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

peace

Taylor walks into the room, phone in her hand and tears in her eyes. "Trav," she whimpers, her voice small but just loud enough that he can hear her over the sound of the television.

"Baby girl, what's wrong?" he asks instantly, signaling for her to come to him. She does so and right away, he pulls her into his arms. Upon his mere touch, something that's like a safety net for her, she lets go. She starts to fully cry.

"Trav, I just can't take it all. They're so mean." She mutters the words into his chest, muffling her sound, but he hears her, loud and clear.

"Sweetheart," he sighs, "what's going on?"

"It's just... all of it. I know that my performance last night wasn't my best but... Jesus. Some of the things they're saying..."

He shakes his head. "I don't know why people feel that it's their right to comment on things that are truly none of their business," he tells her.

Today shouldn't be like this. It's the release week of Taylor's new album and last night, she performed on Jimmy Kimmel. Her earpiece cut out and she couldn't hear her band. She was off, and she knows it. Everyone knows it, but the fact that they need to point it out just infuriates Travis. The whole world has seen her give performances at a caliber that is once-in-a-generation. Everyone has bad days, everyone finds themselves off sometimes.

Taylor is one of the few who has the misfortune that those off days are documented and dissected on the internet.

"What were they saying?" he asks, twirling around strands of her hair aimlessly.

"They were saying that I had no talent and that I don't deserve anything I've accomplished, and... it's just... Trav, it goes beyond the music. They were talking about my body and how it's changed over the years and part of me is like... 'yeah, no shit,' because I'm not nineteen anymore, you know, but part of me..." she pauses.

A look crosses her face, one of ghosts and demons behind her eyes. He knows she's afraid to admit to what's coming next.

"Part of me just wants to fall back into those same stupid fucking patterns that I thought I'd gotten out of," she whispers. Her words are accompanied by another bout of sobs. Travis feels his heart shatter as he holds the woman he loves.

He knows a bit about what she went through in her younger days. How during the time when her body was supposed to be naturally changing from that of an adolescent to a woman, she was fighting it tooth and nail. On many days, that meant starving herself. On others, it meant spending hours upon hours in the gym. He's sure he doesn't know every detail of it all, and he's afraid that if he were to hear them, it would completely break his heart.

But even more heartbreaking would be standing by her side and watching her relapse into those days. He is so thankful that she feels safe enough to come to him and admit how she's feeling, knowing how scary and hard it must be for her to do that. It's a time of her life that she doesn't love to talk about, for obvious reasons. She wasn't healthy and wasn't happy, despite what she was projecting to the world. It was all fake, it was a piece of glass that was ready to be shattered at any moment.

And shattered it was.

That's when 2016 happened. It's only when she ran away, blocked out the rest of the world, that she was truly able to spend time focusing on healing. Travis knows that Joe really helped her with that. He'd be a fool to not acknowledge it. They were good for each other at the time, and he's thankful, because each step on Taylor's path was a step that led to them being brought together. There were men who taught her how to love fearlessly, no matter what others said. They taught her what she wants, and what she doesn't want, in a partner. Most importantly, they inspired her music. They created emotions inside of her that were so intense that they just had to be let out through song.