fic: the hard way (1/?) - demi/selena
Title: The Hard Way (1/?)
Pairing: Selena Gomez/Demi Lovato
Rating: PG-13? (R/NC-17 for later parts)
Summary: With touring and shows and studio sessions, Selena and Demi have gone months without seeing each other. To make things complicated, Selena realizes she's in love.
Note: Not only is this my first Demi/Selena fic, but I decided early on in writing this that - to avoid losing my effing mind - I was just going to set this in some psuedo-alternate universe that is pretty much the same as this one, except this way I have an excuse for not checking dates. So yeah.
disclaimer: This story is lies, lies, lies. Complete fiction.
The deal between them is honesty. Straight, deliberate, unforgiving honesty. In an inbred society of facile agreements and fake friendships that don’t go beyond deliberately posed photo shoots, even the ugliest truth is a comfort. The tabloids may have their smiles plastered on glossy covers, but only Selena knows Demi and only Demi knows Selena.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, at least.
-
Distance isn’t the enemy it’s made out to be: geographical points on a map, airport codes and time zones - in the day and age of smart phones there’s all-day texting and late-night calls. There are busy schedules, to be sure: long days, welcoming pillows and hotel sheets - texts start to scatter in between frequent and few, but they still dance their private little dance. And to say they’ve been in the business long enough to know the ins and outs and when to go left even if they’re told to go right is to belittle the effort.
They know: distance, time? It happens. Even without the securely constructed contracts, inevitability plays its card and they always find their way back to each other.
The only true enemy they have is their own impatience.
-
The room glows an artificial blue, a list of flights poised on the computer screen with a mouse discreetly positioned over the ‘confirm’ button.
“Sweetie...”
Selena jumps and the laptop nearly falls off the desk, but she regains enough composure to squint into the dark doorway, eventually seeing her mom’s tired face looking back at her. “Yeah, mom?”
The window minimizes, Expedia disappearing into the corner.
“Why’re you still up?” She leans against the frame and there’s a knowing - if exhausted - look in her eyes.
“Nothing, just looking stuff up.” Selena shrugs. “Can’t sleep.”
“Sel...” She walks around the desk and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. “You have rehearsal in the morning.”
“And in the afternoon and the day after and...”
“These next couple of weeks are important, you know that.” Her mom reaches out and closes the laptop. “Just be patient. You can visit soon.”
“Visit?” She can act in front of a live audience, but she can’t for the life of her lie to her own mother, who squeezes her shoulder.
“She’ll be back in L.A. soon enough, okay?”
“Yeah,” Selena nods like she believes it. (She doesn’t.) “And I’ll probably be out of town when she is, like last time.”
“It’s been a busy few months, for both of you. You shouldn’t feel bad about working hard. Bigger rewards that way, right?”
“Yeah, mom. Right.” She hopes her mom can hear the appreciation in her voice - it’s there, but buried beneath other worries. “I’m just gonna listen to some music a little bit, then go to bed, okay?”
“Okay. Promise to not stay up too late.”
“Promise.”
Her mom leaves, assured that her daughter feels comforted. But really, it’s only when Selena’s phone lights up a moment later, vibrates at the edge of her desk. She grabs it, reads a miss you xoxo and finds it a little easier to finally close the window.
miss you too.
-
It’s easy to fall into the line of thinking that they’re immortal in some way, celluloid reels running and their faces on screens, in tabloids, forever melded into the genetic code of the internet. But their place in this world is as brief as a camera flash in the whole scheme of things. Things start to waver under the pressure of change. The future is uncertain and the past is intangible: the present is all they really have. They’re growing up and aren’t the same girls they were six months ago.
It’s never a question of validity - in the time and place in which they’re said, the words that come out of their mouths - we’re best friends, we’re there for each other, I know everything about her, I love Demi, I love Selena - are solidified with truth. But it’s only in that moment in which they’re said that there’s certainty - a comment said a year ago may not be true now, today, and yet is no less honest the day it was said.
The question lingers: does she still know everything about Demi? Does Demi still know everything about her?
-
She does not, in fact, wake up one day and suddenly realize she’s in love with her best friend.
