• Him • (pt 1)

So i wrote this story bcs a friend of mine

requested it and is willing to pay me for it,lol.

Keep in mind that this could be anyone. (a male)

Just a random night in L.A

~~~~~~~~

You always loved the studio late at night. When the prima donnas and eccentrics had sashayed off to their parties full of people who would disappear as soon as the stars fell from grace, the building was a ghost town. Just a few dedicators running on coffee, cigarettes, and anything else they could get their hands on down the darker alleys. You were sat by the window, where you'd sneakily suggested they set up the mixing desk, working when the mood took you, but spending most of your time sketching, writing and admiring the frenzied sky above. With the window pushed open, the night time breeze drifted through your hair and the songs of the L.A nightlife flourished joyously. It was peaceful. Just you, the never-ending sky, and his voice. The headphones were dicky - the studio helper had sat on the plug and bent it just slightly out of shape - so you had to prop it up with your sketchbook when you wanted to work.

If any little thing moved even an inch, the sound would go fuzzy and everything had to be readjusted until you found that sweet spot again. That was always your excuse when they wondered why so little was done on nights you told them you were hanging back, yet somehow it stayed miraculously still during the day. The boys hadn't set up much for their next album - a name, a release date, a concept - but the unshakeable urge had overtaken them and they'd wound up back in the studio stitching together unnamed masterpieces from scraps of poetry and instrumentals. It was your job to help them pull it all together. Your heart and mind just weren't in it that night though. Your heart and mind just weren't in anything that night, actually. You were wide awake but just unable to focus on anything. Whether it was the long hours spent on the songs, or maybe the humidity that still clung desperately to the city, you couldn't tell. Maybe you were just too distracted by your imagination.

Though you didn't know the constellations by sight, you enjoyed tracing the shapes in the sky, like watching sparkling birds migrate into the inky blackness. Some of the images you could put together in the night were amusing. So far that night, though, nothing had really taken shape. You couldn't tell if that was the skies fault, or yours. You blinked your dazed thoughts away as best you could, determined to focus on something to avoid a whooping the next morning. Laid out before you was the mixing equipment, an 8-track tape recorder rolled with tapes of your friend's vocals that he'd recorded alone that morning and sheets of music scribbled with his instructions piled haphazardly beside it. It was up to you now to sort out the harmonies he wanted so they could add in the instruments the next day.

Wiggling the headphone plug for good luck, you pressed play to listen to his voice once more. It was a good song, unnamed as of then, and as you read through his scrawl, you could envision the final product the way you imagined him could as he was writing it. He really was out of this world. The way he spoke, the things he talked about, everything he saw, the songs he could envision - there was nothing about him that you were certain you couldn't find in the sky you so loved above you.

It wasn't much of a secret between the other band members that you harboured fond affections for him, and you were constantly at war with yourself trying to understand if that was a blessing or a curse. On nights like that, when you could picture his lips pursed behind the microphone as you listened to his poetry, the answer was fairly simple. Once the tape was over and you'd read through his ideas thoroughly, you snubbed out your dying cigarette and got to work interchanging the tapes - he had taken up three tracks with his harmonies, so the boys would have to be slick with their instrumentals to stop the rest of the tracks, and his patience, wearing thin.

The single light in the studio was dull and flickering, making your work much slower going. The band refused to have it changed, though, because they decided that it added to the atmosphere. They had been declaring this through the making of the last album too - at this point, you thought they just enjoyed having a constant headache. There were regular gusts of wind outside, a chilling reminder not only of the upcoming winter but also of the tantalising sea breeze a few miles away that you were missing out on, and the single bulb above you was constantly blowing off kilter, casting dancing shadows across the moonlit walls.

You risked a quick glance outside. A man was standing on the opposite side of the road, out of reach of the street lights and sheltered from the moon by the eaves of the abandoned building opposite the studio. He was searching through his pockets for something. Not recognising his gait and unable to see any of his features, you quickly directed your attention back to the tape recorder.

