h4rsfics - Tumblr blog

h4rsfics · 1 day ago

Text

oh my gosh.

Things We Never Did (JH86)

Pairing: Jack Hughes x Fem!Popstar!Reader

WC: 14k

If it's make believe, why does it feel like a vow we'll both uphold somehow?

General Warnings: slight angst but nothing of my usual caliber, self doubt and insecurity surrounded by a bunch of assurance from each other and otherwise heart melting fluff 💕 there might be sexual references but there's no smut, I thought about it but inserting filth in the middle of this just didn't quite fit the narrative lmao

A/N: this felt so beyond blurb territory, and it's been so long since I've posted anything with an actual fic graphic, that I wanted to make this it's own thing. I once upon a time said I didn't think I'd ever write for Jack, and I want to thank every person who has ever requested him for pushing me out of my comfort zone, because I get to make things like this - that I'm genuinely proud of and that inspire me at a point where I really thought I had no inspiration in me anymore lmao (this isn't me saying flood me with the jack requests lmao I feel like this is what I've been waiting to write haha, I literally wrote most of this in a day and I haven't written more than little snippets I can piece together in a very long time!!)

I talk a lot about certain players being perfect for certain tropes, and I've always thought Jack would be the ideal candidate for a PR dating fic!! like he just is the type of guy that would end up in a fake relationship with some perfect pop star and charm the absolute pants off of her!! and this song feels made for that, so I wrote it a little different to the others, I hope the anon who requested this likes it!! and again, thank you for requesting it, I really did have a blast!

*also disclaimer I possess not a singular clue in regards to how record labels, music contracts or PR relationships operate (obviously), this is a work of fiction lmao

“Isn’t the whole point of this thing that people see us out together?”

Jack Hughes is far from your first rodeo when it comes to PR relationships.

You've been in the industry since you were a teenager - releasing albums every other year or so since you were 18 years old - and you've been chewed up and spit back out again by enough heartthrobs to feel like you know how these things usually go.

First came Milo, an actor on some hit Netflix series at the time, who shared a management team with you - and your own agent had insisted, you're gonna need all the help you can get, honey, it's cut-throat out there for girls like you.

He had been your boyfriend during your first album cycle, a record packed full of songs you'd written in high school about your first love, so it sort of fit to make it seem like they could possibly have been about him.

There were a lot of girls your age out there who wished they were in your shoes, and listening to your music at the time helped them live out that fantasy - singing along to lyrics about kissing in cars and falling in love for the first time and picturing the pretty boy from the show they all obsessed over instead of some guy back in the middle-of-nowhere town you originated from, who might not have had the movie star good looks but he sure had a big heart.

Milo lasted 18 months, and your breakup led you perfectly into the next album - angsty, dramatic, scathing, you're pretty sure one of the reviews had said, all fitting for the ways in which that first fake relationship messed with your head.

You were young, and you were naive, and you'd made your agent promise no more actors after him - because for someone who could barely even muster a convincing tear on-screen, he sure knew how to lie to you off one.

He’d somehow convinced you that the lines were blurring, that he felt something for you beyond what he was contractually obliged to feel, and, being a young girl who just wanted to be loved, you fell fast, and you fell hard.

And then the rug was pulled out from under you when he moved on to one of his co-stars.

After Milo, there was Noah - a musician, like yourself, who you thought you might find common ground with. He was a little older, not inappropriately so, a little more seasoned, and you could get away with all the fun boy vs man analogies in your lyrics just to aim a dig at the first guy.

Noah never played too much into the relationship behind the scenes - always acting like it was a major inconvenience, like his label had forced him into it and he had no interest in going beyond the bare minimum expected of him to get his name back into people's mouths after his own last flop of an album. And that meant that he'd ditch you whenever you were out as soon as the cameras turned. There were no staged dates, no pap walks for coffee, no conversations over dinner while you faked smiles knowing some creep was lurking with a long-lens down the street.

And for a while, you had thought that was what you wanted after getting so blindsided by Milo and his performance of a lifetime - but Noah just made you feel small. Invisible. Lesser than.

You should have known better, anyway - guys with guitars often possess that kind of over-inflated sense of ego that you’re safer steering clear of.

It helped you convince your fans of your sadness while you sang to growing audiences about being lied to and manipulated, but as those crowds thinned out, you just felt alone. You were so far removed at that point from any sense of normalcy lingering from your life before, that you didn’t really have anywhere or anybody to turn to, either.

Noah lasted half as long as Milo, and after that, you'd asked your agent, no more musicians.

After Noah, you sort of spiralled - seeking validation from men in seedy situations, just wanting to be seen - and an encounter at an industry event with some film producer, who strayed from his wife so often that the tan line on his left ring finger had completely faded, that ended up plastered all over social media meant your agency had to scramble to put everything to rights.

That’s where Rhys came in, the influencer. You honestly think he might have just been the first to reply to the SOS sent out to any single Z-listers in your general vicinity. By that point, you didn't know what perks being seen with him brought you, but you didn't dare ask. You had to put in the work to restore your good girl image and the public's faith in you, and Rhys was about as faithful as they came.

A golden boy from some small town with millions of adoring followers and very little actual talent, he was supposed to be harmless.

He had a bible verse in his instagram bio, for god's sake!

When you pass through waters, I will be with you - Isaiah 43:2.

And he really lived by his own crazy version of that.

Rhys was on you like a cheap suit. He went with you everywhere, never giving you a minute to breathe.

He wanted to follow you into the studio, wanted to put his opinion in over some lyrics he thought might have been, in his own words, unchristian, saying he didn’t like the direction you were heading in. He came with you to fittings, trying to tell your stylist what to put you in, and to photoshoots, trying to have a say over what pictures made the final cut. He made up for his own lack of creativity and individuality by completely stomping all over yours.

He was a nightmare.

And for a boy of supposed faith, he sure made you a sceptic.

You'd begged and pleaded with your agency after that, telling them you needed a break - no more losers, which may as well have meant no more men, period - and thankfully, you had people in your corner - the one you felt so backed up into at that point - who arranged to get you out of it.

You had managed to stay single for a year, trying to figure out what came next and thankful for the space to do so.

And then, your latest single bombed.

You wish you could say you took a creative risk, and that you didn't care because you believed in the music you were putting out - but none of that is true. Your label had been a part of some mega-merger in the summer, and your creative team had been completely disbanded. All the resources you had before had been spread so thin you had no one left that you trusted, and the one person you did have had convinced you to put out a song you didn't write.

Years of advocating for yourself, for your talent and your creativity, gone in the blink of an eye.

We just need to get something out there, he'd told you, let the big wigs know you're someone they need to prioritise.

It's a guaranteed hit, I promise.

You should have known at that point in your career, after 5 years in the industry, that there was no such thing.

There were meetings behind the scenes about your future - meetings you were somewhat ironically not invited to - and it was decided that another PR relationship might boost the sales of your next single.

So, then came Jack, an athlete - but, maybe more importantly, a mystery.

Milo had a show to promote, Noah had an album to sell, and Rhys had followers to gain.

But Jack's talent speaks for itself - an ever-rising star in his sport, with skill and charisma to boot. He's social media-shy, so he doesn't need to flaunt you for likes and clicks, he's fairly uncontroversial, so he doesn't need you to cover up his bad behaviour.

What could he possibly have to gain from agreeing to fake-date you?

Especially considering he's so bad at it.

"Probably," he shrugs in response to your question, hands tucked in his pocket and baseball cap tugged low enough to cast a shadow over the rest of his face, "But I don't know, sometimes I'm alright with not being seen."

This is your third time meeting him - the first at a private dinner held by your management, where introductions were made across tables, and you'd barely got a handshake out of the evening before he was being dragged away by his own people. The second had been in some office building, where the two of you had signed your lives away in the name of gaining something unspoken from one another.

