loosely requested by @-taylorsversion
August, 2016
The line clicks and beeps, the connection between them seemingly extremely unstable. It crackles and pops a couple more times, before the white noise clears and Taylor can hear Joe's low breathing through the speaker.
"Tay..?" a hoarse voice whispers. "Is anything wrong? What's going on?"
"I can't... I can't do this anymore." she chokes out, almost on the verge of throwing up. The room feels like it's spinning around her and she feels like she can't stand properly, even though she's sitting down.
"You mean the whole situationship thing? Cause I understand if you want to stop but..." Joe rambles. "It's a bit sudden of you, T." He chuckles awkwardly through the phone. "It's three am here."
Taylor knows that normally, she would have been so apologetic about waking him up at this god awful hour. She would have hurriedly hung up and forced him to go back to bed, no matter how worried he was about her. But this time, she didn't even bother checking the fucking Greenwich Mean Time. Because she needs him. So, so desperately.
"C-Can we switch to Facetime?" Taylor almost begs him. And Joe can hear the urgency in her voice, so he immediately complies, despite the fact that his eyes were as puffy as ever due to jet lag and the excessive amount of celebratory drinking that has been going on during this past few weeks.
"Hi, Tay," Joe mumbles, seeing her gorgeous face fill the screen. "Talk to me. Please."
"I can't do this anymore." Taylor repeats, trying to get him to understand.
"What happened? Did I accidentally knock you up? Shit, Tay, I don't know what you mean by that!" Joe's words are almost comical, but she seems to barely muster up a faint smile to his witty words.
"I can't do this whole celebrity thing anymore. It's over for me. My career is basically an elephant graveyard, and not a single fucking thing can revive it. Three quarters of the world hates me, Joe! These people want me to fucking die, so I might as well! So yes, Joe, I can't fucking do this anymore."
Joe's starting to understand the direness of this situation. His words are all tangled together, unwilling to force their way out of his throat. "Taylor, you love making music. Recording stuff. Performing. All that shit. Are you really going to give all of this up? I don't know what I can say here, T. Honestly."
"It's more than music at this point, Joe. People are flooding my social media with snakes and comments that I won't even try to explain in graphic detail. I can't turn this around and keep my career beating."
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I have made enough money to last anybody a lifetime, Joe, but this feels like... It feels like the end. Maybe I'll dye my hair. Move to a foreign country. Blackout all my social media. Disappear under the radar. Right under everyone's noses. I'm done."
"You can do all of that. I would support you. Come to London— I'll look after you here. And when you find some inspiration anywhere to make art, people will be waiting for you to come back, T." Joe almost cries. They're both trying, and he can feel that.
There's a reason why she's so madly in love with him. It's how he can make everything okay. How he is so sure of his words, how he is so resilient and supportive. "...Okay." Taylor bites her trembling lip. She's still feeling so shaky, but she can feel her breathing pattern start to regulate. She's thinking so loudly, the words are pounding around her everywhere, so loudly that she thinks Joe can hear her thoughts. But if it were true, she really wouldn't mind.
