#mabel just does vocal exercises | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

harryandmolly · 6 years ago

Text

The Long Way Home -2-

Summary: His world is a little rocked when Shawn is joined on his 2019 world tour by Emma, a former child star with a chip on her shoulder and a voice that haunts him.

Warnings: Language, brattiness, popstar angst

Word count: in the neighborhood of 3.8k

Emma wakes up on the wrong side of the bed again.

Physically, it’s the wrong side of the bed. For as long as she can remember, in whatever bed she’s slept in, from the fifth floor walk-up shithole in Ladera Heights to her grandfather’s house in Louisiana to every five star hotel she’s patronized, she’s slept on the right side of the bed.

Since her team for tour is more modest than that of a headliner, she took advantage of the opportunity to trick out her bus. She replaced the back lounge with a whole bedroom rather than a bunk under a snoring make-up assistant. It’s not the grungey first world tour experience but, fuck it. She has the money and she wants the privacy.

But this bed situation must be really throwing her off. She wakes up on the left side three mornings in a row and it puts her in a fouler mood than she already has been.

She stands slowly, feeling a familiar ache in the balls and heels of her feet, her knees and her lower back. She has the body of an 18-year-old plagued with the ailments of a 60-year-old and there’s no real wonder why with seven days a week of Pilaticardio on top of choreography rehearsals for tour.

Choreography was one of the many things she fought against and clearly lost out to the opinions of her managers, agents and mom. She had plenty of dance experience, sure, you don’t get to be Miss Little California 2010 without being able to put together a jazz square, but she never pictured herself dancing on stage.

She shakes the thought from her head, unwilling to go down that road so early in the morning. If she starts the mental list of all the things she’s doing now that weren’t as she pictured, she’d just get back in bed and she can’t because tour starts today.

Tour. Starts today.

She does almost crawl back into bed but Margaret’s at the door going through her schedule as Emma strips naked and changes into an Ivy Park workout ensemble that she thinks Mabel, her stylist, one of the only people on this bus she can stand to have half a real conversation with, would approve of.

Emma marches out of the converted back lounge bedroom past her troops – Mabel sitting with a bowl of steel cut oatmeal, Carmela, her trainer, in a ball cap holding resistance bands that make her cringe just looking at them. Her make-up and hair team are still in bed, she thinks, because she won’t be needing them until after her torture session. She hates them a little for getting to sleep late but she blames the bitterness on the early hour.

Before tea, before avocado toast, before coherent thought comes Pilaticardio and all its associated agony. Carmela spread out mats and equipment in the empty parking lot outside the venue beside their bus. When they start getting their blood moving, Emma remembers, as she does every morning, why she puts up with it. Pilaticardio makes her feel strong. Emma doesn’t live the kind of life where she feels strong often. From the outside, she looks like the top of the operation, the head of the dragon, making decisions and directing her destiny. It couldn’t be further from the truth. She obeys Carmela’s every instruction but still commands her own body in a way no one can control but her. She revels in it.

When it ends, she’s powerless again, resigned to be whisked off for a five minute shower, breakfast and into hair and make-up for her first ever soundcheck.

She’s not listening to Margaret as they stride across the blacktop toward the venue. She cradles her sweating water bottle in her hands, tapping her manicured claws against the strong plastic.

Emma can’t help herself. She glances at the bus she knows to be Shawn’s, strains to hear some activity, narrows her eyes to look for signs of life. Her heart races just at the sight of it, which she dutifully ignores in favor of her analytical approach.

She tilts her chin up proudly. She’s awake and working hard before the headliner. She assumed this would be the case as Shawn doesn’t need a glam squad to get him looking that good. Plus, it’s her MO. If she works twice as hard as everyone around her, she wins. That’s been ingrained since birth, since her pageant days, since her biggest worry was if she could twirl a baton faster than the girl next to her that her mom always called chubby but really she just had a sweet round face.

Emma carries herself even taller in her skyscraper wedges, practically strutting past Shawn’s bus. She assures herself it’s not because she wants him to be looking, to be watching the back pockets on her skinny black jeans. A thrill shoots up her spine at the idea, though. To have Shawn Mendes’s eyes on her ass? Well worth the Pilaticardio.

Emma tunes back in when she hears Margaret’s voice tick up in register, indicating she’s asked a question. Emma looks at her and raises an eyebrow. Margaret, very used to repeating herself at this point, reiterates.

“Do you want your mom along on the radio interviews tomorrow?”

Emma fixes Margaret with a blank stare. Margaret’s eyebrows quirk and she nods with an exhausted sigh.

“Right. I’ll book her a massage instead.”

Emma doesn’t thank her. She doesn’t acknowledge her. She keeps walking, her heartburn kicking in earlier in the morning than usual.

