conditioning at school kicking in at the worst possible moment. She saves it just as a blonde head pops up from between the bannisters, evidently catching sight of her shoes before the rest of her.
“Oh, hello!”
Shit, man, she thinks before anything else, she’s even hotter in real life.
This is the issue. Her crush on frontwoman and keyboard player of Tiny Desk, Olivia last-name-not-public-knowledge, might be news to her boss, but anyone who follows her personal Twitter has certainly not heard the end of it for the last couple of months. Having been their 341st follower, she’s very well acquainted with Oli’s face, with her hands and the way they flex on the keys, and her gorgeous singing voice.
Admittedly, cope might have been a hypocritical accusation to level at Pris. Now she has to make it through an entire conversation with this woman and her band without dying of embarrassment or spontaneous ovary explosion.
“Hi,” she grins, professional poker face in overdrive, “you’re Oli?”
“I am!” Oli smiles right back. It’s fucking megawatt. She’s gonna die. “Pleasure.”
Eloise shakes Oli’s hand like she hasn’t just wiped the sweat off her palms on her skirt, steady as anything. “It really is. I’m a big fan, I will admit.”
“I’d hope so!” Lizzie interjects from behind Oli, just making it up the stairs. “Would be a bit awkward if you didn’t listen to us.”
The other two members of the core ensemble are, at least, not presenting any immediate threat to her lifespan. Joel and Lizzie Smallish are both beautiful and endlessly talented, sure, but they’re also a known power couple and that’s plenty to stave El off from splitting her affections.
“Hi guys,” she says, sunny, “if you want me to pop down and call in any drinks -”
“No, no, no problem,” says Oli, “Joel’s just on it, he’ll be up in a minute.”
“Ah, he’s a gentleman, isn’t he?”
Lizzie grins as she pulls a chair across from the table next to theirs. Like this, El’s gonna be surrounded on all sides by intimidating talent. “He is! Very chivalrous.”
She wonders, briefly, if she ought to have put something about that in the interview questions. Something, something, is it weird to be the only man in the group? Do you feel surrounded or is it like, yeah, beautiful bisexual women want me to play the drums for them, I’m down? Although, admittedly, that’s not particularly constructive.
“So did you get here alright? Traffic not too bad?” she asks instead.
“We got the train, actually!”
“Oh, right,” El laughs sheepishly, “I don’t know why I was imagining you had a driver or something.” They’re only streamers, after all.
“I wish we had a limo,” Oli grins, and then aside to Lizzie, “we could get Jim to drive us.”
Lizzie snickers. “You trust Jimmy to drive?”
“Ey, he’s got his license and all! I’d put my life in his hands.”
“Your funeral,” she shrugs. El does not know who Jimmy is.
Joel’s head appears, coming up the stairs like his bandmates before him, and he gives her nod while each of his hands is occupied by a coke and a lemonade. Just like that, the tension melts - with the whole group there, they turn on their professional faces, prepared to answer El’s various questions. How they met, what drove them to start the band (there’s a very funny story about a pub crawl and a broken microphone), what it’s been like getting famous… In the moment, she feels a bit basic, but nobody’s actually interviewed Tiny Desk before, so at least it will feel like everyone else is derivative when they actually start getting passed around the news-o-sphere.
It’s a damn good thing El has the audio recorder going, and her questions all written out neatly in her notes app, because for the life of her she can’t stay focused. Oli is a ball of energy, never sitting still for a moment, like she’s allergic to it. Her hands pull at each other, her hair constantly pushed back behind her ear and then fluffed to fall in front of it again; if she pauses, she can feel an arrhythmic drumming coming from her feet beneath the table. (Well, that might be Lizzie. Won’t be Joel - he’s the expert on keeping the beat, after all.) It’s unfortunately endearing.
Somehow, she gets through all her questions, and even drops a little extra follow-up in at the end that was not approved by her boss about future plans. Oli’s eyes light up at that. “Well, I’m actually working on a -”
Lizzie swats at her. “We’ve gotta keep some surprises!”
“Alright, alright. Well, all I’ll say is keep your eyes on our socials!”
They all shake hands, and bring their empty drinks downstairs, and El assumes that that will be the end of it. She spends two hours copying down a truncated version of their conversation into something more easily digestible, snipping out asides that the readers won’t understand. When all’s said and done, it’s quite a pretty thing. All that’s left is to add a snappy introduction, make sure that strangers become as immediately enamoured with Tiny Desk as she was when she clicked on that first stream.