If there has to be one moment, the crux, the big epiphany she’d write in a diary if she ever had the patience to keep one going, it’s when she sees a picture of Demi and a man, standing far too close to be anything short of intimate. The photo quality is manipulative, far away and blurry, on the good side of the photoshop scale - yet no more legitimate than if it wasn’t. She knows that it’s not only out of context, but anyone who believed it would be out of their minds.
Still.
It’s a fade-in, naturally lending itself to the scenery of other thoughts. It isn’t direct, it’s a scene that repeats: a grassy knoll and the dew reflecting heavenly sunshine as she moves between the two, places her feet firmly where they belong and kisses Demi, soft but sure, and everything fits together. The hipster wannabe fades away into the background, never to be seen again.
And maybe this, in and of itself, is where the true surprise lies. Studies - if there were any - would show that one often doesn’t start to suddenly have the urge to kiss her best friend while getting mint chocolate chip ice cream. It just doesn’t work like that.
Even so, the scene never stops repeating itself.
-
Somewhere in between dazedly imagining scenarios that hold no basis in reality and trying to get ahold of herself, Selena decides something. This is all some misplaced feelings issue here - she misses her best friend and there’s a distance growing between them. It’s happened before and each time it’s been no one’s fault, but is still no less difficult to deal with. This is her brain’s way of crying out for help, telling her once and for all: stop your moping and make this reunion happen.
Because honestly, enough being told what to do. She’s mature enough to make her own decisions. This is where a plan starts to form.
Her phone beeps: missing you, girly. only half as fun without you.
Selena smiles. Everything’s going to get better, she knows it.
-
There’s a show in Cleveland and Demi’s going to arrive the night before. Selena knows this through crack investigation skills and knowing how to work the pressure on her agent for the info. It’s going to be a surprise, and Expedia sits fresh on her screen for all of five minutes before a ticket is purchased and a Miss Selena M. Gomez is scheduled for a redeye that will conveniently place her in Cleveland the night Demi Lovato arrives in town for a concert.
Before bed, she goes into speed dial and the phone rings for Demi to pick up. She never does.
-
She’ll always be the first to crack a joke at her own expense when it comes to this - organizing to the point of mania. On the surface, everything appears ordinary, normal, unsuspecting, but eventually - if one looks hard enough - you see the pattern there, the structure, deliberate, suffocating.
She puts things into categories: not really like good/bad or blue/yellow, but in regards to time, to the places things have along a linear line. She has stuffed animals resting chronologically along a shelf, an invisible label of memory on each of them that tells their place in her life. There are simple categories - preschool, puberty, pre-disney and now, but there are also other times. There are memories that feel like the crisp edge of postcards and smell like a Puerto Rican beach.
She’d like to think that ten years from now she’ll have things from before she realized she loved Demi, and things from after.
She can’t kid herself, though. She already has the system all in place.
-
There is a Lovato relative who gets sick, gets sick bad, and the Cleveland show is canceled.
Not that Selena even makes it there to get stood up, anyways. The studio calls, intervenes, calls for a retake session deemed “urgent”.
This is how she learns the hard way that she has no control over this.
are u ok?
There is a message sitting in Demi’s voicemail, Selena’s concerned voice reaching out to her friend, and yet even then she feels the need to text her. Demi isn’t one to hold back for too long, and Selena wants to make sure she’s there for her friend, emotionally, even if she can’t be literally.
all receives in return is :(
There’s no call back.
-
The emergency turns out to be a false alarm and Demi quickly makes her way to Cleveland to make up for the missed concert, before heading to New York even faster.
Or so Selena reads on Twitter (of all places), nary a text or voicemail to accompany it.
A week later, it’s like a bombardment on Selena’s senses. Twitter is overflowed with tweets from Miley and Demi and various others, along with photos popping up in the internet stratosphere. They ran into each other sometime in New York and had a ball and Demi’s so glad she had someone to keep her company and there are pictures and tweet after tweet and that stupid ache returns.
The pictures bug her more than they should, really. but there it is: selena gomez is given a test and she fails it miserably. she spends the car ride to the studio pretending to move on to other pages while repeatedly glancing back at their smiling faces.