Not long after came more footsteps, slower this time, and the sound of the main entrance door to the studio creaking open and being pulled shut. You didn't take much notice, because so many artists and their producers worked in those rooms night and day that it could have been anyone - you'd once met a celebrity on the way in early one morning and completely melted into a puddle of gibberish nonsense. Martha (a friend), who was with you at the time, had teased you relentlessly, and even two years on.

For the next few minutes, you worked on in silence. You'd got about halfway through the vocal mix and were about to pull the headphones back over your ears, which you'd unplugged and discarded in order to work more efficiently, when a set of footsteps became apparent out in the hall. Accompanying them was a low hum that you instantly recognised. You'd been hearing that voice for nigh on four years, you'd be able to recognise his breathing patterns in just a few seconds. Trust him to be humming his own song. The door was thrown open behind you, and a boundless presence flooded all four corners of the room.

"I thought I saw our light on." His voice was so calming when he was sober. It was the first way to tell what he was feeling inside, how your time with him was going to go. When he was drunk or angry, his voice was like a brewing thunderstorm, set to burst at any second. But when he was calm, sober and at ease, he was the easiest person to talk to, his tones hushed and deep, like thick honey dripping from a spoon.

He talked slower than the average person, and much more animated, so much so that he had received a few good-natured jibes from the band and crew about how well he would fit into a Peanuts special, but if you could listen to anyone talk every minute of every day for the rest of your life, it would be him.You threw the headphones back onto the desk, unknowingly dislodging the plug as you did so, and untucked your legs from under the low table to turn around and face him. He looked tired. There was a cigarette burning between his lips that illuminated his face better than the blinking light above could, and it highlighted the limpness of his skin, the brooding darkness of his sunken eyes, the unruly stubble dotted haphazardly across his sharp jawline.

"Yeah, I said I'd stay a while," you replied, taking in his dishevelled state. His clothes were rumpled yet still laced with the faint smell of his oddly scented cologne, and it looked as though he'd spent the last few hours slumped over in his car rather than partying with his friends. "You did? Man, I didn't hear that." He meandered over to the right of the small room, picking up a spare chair and bringing it to your side. Carelessly, he collapsed into it, unblinking eyes now level with yours as he plucked the cigarette from his mouth and held it up to you.

He watched your lips as you took a drag, his own curling almost imperceptibly when you dropped your gaze from his to exhale deeply. It was a subconscious move, but you couldn't stand looking into his eyes for too long. There was just something about them, something melancholy, something otherworldly that seemed to either draw people in or drive them away. If you'd caught that look on his face then, you would have been forced to wonder if he knew it or not. "What are you working on?" He placed his half-burnt-out cigarette back between his lips, pensive eyes skating from yours to the sheets scattered about the desk.

"The vocals you laid down this morning. They're good." He let out an exhalation of amusement but didn't elaborate. Instead, he reached out his slim fingers to skim through the papers that he had written. From the dull expression on his face, he had no recollection of penning them. You'd learnt how to read him surprisingly well for someone who held such a mystique in front of cameras and audiences - though he was by no means an open book, you'd come to understand what certain quirks of his eyebrow meant, what he wanted from the tiniest wave of his fingers, what kind of music or lyric he was imagining as he gesticulated wildly on the other side of the table.

The way his forehead was wrinkled as he stared blankly down at his own handwriting, as though he'd aged forty years in 10 seconds, told you he was beyond deep thought. If you spoke now, he wouldn't hear you. If you decided you were going to attempt human flight out of the window, he wouldn't even notice.

He stayed stock still, fingers slipping a new sheet in front of him every now and again. Since he was so tucked away in his thoughts, you readjusted the headphone plug and slipped them back over your head to check the mix you'd put together so far. Arranging a three-track harmony of his own voice was easier than you had been expecting. He'd downed three shots of whiskey to get his voice low enough - at least that was his excuse - but you couldn't smell any alcohol on him that night, and he was sat close enough beside you. The tape mix was good so far, impeccably good actually, if you did say so yourself, and you were about to start on the second half when a cold finger poking roughly at your shoulder pulled you out of your work.