And all of a sudden, he's knocking on the door of your apartment this morning dressed like Joe from You - jacket zipped up to his chin and a Yankees cap angled down to cover his eyes.

"I think that defeats the purpose of a publicity stunt," you tell him, your own arms folded in front of your chest to shield yourself from the cold, the two of you walking side by side down an otherwise empty street, occasionally bumping into your hip when he swerves to avoid a pole or parking meter by the curb. “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to have someone standing over there taking blurry, pixellated zoom-ins of us holding hands.”

“I forgot you’re a vet when it comes to this stuff,” he snorts, “If you need to hold my hand, feel free, but I’m not about to call someone over to take a picture, something about that feels a little forced.”

You figure it will be a fruitless thing to say, that’s sort of the point.

“Where are we even going?” You ask, instead, a little too late in your venture out of the apartment to actually be concerned about where he’s dragging you off to with no advanced warning. You’d bundled up at his request, put on shoes that were comfortable to walk in, and accepted the way he’d unclipped another baseball cap from his belt loop and perched it atop your own head.

He’d just seemed so sure of what he was doing that you didn’t think to question him, but you’ve been out for an hour now - half of that time spent getting coffee - and nothing about this situation feels like it usually does.

“There,” he points across the street.

“A record store?” you ask as he gestures for you to cross, eyes fixed on the black and white signage that reads, Vinyl Destination, and lips turning up a little in the corners.

For some reason, it reminds you of before.

Saturday afternoons spent browsing the shelves of the independent vinyl store in your hometown, branded a similar punny name - For The Record - with your boyfriend from back then. You’d both buy something you’d never heard before, swap between you, and feed back on the album the following Friday after school in the basement of your parent’s house, where there were shelves and shelves of music to peruse.

You haven’t really had the time to do anything like that in a while.

“The best record store in New Jersey,” he corrects, “It’s like the Oxford Library in there, I figured this could be a good start to getting to know each other.”

You don’t remember getting to know Milo or Noah or Rhys.

They definitely didn’t get to know you.

“I thought if music’s your thing, you can show me the ropes.”

“Does that mean I have to learn about hockey?” You ask as he ushers you into the shop, a little bell ringing above the door that definitely doesn’t carry all the way to the back of the store to alert anyone of your presence.

It looks like it’s been extended, aisles stretching further back than it looks possible from the outside, and something about that warms you - like they’re struggling to contain the creativity flowing between these four walls.

“Maybe,” he chuckles, “Depending on who you ask, hockey might just be the least interesting thing about me, though. I like music, too.”

You're not sure you can say the same of your own career. Music is your life, it has been ever since you unwrapped a mini Fender Sonoran one Christmas when you were a kid - a guitar you subsequently decorated in fruit stickers that you'd pick at whenever you were frustrated.

“Do you like my music?”

You don’t know why you even ask, but it comes out before you can stop yourself.

Damn your constant need for validation.

Of course he doesn’t like your music!

Guys like him never do.

“I haven’t really listened to it,” he shrugs, not making it a big deal, “As in like, I’ve heard the radio stuff, but I’ve never really checked out the deep-cuts.”

“But the radio stuff isn’t your thing?”

“I wouldn’t take it personally,” he says with an apologetic smile, “It’s just that I’m more into other stuff.”

“So it’s the genre you don’t like?”

“It isn’t you.”

You suppose that’s alright.

Nothing personal.

He’s entitled to his own opinion, regardless, and something about Jack tells you that he’s an honest guy. He’s a little guarded, and a lotta mysterious, but he isn’t deceptive.

And he isn’t like Noah, who had taken every opportunity you unwillingly gave him to talk down on you, your art, and the blood, sweat and tears you poured into it.

“I like country music,” He hums as he guides you down aisles he seems all too accustomed to, flicking his thumb out toward the aforementioned genre as the two of you pass by. And that’s not the same thing as, I don’t like your music, so you nod along with a lighter smile.

“Oh,” you drag out, because it probably should have been obvious. He seems like the type. “Trucks ‘n’ beers ‘n’ babes?”

“Not that country,” he snickers, a glimmer of amusement flashing across his soft blue eyes when he turns his head to meet your gaze. “Maybe the beers.”

“Trucks are cool, too,” you say, “It’s alright to admit it.”

“Fine, trucks too.”

“Don’t you wanna pick something up?” You frown once you’re completely out of the section that houses the likes of Luke Combs and Tim McGraw.

“I thought you could show me what Pop is all about,” he suggests, and when he stops by the relevant shelves, he looks a little nervous as he turns to face you properly. “Glitter ‘n’ lip gloss, or whatever,”

You might have taken offence if anyone else had said that, but something about his mocking country accent and the way he so lightheartedly pokes fun at you for some strange reason makes you laugh.

“There’s more to pop music than glitter and lip gloss,” you snort.

“Show me, then.” He nods towards the aisle before you. “I want the whole masterclass.”

It takes a second to tear your eyes from his, and then you get to work.

He isn’t gonna understand Mariah, and he probably won’t admit to relating to Britney, although something tells you there’s a little Lucky in him, but you think there’s some magic in Prince you can convince him with. You start with Purple Rain, because who wouldn’t, and then you find Michael, and even though you refuse to believe Jack has made it to the ripe old age of 24 without hearing Thriller in its entirety, you pick that up, too.

The classics are a good start, you think, but you sort of want to go for something deeper, too. Something that might bleed out if you were ever cut open. Kate Bush, Hounds of Love, then Robyn’s Body Talk, and Melodrama by Lorde.

And then, as you’re flicking through the stacks, you find something else.

Your fingers land on something familiar, a soft smile spreading across your lips as you pull it out, and when you glance up at Jack, he’s looking back at you instead of the plastic-wrapped record clutched in your grip.

“You look like you love that one,” he smiles back, arms wrapped around the other albums you had passed over.

Hats by The Blue Nile, a record filled with synthy, euphoric pop melodies that perfectly encapsulate that magic era of the 80s - the era that is still so influential in the genre today - that made you want nothing more than to transport back in time as you sat in that homely basement all those years ago, when you were nothing but a kid with a whole lot of passion and not a single clue.

The frontman of the band had once compared making an album to falling in love, and that was something that stuck with you throughout your own years of doing so.

Up until the most recent record, that is.

“Yeah,” you breathe, “It’s been a while since I’ve listened to it, though.”

“We’ll listen together, then,” he grins, a smile that is boyish and sweet, and you have to remind yourself not to let it sucker you in. “You’ve got a record player in your apartment, right?”

“I do,” You reply, “Are you inviting yourself in?”

“Would you let me?”

You blink back at him, hesitation forming in the pit of your belly as he subtly seeks your permission - the first time anyone has done that in a long time.

“I don’t think I have a say,” you shrug, sheepish and resigned, because you know deep down that it’s the truth.

Jack is very good at keeping up the illusion of choice - like you could say no, or back out, or not keep up your end of the bargain - but you’ve been doing this long enough now that you’ve lost all sense of autonomy. You can decline him into your home, decline this instance of being in his company, but you can’t escape completely.

And as nice as Jack is, God, you want to escape.

“You always have a say,” he tells you, like he genuinely believes it.

He has that same naive sparkle you had back in those early days of your first fake relationship with Milo, where you’d believed it could just be a little bit of fun. Where you had been blissfully unaware of the thousands of little strings you had been tethered to whenever you thought you were free.

Where you’d slipped and fallen and lost a lot of yourself on the long way down, dragged up by those same strings as you constantly fought to go and find the pieces of you that had broken off.

“Okay,” you agree, because you don’t really want Jack to lose the sanguine side of him that makes him say or believe such things like, you always have a say. “You should pick some, too. Country, if that’s your thing. You can show me the ropes, or lasso’s or whatever.”