I’m sitting upstairs in a quiet, airy pub in Sheffield. Across from me, the three stars of the internet’s rising musical sensation, Tiny Desk, are sipping various soft drinks and chatting about how they wish they had a personal driver. There’s Joel Smallish, the usually fairly stoic drummer with strong eyebrows and impeccable rhythm; lead singer Lizzie Smallish, whose pastel pink hair frames expressive blue eyes and a sharp-witted mind; and of course the band’s pianist Olivia (“Oli” among friends), who can’t seem to stop following a melody with her feet even as she begins to explain their little trio’s humble beginnings fresh out of sixth form.
That’s fine, right? Not too obvious? Has she accidentally tried so hard to avoid revealing her attraction to Oli that she’s swung in the other direction and made it evident again?
Ugh, journalism is so hard. And she’s probably overthinking it. She seems to love doing that, given how often it happens. Into the outbox it goes.
The piece goes up that night, to pretty immediate buzz and wide approval. They get a couple hundred retweets overnight, and the number keeps climbing as the day goes on. It’s a relief; this, at least, cannot be overthought. Interactions and impressions are hard numbers with no room for misinterpretation. She moves on to her next assignment - a review of some TikTok girlie’s new bedroom pop selection, most of which is remixes of her one popular song - and convinces herself that she’s happy enough to put the whole thing down as over.
Then she gets a DM.
hey! it was great talking to you yesterday ^-^ thanks for making us look good online!
Not from the official Tiny Desk instagram account, but from @theorionsound, who has also followed her. It’s a private account, so she elects not to request back. Still, she can see a silly photo of Oli, maybe ten years younger, wearing a panda hat and with someone else’s peace sign held over her face.
yeah no problem! i do genuinely love your work, so it wasn’t hard at all
oh you’re too kind
and, she continues, a little recklessly, i did have to fight off all my coworkers for the chance to meet you
so i’m glad it was worth it
ye looks like the people are enjoying our little chat
they are, they are!
She’s not, admittedly, quite sure what to do in this situation. Oli from Tiny Desk has reached out to her, specifically, personally, on her priv, to thank her for the press. She’s supposed to be writing this piece about the indie pop. She wants to shut her laptop off and stretch out this nothing of a conversation for as long as she possibly can, but she has no idea what else she can say to make that happen.
we’d be interested in talking more off the clock if you are?
El drops her phone. Then, frantic, she scoops it back up off the floor. No cracks. The message is real.
all of us i mean
Fucking crazy thing to find out on a Thursday afternoon.
if you’re interested in getting coffee
sounds great!, she sends, hands trembling.
And so that’s how, some-fucking-how, El ends up with a coffee date with the members of Tiny Desk this weekend. The new article goes up fine, more food to fuel the fire of the neverending news cycle Supreme produces. Apparently, she’s a good enough communicator to score that. Of course whatever she ended up putting to paper for the new piece was good enough too. She can’t waste time overthinking it; she’s going to spend all of Friday doing that for this date.
Well, date’s a strong word. All three of them have asked her to come along. It can’t be, like, a date-date.
Saturday comes, and she makes her way to a café not too far from the pub where they’d first met up. All told, she thought she’d dressed fairly appropriately - just t-shirt and jeans, that nice purple jacket she bought recently, comfortable shoes.
Joel’s in a blazer; Lizzie has a form-fitting dress. Oli’s button-up shirt is some kind of silky fabric, and El can’t tell if those colour variations are the pattern or just an interesting weave.
Fuck.
She raises her eyebrows when she sees El. “Eyup,” she smirks.
“Sorry, did I miss a memo somewhere?”
“No, I just thought - y’know, we’re going out for coffee, might as well dress to impress?”
“We, uh -” El gestures widely at Joel and Lizzie “- I thought this was us getting coffee.”
“Us,” Oli repeats, framing them with her fingers, then turning to hold them up between El and herself.
“Ah.”
The fingers shift into the shape of a heart. “Yknow.”
“No, yeah, I - I get it now.”
“Good!”
“Just - you should probably have said double date somewhere in there.”
“Right,” she grimaces, still good-natured despite having royally fucked this proposition.
It’s not much skin off El’s back, though. Not when she knows, now, that she managed to play her cards right. Oli takes her hand to lead her further into the coffee shop, and she thinks as manicured nails meet pianist’s fingers that she’s very ready to learn the rest of Oli’s body like she already knows the parts she’s seen on screen.