the stars in your eyes | t.s. one shots

5,500 miles

a request

Taylor sighs as she feels her body melt into Travis's. She thought that it would get easier, as they fell into a routine. She'd spend her weekends with him, in Kansas City or anywhere else that he was, and her weeks in New  York, doing whatever was required of her. Yet as they've grown closer, as their relationship has progressed through half of a calendar, each week it has felt more and more difficult to leave his arms.

And this week, it's a really hard goodbye. She went with him back to Kansas City, after he beat the Ravens. She stayed a day, but come Tuesday morning, she has to be on her way. She has to go and rehearse her concert. He has to go and practice for the Super Bowl. And they're going to be missing their typical weekend together, the first weekend in February. He's going to be cooped up in practices, conditioning, and press conferences. And she's got the Grammy Awards. The awards show is something she's been really excited about for a really long time... but she honestly didn't think she'd be doing it without him by her side.

Of course she's thrilled about his accomplishment. Thrilled is even an understatement. She's never been so proud of somebody, as she declared on national television in a moment of pure elation. She saw how hard he worked for it. Still, there's so much that's out of Travis's control that goes into his team making it to the Super Bowl. Neither of them actually thought they'd be here. They thought that the next two weeks would look very different.

She had thought that she'd be coming home from her rehearsals each day to him waiting in her hotel room. She hadn't ever thought that she'd be boarding the plane to Tokyo the day after the Grammy Awards alone. She hadn't thought she'd be rushing right back from Japan to Las Vegas, to watch him play his final game of the season.

But because she is, that means that it's going to be nearly two weeks without his kisses. She won't get to see him again until the moment her plane touches down after she's played her Tokyo shows. 

It's when she's in Tokyo, talking with him on the phone late at night for her, after her concert. She misses him so much, and is counting down the seconds until they're finally able to be together again. Until then, they're only able to steal moments through their phone screens. It's really early in the morning for him, but he had to be up anyway for practice. They figured they might as well use the time to their advantage for a little FaceTime date, him eating breakfast and her eating a late-night snack.

"They were asking me about you yesterday, you know?" Travis says.

"Oh god," Taylor replies, frowning. "What do you mean?" She nibbles on a pretzel stick as the words come out of her mouth.

"Just about your big night at the Grammys, with the new album and all... they just wanted to know how I felt about it."

Taylor's face flushes red. "Oh my god. Oh my god, I'm so sorry." She feels a wave of guilt wash over her. "I never intended for this... any of it. It's stealing your big moment. Shit."

"No, they'd have asked about you, Grammys or none," Travis shrugs. He really doesn't mind it at all. He loves Taylor, and he loves that the whole world gets to know that. 

"But... the fact that they even asked... it's fucked up," Taylor sighs. "You're the leader of this team that's gone all the way to the Super Bowl, that's going to win and bring home the trophy, and you're being asked about your fucking relationship in the press conferences." She holds her head in her hands, sighing with defeat. She wishes she could do something about it, wishes she could change the way they're speaking to him, or just disappear into thin air. "It's like I always say... it's just goes so far beyond the music with me, and I don't know how to get it back to what it was always supposed to be. I just wanted to tell stories with songs, and I've become a fucking lightning rod for speculation and headlines about every subject under the sun."