“Country it is.”

“You could at least try to look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

You’re so used to being criticised that your spine stiffens at the suggestion, brows furrowing a little as you turn to see Jack come up beside you, two drinks in hand and a knowing smile on his pretty pink lips.

He isn’t critiquing you.

He’s playing along.

“I thought you said I didn’t have to pretend so much.”

You’re a few months into your arrangement, now - 3 months, 2 weeks and 4 days to be exact - and you feel a lot more comfortable around him than you did those first few times you hung out.

He’s a little less of a mystery, these days.

Jack Hughes loves hockey, and golf, and his family. He loves live music, and watching sports at any given opportunity, and reading. And beyond all of that, which you could probably have learned from a deep dive into his very minimal social media presence, he loves paying attention.

You’ve figured out that it gives him some weird thrill, to pass a throw away comment on something imperceptible to anybody else, like, told ya, is his own personal catchphrase or something.

If you were at all letting yourself feel anything when it came to this relationship, you might say it’s cute.

It had started at a random dinner one night, as you’d sat across from each other in some hole in the wall restaurant, and you sat trying to ignore the feeling of being watched. There was some guy in the corner pretending to take a picture of his friend, and very obviously zooming in on the two of you as you talked, and something about it made you nervous.

You were used to that kind of thing, but your time spent with Jack thus far hadn’t been like that, and he was sat talking about his brothers - about a story from his childhood that you didn’t want anyone to intrude on if he was making the effort to open up about it - it just felt wrong.

And the anxiety resulted in you fidgeting, leaning onto your elbows and pinching at the pads of your fingers as you made a mental effort to maintain eye contact and not send daggers to that corner.

“Do you wanna leave?” He’d asked, concern curling his brow into a funny shape, and you’d frowned back almost immediately.

“We haven’t even eaten yet,” you pouted, your stomach almost grumbling at the thought of the spaghetti dish you had ordered. “Do you wanna leave?”

“No, but you look like you’re about to break out in stress hives.”

You had thought you were masking your discomfort a lot better than that. You often find yourself adopting the same position in meetings, sometimes, or getting ready for shows, or sat waiting to be interviewed, and no one has ever associated you squeezing your fingers with you being stressed.

“We’re being filmed, I think,” you told him, chewing nervously at the inside of your cheek and subtly nodding toward the back corner, careful not to let your eyes meet the lens. “It’s making me feel really weird.”

Jack didn’t look back into the corner, thankfully - didn’t draw even more attention to what was happening over there. Instead, his head tilted, his eyes darkened a little - still soft, but intense - like he was trying to figure out how best to handle the situation.

He didn’t tell you that that’s the whole point of your arrangement.

He didn’t call the waiter over and have them removed, making a spectacle or a big deal that would embarrass you further.

He just reached over and wrapped his fingers around yours, pulling your hands apart until one was stretched across the table, resting comfortably in his.

There wasn’t even a whisper in your mind that he was doing it for the cameras, either. He was doing it just to comfort you.

“One day I’ll be more than just a back of a head in the story of your life,” he had sighed dramatically, pulling an easy smile out of you as you pictured all the shots they could get from that angle, you listening intently as, what probably looked to them as, just a head of soft hair told you about how his older brother once ripped the braces straight off his teeth. “But until then, we can ignore them, and you can rest easy knowing you look really fucking pretty in this awful lighting.”

“I just feel like I have to perform now, or something,” you had pouted, fighting the burning blush that was rising up your neck and tinting the tips of your ears.

“You don’t have to pretend for anyone,” he had assured you, “If I’m boring you, feel free to let your face show it, although that might actually get them more clicks.”

“You could never bore me.” You had said. And even as early as that date was, you knew it to be the truth.

And ever since then, he’s found insurmountable ways to make you feel seen.

Like tonight, the two of you dressed to the nines at a fundraising event for your label, surrounded by a bunch of big wigs with fat wallets, as your manager had said.

Jack had made your mouth go dry the first time you saw him, in a tailored suit and a tie that made his eyes seem even bluer, as If that's even possible, and he's been by your side most of the evening. Your heart skips a beat at every glance he casts your way, every graze of his fingertips against your hip, every time any one refers to you as the happy couple.

He's the one thing getting you through.

“This is all just so boring.”

He snorts as he hands your drink over, your fingers brushing for maybe a second, the glass cold in your grip, and you lift it until the straw within it meets your lips. “Thought you said I could never bore you?”

You like how he remembers that, too - ever so perceptive, and all.

“You don’t,” you affirm, “It’s all the patronising comments from all these old guys who don’t have a clue, I’m so tired of it.”

You never used to mind this stuff, back when you were coming up. You believed in the magic of it - believed the people who would make little suggestions on how to perform better, how to dress, what to sing about, what to say - you thought those people had your best interests at heart.

You never really saw it for what it is - a bunch of people finding more and more ways to control and suppress you, to mould you into their own version of the perfect pop star you spent your whole childhood dreaming of being.

“Old guys are the worst,” he rolls his eyes, “There’s this one dude who keeps making comments about me every time he’s asked about my game, says I play instagram hockey. It’s just a bunch of dinosaurs out of touch with reality.”

You frown, although there’s a part of you deep down that opens up a little at the thought of him going through the same thing, as hard as you know it to be. Who ever thought you’d find actual common ground with someone like Jack?

Whoever thought that the idea of anyone speaking down on him would have you feeling so personally wounded?

“What does that even mean?”

“Hell if I know,” he scoffs, “I’m making a conscious effort not to listen to the opinions of idiots, these days.”

“Isn’t that hard?” You ask, turning your body entirely towards him instead of scanning the room for one singular interesting person to talk to, like you had been doing before he came back. “Considering there’s so many of them, and all.”

He smiles at you in a way that feels treasured, eyes glinting like you're both the only two people in on the joke - and maybe you are. Maybe no one else could possibly ever understand.

“You know I read this autobiography a while back about this soccer player, and he was talking about how a few years after he became a dad, his priorities sort of shifted,” you keep your eyes on him as he talks, watching the way his face scrunches subtly as he does, “And it started to show in his game, like the way he was evolving as a person off of the field was starting to bleed into the way he played, and people started just dogging on the poor guy 24/7.”

You frown, and Jack does too, pretty lashes fluttering as he blinks, like he’s still trying to absorb the teachings of this random athlete.

“And he’d go home to his daughter, and see how perfect his life was, how hard he’d worked for it to be that way, and all those comments just started to hurt more, I guess ‘cause it felt personal.”

You start to wonder how Jack feels about stuff like that. In the short time you’ve known him, you’ve learned a lot - and with that, comes seeing the sort of stuff people say about him online. Where some will call him the future of his sport, others make out like he’s the beginning of the end of it, and no matter what he does - how well he performs, how many goals he scores, how much of himself he gives - it’s never enough.

“And one day he’s playing with his kid, and she notices he’s a little sad, so he tells her what’s been going on,” and as he remembers what comes next, his lips turn up a little in the corners, “And she tells him that when you’re a king, you get to decide who lives in your land, and if someone doesn’t like you, they can move out.”

“Are you a king?” You ask him.

“Not yet,” he chuckles, earnestly. “I think in my head maybe I’m a knight or something and I’m guarding the gates of the castle,” he tells you, his voice a little deeper like he’s getting into the spirit of a storyteller, and you smile as you watch him - a little dorky underneath all that blazing charisma. “And deeper in that kingdom is my family, and everybody that I love, ‘cause they all have to hear this stuff, too. And I only let through the people who matter. I think a little criticism is healthy, but some guys take it way too far.”

You’re reminded of the last single you put out - the one you released that caused your label to lump you into another PR arrangement - and all the criticisms that came with it.