Appropriate, then, that her first single, the thing that’s been kicking up almost as much fuss in her team as this tour, is called “Fireheart.” “Fireheart” was first played for her by a team of producers in a frigid conference room on the 40th floor of a building in downtown Los Angeles where all the bad things happen to her. She remembers smiling in that way that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“It’s perfect,” she croaks. In her head, she’s tearing her hair out.

She went home that night to her 6-bedroom palace in the Hollywood Hills, the only place she gets to be alone (at least sometimes) and cried so hard she busted blood vessels in her cheeks that she knew would make the make-up artists think she’s bulimic and she doesn’t have the energy to correct them.

“Fireheart” isn’t a bad song. She chants this in her head as she springs up the steps to the artist entrance of the venue with Margaret hot on her heels. This chant has a tune associated with it now for how often she desperately repeats it. She bobs her head along with the imaginary beat, walking past her vocal coach with a nod and a shallow grin as she walks onstage.

She feels nothing when she looks out into the 17,000-capacity arena, empty and waiting for her to bring it to life. She stands on the edge of the stage, painted toes almost hanging off the edge, willing a little bit of danger to get her blood pumping. It’s the only thing that does anymore.

Her vocal coach Steven stands behind her, feeding her warmup exercises. She stares at the fourth seat in the third row, wondering who will be there tonight, wondering if she’ll be a little girl screaming her name, or screaming “Becky,” the character she played on Fake It Til You Make It. She answers to that name as easily as she answers to Emma. It doesn’t matter anymore. Neither of them are her. Not really.

Soundcheck goes off without a hitch. Her voice is sounding great, thanks to Steven. Just to be safe, since it’s her first tour and her voice is so green, he has her on vocal rest for the rest of the afternoon. If he weren’t 54, gay and married, she’d plant one on him.

Emma retreats to the bus for a conference call with the label about her single release, a dreadful reminder that this precious vocal rest can’t last. The single drops in two weeks and they’ve been hyping it up for months like it’s a fucking Beyonce album. Radio interviews are set up all over Europe. They’ve picked the treatment for the music video, which they’ll shoot on a day off during their stint in LA in July. Everything is almost ready for her debut, her sugar pop, twinkly-eyed, auto-tuned debut.

Thank god she can be silent for that call. And thank god no one but Margaret can see the faces she’s making.

When it ends, she feels that familiar 3pm defeated feeling. On her persistently buzzing phone, she types up an “I need 30 minutes. Please” message in her notes app and shows it to Margaret. Margaret acquiesces with a sharp nod.

Emma stumbles into her bus bedroom and shuts the door, slumping against it for a 10-second pity party, hanging her head.

In five steps, she’s at the foot of her bed, yanking at her shoes and reaching for her magenta wireless Beats at the same time. She hops onto the Casper mattress she insisted on and feels her bones sing her praises for relieving them.

But before she descends into a quick rest, she crawls on her knees to the window at the head of her bed and peers out through the slatted blinds, again looking toward Shawn’s bus curiously. Lights are on now, of course, it’s midafternoon and he’s soundchecking after her. She has great timing, apparently, because the door opens and, behind a few scraggly band members she can’t remember the names of, he steps out in Nike shorts and a pink hoodie that makes her release a funny noise from the back of her throat.

She studies him, the way he turns and responds to one of his friends with a barking laugh that makes him throw his head back. He runs up behind another one and claps a hand on his shoulder, facing away from her so she can’t see him but she imagines he looks like he’s having the time of his life.

That 3pm wave of indescribable sadness is ebbing closer and if she doesn’t head it off at the pass, it’ll crush her. She licks her lips and lies face up on the mattress over her Egyptian cotton sheets, feeling a rush of relief in her veins like heroin when her headphones go on and the music starts.

She closes her eyes and rests a hand in her stomach while the other rakes through her hair. When she’s this far away from everything, she can pretend the hand doesn’t belong to her, that it’s someone else doing a job she’s done her whole life – soothing her, talking her off a ledge.

“I pretend that I’m not ready, why do we put each other through hell? Why can’t we just get over ourselves?”

Shawn lives for the feeling he gets before a big show, and there’s no show bigger to him than a tour opener.

He’s been bouncing off his dressing room walls for hours, it feels like. He’s so jazzed by the thrumming in the walls of the Ziggo Dome as it fills to the brim with tens of thousands of screaming fans that came to see him. He can’t imagine this level of energy coming from anywhere else. It’s fucking addictive. He wishes everyone could try it.

When a team of women looking solemn storm past his open door, he knows Emma is near. Sure enough, his room of band mates and other team members falls silent as she brushes past the door, flanked by her manager and her vocal coach.