You looked over at him to find him staring at what had been the final piece in the pile of papers, which were now scattered messily between the floor and the table, with his finger still poking at you. You batted it away, then pulled off the headphones to give him your full attention. "What is this?" He was staring incredulously down at his notes, his eyebrows furrowed and lips sternly pressed together. Leaning closer so you could peek over the top of the paper, you saw it was his ideas for the percussion instrumental. You were about to tell him so before he scrunched it up angrily in his hand and hurled it out of the window in one fluid movement, as though he was on fast forward. By the time you'd processed the action, he was sat back in his chair, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, head tilted back, eyes closed, mumbling to himself.

"_____?" you said his name apprehensively. "Would you pass me more paper and a pen please?" he muttered quietly. Obligingly, you scrabbled through the drawer beside you, shuffling closer to him to be able to pull it open properly, and came out with a ripped in half piece of paper and a leaky biro which you pressed into his expectant hand. As though a puppet master had jerked at his strings, he shot up in his seat. He got straight to work scrawling on the scrap paper, ink staining across the taut, pale skin of his hands. He'd lost his tan recently. Usually, the many late afternoons spent prowling the town topped up his UV exposure, but you weren't sure where he'd been spending the past nights.

Rather than going back to the work that you would inevitably be distracted from, you leant down to your bag for the candy bar you had stashed there that morning. As you unwrapped it and started munching, you took the time to unabashedly eyeball him while he worked. His hair hadn't been washed. You could tell by the frizziness and lacklustre texture. Still, it fell across his brow in an amorous, Shakespearean way, and your fingers twitched to remove the flailing strands from his eyes. Just peeking out from the fraying ends of his shaggy mane, through the hollow cove of his cheeks, you could see his teeth grinding, the clear line of his jaw protruding forward as his eyes scraped meticulously over the words he was writing. His lip was held harshly between his teeth, a move that grounded him as he wrote.

Suddenly, he paused mid scribble. Sensing incoming eye contact, you quickly directed your gaze to your fingers, which were messing apprehensively with the scrunched-up candy bar wrapper. It didn't take long for you to feel his eyes on you. When you looked up (doing your best to act as though you hadn't been watching him for the past five minutes), he was staring at you thoughtfully. Waiting for him to speak, you stared steadily back at him.

"Let's go out."

Of all the things he could have said, that was the last thing that had been on your mind. His elbows were still resting on the table in a triangular shape, shoulders tense, pen poised mere millimetres above the paper, his other hand balancing his chin so he could look at you the way he was.

"Out? Now? But I have to get these mixes finished for -" He waved your, admittedly weak, protests away with a careless, ink-stained hand. "Forget about that, it's not important. Let's go out."

He was already standing up, throwing down the biro with such accidental force that it bounced across the table. Unperturbed, he shifted his vacated chair out of the way with one foot, breached the miniscule space between you to grasp your curled up hands, and gently guided you up with them. It was like your legs forgot they were connected to your brain. As though they were taking their commands from his mysterious labyrinth of a mind, and you were powerless to stop them. Before you were even fully aware of it, you were stood stock straight in his flickering shadow, catching the smug gleam in his mischievous eyes between the planes of silhouette shading his skin. He knew he already had you. "Fine!" Acting as though you were truly caving to his demands, you huffed dramatically. "But you have to explain why nothing got done tonight."

"Don't worry 'bout it Y/N, nothing gets done when you're here anyway."

You let out a noise of offense, but, glancing at the sketchbook that lay innocently on the table, couldn't really argue your case. Instead, you pulled a face at him, and turned out of his hypnotic grip to reach for your bag. "Touché."

~~☆~~

Okay so i was gonna write some more but then i got tired (im supposed to be napping right now)

I hope my classmate sees this because if not, it would be pretty embarrassing for me ;d