People called you vacuous and shallow, unimaginative, one dimensional.

And maybe there had been some validity in that.

There was definitely shame - you’d ignored your dad’s calls for weeks after the fact, too afraid that he’d read all those words about you, and that maybe deep down he agreed.

You hadn’t written the song, after all - just recorded it in a booth at the instruction of others and flung it out into the world without putting up much of a fight - and he’d always told you that nothing else mattered as long as you were honest.

And having it pointed out that you’d strayed from that had hurt a little at the time, but maybe some of the people doing so expected better because they cared.

Maybe if you were guarding your own castle, you might let some of those people in.

“Don’t the idiots end up piling up at the gate?” You ask, trying to think of all the times you’ve tried to ignore the endless voices telling you that what you’re doing isn’t right, or good enough. After so many, they become incredibly hard to drown out. “Seems like it would cause some sort of problem with crowd control.”

“Not if you throw them to the wolves,” he smirks, his voice even lower, like he’s reading an adventure book to a curious child, and he just got to the point where they encountered a grizzly bear. Dramatic and a little sinister - although he doesn’t quite pull that part off. It makes you smile a little like a child, close lipped with eyes gleaming back at him - all previous boredom forgotten as something glints back at you in his own oceanic irises. “Some people will say things about you just to get a reaction, and some will use their words to try and change or control you, and you’ve got to make it so neither have the chance to get through.”

“You’re a lot wiser than you look, Jack Hughes.”

You can see him appreciate the compliment over the backhanded nature of it - can see him see straight past the way you persist in resisting the little ways things about him that charm you in much bigger ways - and he casts a glance back over the crowd of people you no longer have any interest in sticking around.

“You wanna get out of here?” He asks, just like that time back in the restaurant, only this time, it isn’t because you’re uncomfortable, or anxious, or uncertain, and he thinks it might make you feel better.

It’s because he knows there’s no need for either of you to be there.

“Yeah,” you smile back at him, because after 3 months, 2 weeks and 4 days, as absolutely mad as it feels, you think you might let him take you anywhere. “I wanna get out of here.”

And then he guides you out of the event, shielding you from the dizzying flashes of cameras with your hands clutched tight together, and the two of you spend the rest of the evening in the back of a town car that’s pulled up discretely in the corner of a McDonalds parking lot - the driver has the partition rolled down, and he’s offering you his fries while Jack asks him a million questions about his fantasy football league.

And it’s the realest moment you’ve lived in years.

“Don’t you two look very cozy?”

The holidays came around 6 months into your relationship with Jack, and you’d been lucky enough that your schedules overlapped in time to see him for New Years Eve.

You had been back in the mid-west for the latter end of December, and while you both spent Christmas apart, with your families - because extending the performance onto both of your parents and his brothers during such an intimate time, just for the sake of a few pictures your management could leak, didn’t feel right - you really wanted to share some part of this time of year with him.

Even if your relationship wasn’t technically real - even if you were putting up the fight of a lifetime to push down your rapidly growing and unrelenting feelings for him - Jack was still one of the closest friends you’d made since you started your career.

He had a game in Columbus on the 31st, and his next game was back in Jersey on the 3rd, and your management teams had conspired to get some pictures taken of you in the crowd at both games.

It had been the first time you met his parents, sat in between his mother, who showered you with compliments for your work ethic, your stage presence, and your influence over younger girls, and his father, who told you Jack had got him into the deeper cuts of your sophomore album, and he could pick out the slight influence of Joni Mitchell in some of your lyrics.

High praise from two incredibly admirable people, and there was no fighting the way it went straight to your head - thinking of them talking about you over dinner at Christmas with their son, and his own gushing opinions about you flooding into their vernacular.

You can see it so clearly because you’d done the same thing - flooding your dad with knowledge he never in a million years thought you’d be feeding back to him, so far removed from the little girl he raised who wouldn’t know what plus-minus meant if someone waved the definition in front of her on giant cue-cards, and telling your mom about the time you’d been out for coffee and Jack had spent ten minutes hyping up this total stranger of a kid for his junior tournament coming up.

The reality of your situation was very quickly slipping from your subconscious, but the joy you felt sort of distracted you from just how deep into the hedge maze you had found yourself - hypnotised by the dazzling smile he would cast your way from down on the ice when he found you in the crowd during warm-ups, and the way he’d throw an arm over your shoulder when you met him in the lobby of the hotel he and the team were staying in.

His parents knew you weren’t a couple, and his teammates knew too, so there had been no need for the way he kept you close all night other than the fact he simply wanted to. He kept a hand on the small of your back as you mingled, or on your thigh as you sat and sipped at your drink, waving away the compliments a couple of his friends tried to shower you with and ignoring the way his touch would firm up - lingering like a possessive promise despite the fact that it never travelled any further.

The two of you had promised your management that you’d get a couple pictures, and those were out of the way early into the night of the 31st, his brother sneaking a shot of what was supposed to look like a New Years Kiss, but was, in fact, him pressing the tip of his nose to yours and challenging you to a staring competition.

You’d laughed so hard that your lips might have accidentally brushed, just for a second, but he never made a big deal of it, and the two of you could just enjoy being around each other - being around his family who had looked after you like you were their own, and his teammates who you’d gotten to know quite well over the past few months - and it was bliss.

The picture of your kiss is the one that your manager takes a particular liking to, and something about the way he grins down at his phone as he shows you makes you feel uneasy.

Only you and Jack know what’s real.

That’s all that matters.

“You asked for juicy pictures,” you shrug as your hairstylist tugs at your hair from behind and you lock your phone to hide your most recent text thread, like you’re trying to protect the boy behind it.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to like this one,” he sighs, sinking down onto the couch opposite you and rolling his eyes - like this is about to cause some major headache for him.

You don’t like his tone - the way he refers to Jack like he’s just another name on another list. Like he isn’t the one person you’ve ever felt comfortable playing the game that is your entire career beside.

“So what if I am,” you frown, “Doesn’t that sell the story better?”

“Don’t you ever actually read the contracts I put in front of you?” He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, a genuine look of exasperation crossing his features. “You have six months left on your agreement before a very messy breakup, which will line up perfectly with the album release date after the extension you were so mercifully granted. I thought we said after Milo that you wouldn’t be feeling things when it came to this stuff, any more.”

“No one but me gets to dictate what I feel or who I feel it for.”

It’s the first time maybe ever you’ve had the courage to fight back.

You don’t even know where you found the voice to do so, but something about the idea of a messy breakup with Jack, and having to sing about it in the months and maybe years after, twists very deep in your gut.

There are so many things about your relationship that aren’t real - dinner dates and pseudo-eskimo kisses at parties, appearances at events and hoping you’re seen walking down the street hand in hand. But something genuine lingers beneath the surface.

Deep conversations about your hopes and dreams - futures you conjure up in your minds despite people on the outside assuming you already have everything you might want. Learning more and more about each other as the days, weeks, and months go on. He knows how to calm you when the storm starts swirling within, encourages you to rebel in little ways against all the people who try to cage you, and you’d like to think you provide the same sort of relief.

He’s wildly intelligent - generous with it, too - and he cares for you like no one ever has before.

Not like any of those other guys pretended to.

Your relationship may be fake, but your affection for him is not.

“They do when they’re responsible for financing both of our lives,” your manager argues back, and again, you take offence. Your career is not your life. “You have half an album filled with songs about cheaters and liars, you can hardly pull off a convincing performance of those when you’re playing wag over on the Jersey Shore.”

“I didn’t even write those, of course I can’t pull them off,” you scoff, still livid at the fact that your label is forcing you down this path when you’d been given such seemingly-free rein, before.