All recordings for that day are scrapped.
(TBC...)
Pairing: Selena Gomez/Demi Lovato
Rating: PG-13? (R/NC-17 for later parts)
Summary: With touring and shows and studio sessions, Selena and Demi have gone months without seeing each other. To make things complicated, Selena realizes she's in love.
Note: Not only is this my first Demi/Selena fic, but I decided early on in writing this that - to avoid losing my effing mind - I was just going to set this in some psuedo-alternate universe that is pretty much the same as this one, except this way I have an excuse for not checking dates. So yeah.
disclaimer: This story is lies, lies, lies. Complete fiction.
The deal between them is honesty. Straight, deliberate, unforgiving honesty. In an inbred society of facile agreements and fake friendships that don’t go beyond deliberately posed photo shoots, even the ugliest truth is a comfort. The tabloids may have their smiles plastered on glossy covers, but only Selena knows Demi and only Demi knows Selena.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, at least.
-
Distance isn’t the enemy it’s made out to be: geographical points on a map, airport codes and time zones - in the day and age of smart phones there’s all-day texting and late-night calls. There are busy schedules, to be sure: long days, welcoming pillows and hotel sheets - texts start to scatter in between frequent and few, but they still dance their private little dance. And to say they’ve been in the business long enough to know the ins and outs and when to go left even if they’re told to go right is to belittle the effort.
They know: distance, time? It happens. Even without the securely constructed contracts, inevitability plays its card and they always find their way back to each other.
The only true enemy they have is their own impatience.
-
The room glows an artificial blue, a list of flights poised on the computer screen with a mouse discreetly positioned over the ‘confirm’ button.
“Sweetie...”
Selena jumps and the laptop nearly falls off the desk, but she regains enough composure to squint into the dark doorway, eventually seeing her mom’s tired face looking back at her. “Yeah, mom?”
The window minimizes, Expedia disappearing into the corner.
“Why’re you still up?” She leans against the frame and there’s a knowing - if exhausted - look in her eyes.
“Nothing, just looking stuff up.” Selena shrugs. “Can’t sleep.”
“Sel...” She walks around the desk and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. “You have rehearsal in the morning.”
“And in the afternoon and the day after and...”
“These next couple of weeks are important, you know that.” Her mom reaches out and closes the laptop. “Just be patient. You can visit soon.”
“Visit?” She can act in front of a live audience, but she can’t for the life of her lie to her own mother, who squeezes her shoulder.
“She’ll be back in L.A. soon enough, okay?”
“Yeah,” Selena nods like she believes it. (She doesn’t.) “And I’ll probably be out of town when she is, like last time.”
“It’s been a busy few months, for both of you. You shouldn’t feel bad about working hard. Bigger rewards that way, right?”
“Yeah, mom. Right.” She hopes her mom can hear the appreciation in her voice - it’s there, but buried beneath other worries. “I’m just gonna listen to some music a little bit, then go to bed, okay?”
“Okay. Promise to not stay up too late.”
“Promise.”
Her mom leaves, assured that her daughter feels comforted. But really, it’s only when Selena’s phone lights up a moment later, vibrates at the edge of her desk. She grabs it, reads a miss you xoxo and finds it a little easier to finally close the window.
miss you too.
-
It’s easy to fall into the line of thinking that they’re immortal in some way, celluloid reels running and their faces on screens, in tabloids, forever melded into the genetic code of the internet. But their place in this world is as brief as a camera flash in the whole scheme of things. Things start to waver under the pressure of change. The future is uncertain and the past is intangible: the present is all they really have. They’re growing up and aren’t the same girls they were six months ago.
It’s never a question of validity - in the time and place in which they’re said, the words that come out of their mouths - we’re best friends, we’re there for each other, I know everything about her, I love Demi, I love Selena - are solidified with truth. But it’s only in that moment in which they’re said that there’s certainty - a comment said a year ago may not be true now, today, and yet is no less honest the day it was said.
The question lingers: does she still know everything about Demi? Does Demi still know everything about her?
-
She does not, in fact, wake up one day and suddenly realize she’s in love with her best friend.