She’s dressed for the show in a spangley blue dress and matching high tops. Her hair is blown out and her eye make-up is dark. As she passes the door in a long, modelesque stride, they lock eyes for only a fraction of a second before she’s looking away like she didn’t see him. He shivers.

“She’s really starting to freak me out,” Zubin mutters.

Shawn frowns. “She’s just… cold,” he mutters, puzzled.

“Fucking frigid,” Geoff replies sharply, disapprovingly, “A girl that pretty can’t be that mean, it’s so wrong.”

“She’s not mean,” Shawn defends, sitting backwards in a chair so he can lean his chest on the back panel, “I mean, she hasn’t been mean, she just hasn’t been friendly.”

“She’s barely said a word to anyone but her team since she got here. And have you seen the way she looks at them? She’s an ice queen,” Mike reasons.

Shawn knows it’s pointless but something in him wants to fight for her, fight for something in her he hasn’t even seen yet. But he’s heard her sing so he knows it’s in there.

He shrugs, noncommittally. “I’m gonna go watch her set from sidestage.”

He’s joined by the others because they’re curious to see if this lovely Fembot can put on a show. They crowd their way out into position as her music comes on. He recognizes the track from the first season’s soundtrack, her first top 10 Billboard single. He rolls his eyes at himself for how familiar he’s become with her career. He pretends it’s simply research, that it’s good sense to know about his opening act. If he’s honest, that’s not it entirely.

He makes sure she can’t see them before she walks out – he doesn’t want to make her nervous. If she’s anything like he was during his first arena show, she’s shaking like a leaf right now.

But she could’ve fooled him. She struts out onto the stage, bouncing in her cute sneakers and waving like she’s Taylor fucking Swift. And she might as well be because even though she’s the opener, at least half the stadium is shrieking her name. It’s this funny hybrid of “Emma!” and “Becky!” that, amplified, sounds more like “EMKY!”

He feels like he’s watching “Camp Rock” or something. Every move is choreographed, every line screamed to the crowd is rehearsed. Her dancing is perfect. Her pitch is on point. She might actually be an automaton after all. He’s pretty convinced until she reaches the last song of her set.

The dancers flee. Someone runs a vibrant yellow acoustic guitar out and she slides it on like it’s an extension of her. He shifts uncomfortably because he’s kind of turned on.

She pulls two pins out of her hair he couldn’t see were stuck in there and her hair falls longer and looser around her lightly bronzed arms. She smiles as the crowd cheers and murmurs something into the mic about “slowing things down for a sec” and it’s still practiced but he hears something in her voice he hasn’t yet and he’s hooked.

She swings the guitar behind her back and kneels, unlacing her sneakers. She kicks them off and stuffs her little white socks inside. Shawn and his whole group are silent, watching her with fascination. She stands upright, barefoot and gives the crowd the first genuine smile he’s seen on her. It takes his fucking breath away.

She shifts back and forth from the balls of her feet to her heels, sliding the guitar back into place across her stomach. She begins strumming softly and he recognizes the opening chords to “How I’ve Been.” He knows it well, it’s his favorite. It’s the seventh track on her third soundtrack album and the only one he’s found that boasts her as its only writing credit.

She bobs her head with the music and he finds himself joining her. She balances the guitar on her right hip, her right foot lifting onto her toes as she strums. He watches the shimmering sequins wriggle over the backs of her long, butter-soft legs. Shawn actually feels his stomach flip like he hasn’t in a very long time.

Emma’s voice is deep and throaty on this track. He loves the way it sounds in his headphones but even more now when she’s singing it live and he can hear it vibrating out of her chest. He wants to rest his head there while she sings to him but he shakes that idea as quickly as it comes and focuses. Eddy nudges his arm and makes a surprised and impressed face. Shawn quickly nods and looks back at her, unwilling to be distracted from this.

She’s here now, he can feel it, in a way she hasn’t been the whole show. The whole two days they’ve been at the venue. She’s commanding the stage in a way he didn’t learn to do at all while he was an opener, and arguably not until well into his first headlining tour. But she’s crooning into the mic like an old fucking pro, planting her feet wide and throwing vocal runs into the song that aren’t on the recorded version.

He hears himself whoop from the sidelines and he doesn’t care that his bandmates are eyeing him suspiciously. He claps loud even though he knows she can’t hear him. He’s just happy to witness this.

Her last run is the most impressive and has the whole crowd on its feet. When her voice fades, the cheering doesn’t. She lifts the guitar by the neck and grins genuinely, laughing and waving. He hears himself laughing and glances around. The guys are swept along, too, smiling and nodding to each other, mumbling about “hey, that was pretty fuckin’ good.” She’s won them all over, it seems. Shawn is content.