When you’re so abundant with creativity when it comes to writing about realer things - about a boy who helps you overcome your fear of falling again, who brings you back to those nights in your basement, where you’d written that first album that you built your career on. “And I never agreed to making out like he would cheat or lie to me.”

You’d been home for 10 days leading up to Christmas, and you’d written twice as many songs in that time - all on your own, without the help of a camp or anyone else’s input. You’re not even sure you’d written that many verses alone in the past year.

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs, “You both signed the contract. Whether you like it or not, when summer comes around, he’s not gonna have any obligation to you to hang about, and your music will end up speaking for itself whether the breakup is messy or not.”

You feel tense all over, your eyes narrowing as you watch him relax back into the couch like he isn’t being just like all those label suits you’ve both spent the last few years complaining about.

He used to be in your corner, he used to have your back.

“Jack doesn’t hang about out of obligation,” you bite. “He cares about me.”

“He isn’t going to care after those songs come out.” You swallow back the lump in your throat. “I don’t think he’ll even like you that much, either.”

You think of Jack guarding his imaginary castle, warding off all the people who decide for themselves what kind of person is based on songs you sing filled with words you could never write. You think of them crowding along with all the people who already think they have any right to judge him, and how he might struggle to fight past them all on his own.

“Well maybe I’ll write a different album myself,” you huff, “Something better, something honest, then those songs never have to see the light of day.”

“The guys at the label aren’t gonna like that.”

You bite your tongue from telling him that he’s now one of those guys at the label. The same heartless, money hungry idiots who wouldn’t know real art if it smacked them in the face.

Instead, very unlike the pristine pop-princess he thinks he's raised you to be, you say, “The guys at the label can kiss my ass.”

“I swear I left you in that exact spot when I went to training hours ago.”

You’re back in New Jersey by the end of January, and Jack starts spending more time in your apartment than he does his own. He comes to spend the night with you to decompress after home games, sets off from your place and picks Luke up on the way to the Prudential Center on nights he stays over, and he drops by so often you even gave him a key.

Even your parents don’t have a key to your place.

You’re loving every second you spend with him, and writing every minute you get alone, and the words are pouring out of you at a pace you’re quite honestly struggling to keep up with.

Even when you were first starting out, you don’t think you were ever this inspired.

When you were aspirational, and determined, and you would do anything to make it, you could never find such a spark like this, and you're honestly a little apprehensive about the drought that might follow.

But if this is the only thing that’s gonna work to make sure you can keep Jack, you’ll burn yourself out a thousand times over. You’ll never make another album again.

The only problem is, you haven’t shown these songs to anyone.

You haven’t played the demos you’ve made, you haven’t sent the lyrics to any of your songwriting peers, you’ve buried them in locked notes on your phone and journals hidden behind records you haven’t spun in years gathering dust on your shelves.

There’s so much of your heart in them that it makes you nervous for anyone to hear the rhythm in which it beats, as if it could give them the power to break it.

You slam your journal shut when Jack appears in your living room, eyes wide like you’ve been caught committing a crime, and your cheeks flush a little thinking about the state you must be in.

He’s right. You’ve hardly moved. Still in your pyjamas, your hair barely brushed, your whole body slouched and slumped as you’ve written and re-written the lyrics until they’re as perfect as they could possibly be - you probably possess the posture of a paperclip - and your guitar flung off to the side of you, the mark of its strings etched deep into your fingertips.

“I think I got up to pee,” you shrug, “But I’ll be honest with you, I can’t actually remember.”

“I figured as much,” Jack chuckles fondly as he makes his way over, placing two paper bags on your coffee table. “I brought lunch back. Bagels and Boba, just like you like.”

You smile, pushing the journal off your lap and onto the couch, a little less protective and little more trusting of him as the two of you sink down onto the rug together and he unpacks the food before you.

He tells you about training as you eat, indulging you in stories about his teammates like they’re friends of your own, and you bask in the unfiltered version of himself he awards to you - so lively in comparison to the way he seems to tone himself down in the little bits of his press you catch when you’re watching his away games on the TV.

“What about you, did you write the next Like A Prayer today?”

“I wish,” you snort, leaning back against the couch you’ve spent all morning rotting away on, “I think what I did write is a little more muted.”

“Can I read it?”

You fight the urge to pounce on the book to stop him reaching for it as soon as he casts even the smallest glance that way.

You know he won’t read it without your permission, in the same way that you know he won’t break the heart that sits in there if you trust him with it.

But there’s something that makes you hesitate.

“Can I ask you a question first?”

“Anything.”

He leans back onto his hands and looks you straight in the eye - easygoing in a way that you wish would rub off on you, sometimes, and you stare straight back as you build up the nerve.

“Why did you agree to this whole situation?”

It’s a question you’ve been longing to ask for seven months, always feeling the perfect opportunity slipping away - but if you’re about to trust him with the truth of the song you’ve written today, you need to know his truth, too.

His eyes narrow for a brief moment before he straightens up, pressing his lips together as he takes a second to think.

You feel your throat go dry.

“If I’m gonna tell you,” he says, “I just need you to promise you’ll hear the whole thing before you make any judgement.”

“I promise,” you blink back at him, amazed at how the words so easily slip past the lump that’s suffocating you beyond the back of your mouth.

He nods, and it’s another minute of toe-curling silence before he speaks again.

“I thought it might help me get over someone else.”

The heart you had been so ready and willing to hand over to him mere minutes ago seems to plummet out of reach, landing with a painful splat that is so far down, the noise of it echoes.

Someone else.

Just the thought of him with someone else feels like it might kill you.

“I went through a pretty rough breakup at the beginning of last summer,” he explains, “We’d been together a couple of years, I thought we were serious, we were gonna move in with each other when I came back to Jersey after the off-season.”

You blink back your tears, nodding as if you understand, as if you have no choice but to resign yourself to the fact he’s been using you this entire time to get over another girl.

“But she’d applied for this internship overseas without telling me, this thing at a gallery in Paris, she was big about art, and I guess that’s the place to be if you’re into that kind of thing.”

You find your chest clenching around the gap from an organ that’s no longer there, that’s trying its best to beat at the bottom of whatever valley it just dropped to the bottom of, imagining Jack loving a girl who would leave him behind.

“I think it broke me more than I probably cared to admit to anyone else, so when my agent said there was this suggestion of faking a relationship with some singer, I didn’t even really think it through before I said yes. I figured if the relationship itself isn’t real, it can’t really hurt me again.”

You know yourself that isn’t true - but maybe you’ve been falling in love with someone unavailable this whole time. Maybe you’re just like that fresh-faced eighteen year old girl, falling for boys she has no business believing just because they flash her pretty smiles.

“But then that singer was you, and you sort of made me look at things differently.”

"How so?"

"I don't know, you've always been so open with me," he shuffles a little, "You don't hide, you don't run or push me away, and even though this whole thing was put together for us at first, and we were being told left, right and centre how to act, you never pretended."

Your breath stutters and jumps each time you try to catch it, and all you can do to react is to blink back at him, wide eyed and awestruck.

"You made me realise that maybe I was. Pretending. Before this fake relationship." He uses air quotes around the phrase, and the gesture makes your lips quirk up a little.

“Do you still think that way? That this isn’t real enough to hurt?”

“God, no,” he scoffs, “I think you’re gonna break my heart ten ways to Sunday.”

The laugh that comes out seems to mix itself with some sort of sob, and when your teary eyes meet his, he gives this melting sigh that erases any doubts you’ve just had in the past couple of minutes.

“I think my last relationship was over a lot earlier than it actually ended,” he admits, “I think it’s why it was so easy to tell her to go. ‘Cause I could have put up a fight. I could have told her we’d make the distance work, ‘cause we’d done it before. But I don’t think I loved her the same way I used to, not at that point.”