If there has to be one moment, the crux, the big epiphany she’d write in a diary if she ever had the patience to keep one going, it’s when she sees a picture of Demi and a man, standing far too close to be anything short of intimate. The photo quality is manipulative, far away and blurry, on the good side of the photoshop scale - yet no more legitimate than if it wasn’t. She knows that it’s not only out of context, but anyone who believed it would be out of their minds.
Still.
It’s a fade-in, naturally lending itself to the scenery of other thoughts. It isn’t direct, it’s a scene that repeats: a grassy knoll and the dew reflecting heavenly sunshine as she moves between the two, places her feet firmly where they belong and kisses Demi, soft but sure, and everything fits together. The hipster wannabe fades away into the background, never to be seen again.
And maybe this, in and of itself, is where the true surprise lies. Studies - if there were any - would show that one often doesn’t start to suddenly have the urge to kiss her best friend while getting mint chocolate chip ice cream. It just doesn’t work like that.
Even so, the scene never stops repeating itself.
-
Somewhere in between dazedly imagining scenarios that hold no basis in reality and trying to get ahold of herself, Selena decides something. This is all some misplaced feelings issue here - she misses her best friend and there’s a distance growing between them. It’s happened before and each time it’s been no one’s fault, but is still no less difficult to deal with. This is her brain’s way of crying out for help, telling her once and for all: stop your moping and make this reunion happen.
Because honestly, enough being told what to do. She’s mature enough to make her own decisions. This is where a plan starts to form.
Her phone beeps: missing you, girly. only half as fun without you.
Selena smiles. Everything’s going to get better, she knows it.
-
There’s a show in Cleveland and Demi’s going to arrive the night before. Selena knows this through crack investigation skills and knowing how to work the pressure on her agent for the info. It’s going to be a surprise, and Expedia sits fresh on her screen for all of five minutes before a ticket is purchased and a Miss Selena M. Gomez is scheduled for a redeye that will conveniently place her in Cleveland the night Demi Lovato arrives in town for a concert.
Before bed, she goes into speed dial and the phone rings for Demi to pick up. She never does.
-
She’ll always be the first to crack a joke at her own expense when it comes to this - organizing to the point of mania. On the surface, everything appears ordinary, normal, unsuspecting, but eventually - if one looks hard enough - you see the pattern there, the structure, deliberate, suffocating.
She puts things into categories: not really like good/bad or blue/yellow, but in regards to time, to the places things have along a linear line. She has stuffed animals resting chronologically along a shelf, an invisible label of memory on each of them that tells their place in her life. There are simple categories - preschool, puberty, pre-disney and now, but there are also other times. There are memories that feel like the crisp edge of postcards and smell like a Puerto Rican beach.
She’d like to think that ten years from now she’ll have things from before she realized she loved Demi, and things from after.
She can’t kid herself, though. She already has the system all in place.
-
There is a Lovato relative who gets sick, gets sick bad, and the Cleveland show is canceled.
Not that Selena even makes it there to get stood up, anyways. The studio calls, intervenes, calls for a retake session deemed “urgent”.
This is how she learns the hard way that she has no control over this.
are u ok?
There is a message sitting in Demi’s voicemail, Selena’s concerned voice reaching out to her friend, and yet even then she feels the need to text her. Demi isn’t one to hold back for too long, and Selena wants to make sure she’s there for her friend, emotionally, even if she can’t be literally.
all receives in return is :(
There’s no call back.
-
The emergency turns out to be a false alarm and Demi quickly makes her way to Cleveland to make up for the missed concert, before heading to New York even faster.
Or so Selena reads on Twitter (of all places), nary a text or voicemail to accompany it.
A week later, it’s like a bombardment on Selena’s senses. Twitter is overflowed with tweets from Miley and Demi and various others, along with photos popping up in the internet stratosphere. They ran into each other sometime in New York and had a ball and Demi’s so glad she had someone to keep her company and there are pictures and tweet after tweet and that stupid ache returns.
The pictures bug her more than they should, really. but there it is: selena gomez is given a test and she fails it miserably. she spends the car ride to the studio pretending to move on to other pages while repeatedly glancing back at their smiling faces.
All recordings for that day are scrapped.
(TBC...)