After a quick, humble bow, she grabs her shoes and scurries off. As she’s approaching their side of the stage, she’s still smiling down at her feet, watching where she’s walking until she sees a big group of man legs and stops dead, her smile dropping off instinctively.

“Awesome job!” Shawn practically squeals, stepping up to give her a quick, friendly hug. It’s awkward around her pretty yellow guitar and because she totally freezes when she sees him.

When he pulls back to chat with her about the set, she’s gone. Not physically, she’s still there, but whoever she was on stage might still be floating around out there in the ether, away on the wind, because she’s definitely not in Emma’s body.

Her expression is flat. She manages a dead smile and a nod. “Thanks, man. Have a good show.”

She steps aside, nodding politely at the other members of the band before stalking away, still barefoot, still sparkling. Her cast of creatures hustles behind her to keep up with her enormous steps back to her dressing room.

Shawn’s eyebrows are pulled together in thought as they wade back through the twisting backstage hallways for the last few minutes of pre-show prep, complete with rituals and superstitions. He needs to shake this weirdness before he gets out there. He wonders if he’ll catch a little bit of her, the one he saw during the last song, when he’s out there. Maybe it’s like a pixie dust he’ll breathe in and he’ll feel again like he did when he was watching her.

He doesn’t spend much time wallowing in his bewilderment, there’s too much to do. Between Andrew and the band, he’s fully occupied, no room for powerwalking blondes with long fingers and bare feet. They herd up the way they always do and prowl to the stage. The full power of the pre-show ecstasy overtakes him. He’s drunk with it, drumming his hands on his thighs, nodding his head impatiently. He’s handed a perfectly tuned electric by a tech named Joey and grins wildly, thanking him by name, which seems to take him by surprise.

When the lights go down, his heart roars in his chest. He bounces on his toes and throws his head back, shaking his hair and feeling the fire crawl up his veins.

He jogs out onstage, momentarily overwhelmed, like he always is, every night without fail, at the screams. They’re screaming for him. That’ll never not be so fucking cool.

He greets the Dutch crowd to raucous cheers and starts playing “Lost in Japan.”

He forgets to look for her until after the second song once the jitters have faded a little into welcome energy. He looks forward to her reaction and hopes she’s having a good time. He glances to the side he stood on earlier and doesn’t see her. He turns and looks the other way and frowns.

He tries not to wonder about it as he starts in on “Why” and curls a hand around the microphone with a guitar pick between his fingers. He looks down at the VIP section, assuming she wanted a better vantage point.

But no Emma.

He’s definitely thrown but continues on, willing himself to forget her absence until he’s lost in the show again.

It’s a great tour opener. Amsterdam is such a fun crowd. He thanks them profusely after his encore and jogs off, handing the guitar off again with another “thanks, Joey,” which earns him a wholehearted “great show, Shawn.”

Andrew greets him excitedly with words of genuine praise that Shawn doesn’t really register.

“Thanks, man,” he laughs, nodding at him, “Hey, did Emma leave?”

Andrew keeps his gaze level, shrugging. “She didn’t stay for your set.”

Shawn blinks. “She didn’t stay? At all?”

Andrew shakes his head. Shawn’s parted lips shut and he hums, trying to sound disinterested.

“Kay. Let’s bounce, I’m fuckin’ sweaty!”

His words are stilted and he knows if he can hear it, so can Andrew, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.

After some good-natured monkeying around and a beer or two, Shawn strips off his sweaty show clothes and showers off, letting himself think about Emma again. He wonders why she didn’t stay. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well? Maybe she’s got an early interview tomorrow, her single is dropping pretty soon, he thinks. The truth is, it doesn’t really matter. It’s impolite for an opener to leave before the headliner’s set, especially on the first show of the tour. It’s a weird vibe to throw out.

But he can’t stop thinking about her with that yellow guitar and her hair sticking to her back and her toes curled against the dirty stage floor for balance. He grows a little hard under the hot water at the thought. He throws the temperature to the cold setting, blasting himself as he plants his hands against the tile wall, breathing slowly. When it’s so cold it sucks the air from his lungs, he shuts it off and steps out to dry off.

He walks past her bus that night with his hands in his pockets and his head in the stars. He notices a light on in the back where the lounge should be but he hears she converted it to a bedroom and he scoffed when he heard it from Geoff but he’s secretly a little jealous. As he walks closer, he hears music. He strains to place it. He lifts his eyebrows when he realizes it’s Tammy Wynette.

Frowning, he slumps off to his bus, feeling a little defeated. But the tour must go on.

Taglist: @the-claire-bitch-project @smallerinfinities @crapri @stillinskislydia @carlaimberlain @heavenly—holland @abigfatmess @rosecolouredtimes

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes rpf #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fic

213 notes · View notes