He seems disappointed in himself to say it, and you watch as his eyes cast downward, watching his fingers run themselves through the low pile of your rug. You want to reach out - want to comfort him in the same way he had comforted you, clutching his fingers between your own and trying to communicate through touch alone that you are there, and that you always will be. You aren’t disappointed in him. You believe in him. You love him.

“That probably seems really heartless to say, but I think I just would rather her have been happy elsewhere than miserable with me, even if being with her was what felt comfortable at the time.”

“I think you have a bigger heart than you realise,” you tell him, “And I think you’re really brave.”

You think there’s a part of you that knew from the beginning that Jack is a person filled with passion.

It shows in his hockey, it shows in his love for his family, it showed that day in this same apartment after the two of you had visited the record store - as you’d sat just like this on the floor together, and he’d asked you a thousand questions about the songs you played him like he genuinely wanted to learn. Like he cared, even back then - back when he thought you were nothing more than a temporary block he could wedge into the space left by someone else, and he still wanted to understand you on a much deeper level.

“You don’t think I’m an asshole for using you in the beginning?”

“Do you think I’m an asshole, for using you?” The whole point of your arrangement back then had been transactional - and as much as you might have just spiralled inside, you can’t actually hold any of that against him. The Jack who felt that way back then isn’t the Jack that sits in front of you now. He’s changed, and he’s changed you, too. He shakes his head, and you smile softly. “There you go, then.”

You reach behind you, your fingers clutching at the edge of your journal before you throw it over to him.

“It’s the latest couple of pages, you should be able to figure out where it starts, I’m gonna get rid of all this trash so I don’t have to watch you read it and judge me.”

The smile he gives back is almost like he knows just what this means - like you don’t have to say what you feel, because he understands, and maybe he feels it too. Maybe nothing about this is fake, anymore.

You give him a couple of minutes while you tidy up, busying yourself in the kitchen as he reads the secrets that poured straight out of your heart today, and when you eventually return, he’s smiling that same smile.

“Is this about me?” He asks when you sink back down beside him.

“I don’t know,” you shuffle a little, tucking your feet beneath you, “Maybe. I think it’s mainly about me, for once.”

“It’s incredible,” he breathes. “You’re incredible.”

Your eyes start to well up a little again, and it’s only a few seconds before he starts to blur with the tears forming over them.

And once you’ve blinked them away to clear up your vision, you find yourself leaping over to him, taking his smiling face between your hands and pressing your lips straight to his.

It’s a kiss that’s messy, and perfect, and real, and once his hands plant themselves on your skin, pulling you closer, kissing you deeper, loving you so openly and honestly, there really is no going back.

“I promise I won’t break your heart, Jack,” you whisper against him, and though deep down you know that’s not a thing you can ever be sure of, it’s something you want to be true.

“I promise I won’t break yours either.”

And God, you hope that’s true, too.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a good singer?”

Jack’s schedule is unrelenting throughout February, and it isn’t until the beginning of March that the two of you are able to spend a little bit of time with one another - time where you can figure out exactly what you are, and what you’re going to do to move forward with your relationship - even if it’s just a couple of days in the middle of an otherwise busy week.

He booked the two of you a little romantic getaway on the one day off he had, driving down to a small coastal town and getting cozy together at an inn that looked straight out of a Hallmark movie in the best possible way. You get so caught up in the fantasy of it all that the important conversations keep getting pushed back - but it’s hard not to, everything about the trip feels like such a dream, even if it is only one night.

It started with the drive itself, Jack had opted to take responsibility behind the wheel, and he’d even made a playlist of all his favourite songs, and you noticed for the first time they weren’t all country anymore. He took you on the scenic route, sprawling fields that lead toward the coast, and then blue as far as the eye could see.

When you’d arrived at the Inn, he’d carried your bags inside, had charmed the lady at the desk whose son was apparently a very big fan, and you had taken a picture of the two of them, smiling wide at his blushing cheeks and his pretty smile when she’d fixed one of their merch caps atop his fluffy hair.

You’d taken a walk into the local town, where you had been recognised yourself, and when a couple of younger girls had asked for your picture, you’d caught him smiling just the same. They’d promised not to post anything until the day after, at which point you’d be on your way back home, and had wished you both a happy trip, squealing between themselves over how cute you were together.

The older couple who owned the place you were staying had set you up a candlelit dinner by the ocean front, and you’d sat across from each other with the gentle evening breeze blowing through your hair, making plans for the future that felt a lot like promises - new dreams that you could share together, that reminded you what it felt like to have hope for what was to come.

And you’d walked along the beach back to the Inn hand in hand, he’d made a show of carrying you across the threshold of your suite - in arms that he was adamant were only shaking from the wine you’d both drank together - and had kissed away eagerly at your giggling lips as you held onto him for dear life.

He was intent on showing you affection you haven’t felt entitled to in too long of a time, and you were happy to bathe in it.

From deepened kisses once your feet were planted - albeit unsteadily - to the floor, to his hands on your hips so that he could guide you backward in search of the bed, to fingers trailing teasingly under the hem of your clothing, his every move was lively, every touch loving.

For all the times you had pictured intimacy with Jack - for all the times the two of you had been close enough to fake kisses, or the times you’d held hands - it could never compare to the real thing.

He had been tender, and passionate, and he really put those perception skills to their best possible use, gauging your reactions to every minimal touch he could give and amping up the intensity when it suited him.

His name left your lips in whispers, and then whines, sinful moans, and then screams, and you had put your voice to more use between those sheets than you’d done so on stage in recent times.

And now you’re curled up against his side, and you’ve been basking in the afterglow for a while now as you both catch your breath - so long that you don’t even realise you’re humming a little as you trace little unspoken confessions into the skin over his chest, the feeling of bliss gently fading into something you can’t really put your finger on. It’s what makes him ask the initial question, making you glance up at the way his eyes sparkle with mirth.

“I swear you’ve got the voice of an angel,” he tacks on, “Should make a career out of it.”

“That’s what my dad always used to say,” you sigh, a soft but sad smile forming as you try to remember the days that you really believed that would be all you’d need to make it.

“I bet he’s really proud of you.”

Jack is yet to meet either of your parents - it’s something you’ve planned, but with his schedule, and your schedule starting to tighten up, it’s just not something you’ve gotten around to sorting. You think they’d all get along - your mom might be cautious at first, especially after all the other guys you’d introduced over the years, but you think she’ll very quickly see the parts of him that you do.

And your dad will probably be easier, if you’re honest - he only ever wants you to be happy.

It’s why you’ve been a little distant for the past year, because if he came out and saw the state your career is in behind the glitzy stage performances and the glamorous photo shoots, he’d probably throw a fit.

You don’t think any of it is what he pictured for you anymore. The management, the label, the creative freedoms you’ve had taken away piece by piece over the years, the way you were blind to all the slimy little hands that forced their way in to take it. None of it would make him proud.

“I don’t know,” your lips twist in uncertainty, “I don’t even think he’d recognise me anymore.”

You remember being home for Christmas, writing in your basement, plucking away at one of the guitars he’d spent an entire paycheck on before you ever made it, and catching him lurking at the top of the stairs, listening in with this soft smile that you’re not sure has faded since you were a kid.

But those songs he overheard aren’t what the label wants from you.

You’d met them a week before Jack brought you here - had played them a good dozen of the demos you’d made - and they weren’t budging.

You’re running out of options, and if your dad could have seen you in that room at that time, sinking into your chair and choosing not to advocate for yourself, you don’t think pride would be what he would feel.

You hadn’t told Jack what happened. You still haven’t told him what happened in that meeting with your manager all those weeks ago, as much as you’d tried to stick up for yourself at that point - but maybe you should.

Even if it makes him mad, or makes him hate you, maybe the two of you can overcome what’s inevitable and figure it out before everything falls apart.

“My next album is gonna be really bad,” you blurt out, and his once relaxed posture stiffens beside you, his neck craning as he frowns down at you, brows furrowed in concern. “He won’t say it, but he won’t be proud of me when he hears it.”

“I’m sure that’s not true-,”

“No, it’s garbage,” you confirm, “It’s angry and it’s brutal and it’s not at all me.”

“Baby, I’ve heard some of those songs, they’re not garbage.”

He straightens up until he’s sat against the headboard, and you sit up too, your legs tucked beneath you as you start to squeeze at your fingertips.

“The label doesn't want any of those songs,” you can’t even meet his eyes, tears starting to well in your own, stinging and relentless. “Me singing about falling in love and finding myself doesn't fit with the narrative they have in mind for when we break up in a couple of months.”

“Oh.”

You haven’t discussed what the end of your contract might mean for your relationship - you’re not even entirely sure you’ve properly discussed your relationship, itself - but the way his shoulders slump tells you just how much he hasn’t even let himself think about it.

“I tried talking to my manager about it, but,” you sigh again, heavier, although it doesn’t clear any of the weight from your chest, “Scandal sells, apparently, and that’s all they’re interested in anymore. They said the songs I wrote were too complex for me, and the most they’d consider is selling them to someone with a little more depth about them.”

“Fucking dinosaurs,” he mutters, blinking slowly as his face curls in disgust - and before you can think too hard about where that aversion is aimed, he reaches out to run a comforting hand through your hair, “They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, they don’t know you, you’re deeper than-,”

You can tell he’s scrambling for some sort of analogy - Jack Hughes, who despite the millions of erms and uhhs he gives everyone else, has never struggled to know what to say when it comes to you. It almost makes you smile.

“Deeper than the freakin’ Titanic wreck, or something.”

You snort out a laugh, and he frowns even stronger.

“No, I’m serious, you’re magic,” he tells you, his voice breaking with the sincerity of his words, and he leans over, cupping at your face with the warm palm of his hand and holding you in place to properly take in what he’s saying. “You don’t even know how much you’ve changed me since we met, how different I am because of you. You have this superpower when it comes to feeling things and expressing it in a way that makes me feel, even if it isn’t obvious or in your face, it’s real and it’s incredible, if this is the sort of stuff you’ve been writing about that they don’t trust you to say, we’ve got to figure out some way to make them listen.”

“I’ve tried, Jack,” you sniffle, your own voice breaking too. “They don’t care, not about me, or what I want, or what I have to say. They just want sales, even if what they’re selling isn’t good, they’re not the ones who will get crucified for it. I tried to tell them that I can sell us, that I’ll do more of the coupley stuff for them if it means I don’t have to sing those songs, but they won’t budge. They’ll probably have another contract drafted for the next guy by the end of the year, and the cycle will just repeat itself, and I have no choice but to play along.”

“You always have a choice,” he says, and you swear, even now, all these months down the line - even after what you’ve just told him, and everything of the industry you work in that you’ve shown him in this time - he believes it.

You shake your head, careful not to lose his grip on your jaw, terrified of the small amount of comfort just his touch alone can bring you going away.

And just as you’re about to admit defeat, something in his demeanour shifts.

He perks up, and smiles, and raises his other hand to grip at the other side.

“We’re gonna leak it.”

“What?”

“The songs, if they’re as bad as you say they are, they’ll get the same reaction as last time, right?”

The time when people had called you shallow and unimaginative?

It’s not exactly something you want to relive.

“Probably,” you sigh, “But people were mean about that last song, Jack, if I put these out they’ll tear me to shreds.”

“The songs are getting out either way,” he tells you, brutally honest but caring, nonetheless. “If we leak them now it’s like market research, right? The reviews will be so bad they’ll have no choice but to switch it all up, and you have everything you need to make the album you want, right? The songs you’ve been writing the past couple of months?”

Your heart mapped out in its entirety across pages and pages of notes, across journals and voice memos and random demo apps on your phone.

Yeah, you probably have an entire album by now.

“Maybe,” you frown, “But there’s probably something that can be traced back to me if it happens, I could get in some serious trouble.”

“You’re the talent, baby,” he smiles, like some corny line out of a movie that you can’t help but smile back at, “They’re not gonna touch you.”

You melt a little further into his touch, almost at the point where you’ll agree - because it honestly isn’t the craziest plan in the world. You’ve heard it happening to other artists with much less notice - where they have to switch up their records with only a couple of weeks before release. You’ve got another couple of months.

But there’s one small problem.

“Jack, those songs,” you lift your hands to rest over his, “They’re not just bad, they’re mean.”

Lyrics implying he’s deceitful, that he used you - ripped your heart from your chest and sliced it open with the blade of his skate, pretty much. If those songs went out into the world, it would add to all the noise he already fights so hard to block out. You can’t let that happen.

“What if people believe that they’re about you? What if they think you’re a liar and a cheat? That’s not fair, I don’t want to play any part in doing that to you.”

“I mean you’re not even credited as a writer, right?” You shake your head, even little suggestions for amendments to single lines were vetoed by the producer in the booth when you recorded them. “They can’t call you unimaginative and then get all caught up in the story you’re putting out, it makes them look stupid.”

God, maybe he’s right.

Maybe you can pull this off.

It’s not like you can think of any other way.

A little pain for a much bigger reward.

Your name dragged through the mud one more time is nothing if it means you get to keep Jack, right?

“Plus,” he smiles, reassuring and confident in a way that instils those qualities in you. “I think I can love you loud enough for everyone to know the truth.”

You smile back, and hopefully he feels the same way when he sees it.

“I think I can love you louder.”

“If this is the end, at least I had a Grammy nomination along the way.”

You’ve been holed up at your parents house for the last two weeks, binging Gossip Girl and trying to pluck up the courage to take your phone off of Do Not Disturb.

It had taken you a while to figure out an actual plan for leaking the album that was scheduled to release in July, and the longer it took to mitigate all the risks, the closer that deadline loomed.

Jack held your hand through it as much as he could, but March and April were busy months for him. The Devils had made it to the playoffs again, and you’d tried to assure him you didn’t want to take away his focus, but there was nothing you could say that would stop him worrying.

And when the time finally came - you hate to say you were sort of relieved that his team were knocked out in the first round. You think a part of him might have been, too, playing a good chunk of the end of his season through a pretty gnarly shoulder injury and juggling all this drama on top of that.

But he stayed by your side on the night it happened. He pressed send on the incriminating email that contained those songs you felt so ashamed of, and the two of you sat in silence for a bit, waiting for the criticisms to start rolling in.

And God, it was brutal.

Jack read most of it for you, filtering out the vitriol and trying to pluck out anything constructive that you could actually use to your advantage, but you found solace in the fact that you already knew it wasn’t your best work - it was hardly even your work, at all. And then he’d suggested that maybe the two of you get away - shut your phones off and escape - and all you’d wanted to do was go home.

So that’s what you’d done. You both packed a bag, booked a flight, and within 24 hours, you were back in that basement, showing Jack where everything started. He finally met your parents, who adored him just like you knew they would, and you got to give him a guided tour of your childhood.

The first stage you ever performed on, the community center you’d managed to keep open with the money you made on your first tour, where you’d spent every Wednesday night from the ages 11 to 16 learning to play the piano. You showed him all the spots referenced in your earlier music - and he had been the one to figure out which lyrics had related to which places.

And now you’re sat on the same dusty couch you wrote those songs on, surrounded by shelves of all the records that inspired you, with the boy who brought it all back to you.

“Why didn’t I know you had a grammy nomination?” he asks, eyes glinting in amusement as he watches you toss your phone between your hands, trying to delay the inevitable.

“Pop vocal album doesn’t get the recognition it deserves,” you sigh dramatically, “Also I didn’t even win, so,”

“Nominations are still cool,” he shrugs, “I’ve been put forward for the King Clancy for the past three years in a row.”

And only because you can tell he’s just trying to make you feel better, and he isn’t genuinely upset about never winning whatever trophy that is, you say, “Bet that used to get you all the girls,” with a sarcastic scoff.

“I don’t need a trophy for that,” he winks, and even now, almost one year down the line, the gesture makes you feel a little wobbly.

“No, just a legally binding document,” you manage to bite back, relishing in the way he barks out an absolute belter of a laugh.

“Stop distracting me, your manager’s gonna start taking another 10% for the stress of you ignoring his emails if you don’t call him in the next ten minutes.”

You really thought turning your phone off might help you escape responsibility for what you did, but he’d managed to find you - sending a strongly worded email with some very imaginative emojis to your childhood hotmail account, and it had unceremoniously pinged through just yesterday when you were looking for some old photos on your family computer.

He’d signed it off with, and if you don’t return one of my 1300 calls in the next 48 hours, you’re going to be responsible for my untimely demise.

Dramatic, much?

“I don’t think my 48 hours are up, yet,” you pout, “Maybe we should make him sweat a little longer.”

“Baby,” Jack chuckles, shuffling along the couch until his knees touch yours, gently tucking your hair behind your ear, “Everything’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

And God, you believe him.

Jack Hughes’ unwavering optimism is disgustingly infectious, it seems - no matter how strong of a fight you tried to put up in the beginning.

What’s even the worst that could happen?

You did the hard part - sending that email out with the unmarked attachment, reading through all those criticisms that called the songs you made vapid and soulless - and you even managed to avoid that hard part extending onto Jack.

In fact, people were so sold on the love you two shared, that it played a part in just how unconvincing your music had become.

So we’re expected to believe this girl, a tweet with a picture of you staring adoringly at Jack from across some random restaurant table had read, could possibly ever sing about wrecking someone’s car and throwing their lying, cheating ass to the curb? She looks like her head is filled with hearts and tweety birds!!!

“What if they know it was me?” You ask, “What if they drop me from the label and steal the songs I did write? I’m pretty sure they own them once I submit them, then I have nothing.”

“You have this basement, and a guitar, and a whole lifetime of new memories and experiences to make magic out of. You’ve already done it once.” He says, and then he points between the two of you. “And you’ll have this, too. I’ll even sign another contract if you want.”

“No more contracts,” you snicker, your chest feeling heavy in a way that doesn’t feel constricting anymore - it just feels full. “No more pretending, no more dinosaurs or cages or the idiots who keep trying to put me in one.”

“Atta girl,” he beams, oceanic eyes shimmering back at you with pride as leans over to kiss you, soft and sweet. When he parts, his lips are impossibly pink and curled up in the corners as he watches you pick up the phone and put it on speaker.

It rings just once before there’s a voice on the other end, and just as you manage to stop yourself from saying, I’m sorry, out of instinct - your manager speaks from the other end.

“They’re giving you a month to get this new album together,” he practically shouts, like he’s worried you’re not about to give him the time to speak. Your eyes widen when they meet Jack’s, and his expression mirrors your own. “Whatever producers you want, whatever you need, you’ve just got to come back out to New York and it’s yours, they’ll give you anything.”

And because some warped thrill rushes through you - something you don’t even understand or recognise - you find yourself saying, “I want two months.”

“Deal,” your manager grumbles before he hangs up, and you throw your arms around Jack in elation and victory.

“Don’t you have everything pretty much done,” he chuckles, “What do you need another month for?”

“To spend time out on the lake in the summer with my boyfriend,” you shrug, beaming at him as you meet his eye. He’s given up so much of his free time already for you, broken from his usual routine just to make sure you had someone by your side.

If you have to go back to New York just to make the album, you don’t want him wasting all his time following you.

Time is the only luxury neither of you have been truly granted yet throughout this whole situation, and you think spending it together without the pressures of work - whether that’s hockey, or recording, or even faking a relationship - is something you’ve both earned.

“I think we’re long overdue some privacy.”

Jack smiles, his skin flushed and his cheeks a little puffy - and you’re so in love with him that it consumes you, entirely. You kiss him again. And again and again until you’re just messily giggling into each others open mouths.

He leans back, eyes flickering all over your face as he takes you in - no doubt riding the internal wave of everything you’ve both been through over the past few months.

“I can’t wait to not be seen with you.”

“It feels really weird to stand up here and introduce a song that I never wrote.”

Your album came out in August.

An intimate collection of songs written about your fear of falling, and the boy who helped you get over it, and it had been the most nerve-wracking week of your life leading up to it’s release.

You were sure of what you had written - confident in your abilities, and the heart and soul you put into it - but there was a vulnerability to the whole thing that you’d never really felt before.

Your first album had the encouragement of everyone around you - people who told you that you were going to go far, and that your potential was unlimited. It had been your debut, and there was no pressure for it to be perfect, but you could take pride in the fact that it felt close enough.

Your sophomore album came with a little more pressure, but you’d been inspired enough by the absolute car crash of that first fake relationship that you didn’t really think much when it came to putting it out. You just wanted to speak your mind, wanted to get your side of the story out, and you were much less cautious at the time that there was another person on the other end of that whole ordeal.

The third album came from a place of isolation - at a time where you felt forgotten, and unimportant, and you felt like you had something to prove. That album had a lot of insecurity beneath the surface, but you had done your best to cover it up with pop-punk inspired percussion and a lot less restriction on your vocal.

But when you’d sat in the studio and listened to this fourth album in it’s entirety for the first time, it had felt like listening to an audiobook of your very own diary.

Sure, it was sweet - you’d just fallen in love for what felt like the first time all over again, and you wanted to share a small piece of the man you had fallen for in songs about choosing him and risking it all to be with him.

But there was sourness in there, too. Songs about feeling caged, craving freedom, losing yourself with no one there to help you.

The whole album was far from perfect, but it was about as authentic as you might ever get.

And when those first reviews started to roll in, you felt like you couldn’t read them.

Jack took the reins, though - always there to hold your hand through those harder times.

“The lesson of this album is not to sit back and let others speak for you,” he had read aloud, “But to find your voice and speak for yourself, because that’s the only way anyone will hear you.”

For the first time in a year - or maybe even more - you felt like you could breathe, again.

And now you’re touring again, singing to crowds of people who pay to hear you, and finding time in the cracks of your schedule to dedicate to the guy who made it all possible.

You meet his eyes as he stands beside your parents off to the side of the stage, beaming with pride and exuding adoration as he watches you.

“But this song is really special to me,” you continue, feeling your skin flush as you look back out at the crowd. “The guy who did write it once said that making an album is like falling in love, and that’s what this whole journey was for me.”

You clutch at the guitar strapped around your body, pulling it in front of you and preparing your fingers along the strings, positioning them to the right chords on the right frets.

“I’m gonna tone it down a little, ‘cause the guy I love doesn’t really like pop music,” you laugh, and you glance back over to see him laughing too, despite the chorus of playful boos, “But this is called The Downtown Lights.”

And as you strum along, you’re no longer stood on a stage in front of thousands - you’re transported back to the floor of your apartment after that first time you’d spent time with him alone.

The Blue Nile’s Hats is spinning on your record player, the synthy beats bouncing off your walls, the layered vocals filling some unknown, lonely void within you, and you’re meeting his eye to gauge his reaction, seeing something in there that you knew you wouldn’t be able to fight down the line.

Something curious, and new, and real.

How do I know you feel it? How do I know it's true? It's alright, it's alright The Downtown Lights

320 notes · View notes