Chapter Text
Kayn is late. She's stuck in an Uber somewhere on the main road and traffic isn't moving an inch. She sighs, trying her best to stay calm as she stares at the raindrops trickling down the car window in a jumbled race before they reach the bottom of the glass and disappear out of view again. Typical, really, that the only time she really tries to be punctual is when she fails miserably, and it's not even her fault. Okay, so maybe it's a little bit her fault for not checking the briefing that Zed sent her, but in her defense she hates emails.
Today has been shit from the second she woke up. First, she'd been out of her favorite cereal. She must have finished it yesterday and then, for some reason, just put the empty box back in the cupboard and forgotten about it until this morning. A very effective way of ruining her day before it had even really started when she'd had to settle for just black coffee and bad vibes. Then, her phone had gone off while she was in the shower, so she'd had to stick her hand through the shower curtain and fumble to pick it up and put it on speaker, sloshing water all over the counter and floor in the process. Honestly, if only the misery had ended there, she would have almost been fine, but of course that's never how it goes.
The car moves a little. Then it stops again. It goes on like that for an unclear amount of time. Kayn taps her foot against the inside of the car door, antsy and impatient. She huffs, gazing out the window at the concrete jungle that stretches out off of the main road they're on. In the distance, she can see skyscrapers and high-rise buildings in a monochrome landscape so familiar to her that she can almost pick up the stench of piss and hot asphalt from inside the car. At least the rain tunes out the cacophony of early-morning city noise, so she doesn't have to deal with all that before she's even had breakfast.
It is 11 am, Rhaast supplies unhelpfully, tickling the back of Kayn's neck as she makes her formless presence known. Kayn wishes that she would shut her stupid non-corporeal mouth and stay out of her head.
Not so easy when I live here, is it? Rhaast bites.
Kayn chews the inside of her cheek in an effort to not reply out loud and scare the shit out of her Uber driver. Instead, she pictures herself flipping off Rhaast and skateboarding backwards into hell.
How mature.
The moody weather spills onto her head and down the back of her top when she finally steps out of the car and runs towards the designated high-rise building where her meeting is to take place. When she gets there, she takes a moment to roll back her shoulders and take a deep breath, calm herself down. Then, she steps through the front doors and crosses a wide, high-ceiling lobby. Most of it is painted white and decorated with abstract sculptures and pictures in beige and sepia tones which makes it feel like a really hostile dreamscape to Kayn. The receptionist, just as beige as the rest of the interior, barely looks at her when she states her business, just waves a manicured hand and points Kayn towards an elevator on the left side of the awful, pompous lobby. She already wants to leave.
Speaking of. She and Zed are supposed to meet with another musician who is also participating in some upcoming award show that Kayn can’t for the life of her remember the name of. The meeting is really just to establish all the contractual details before they can formally start working together, so she would be lying if she said she was all that invested, but she knows that this meeting is important. First impressions can make or break your success in this industry. The award show has requested that she and the other artist perform a collaborative stage together because they’re both up-and-coming artists, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Kayn’s not exactly a rookie anymore, growing up with music the way that she did, but she supposes that if you haven’t had a mainstream hit before, it’s all the same to the public.
It takes forever for the elevator to get to the ground floor. While she waits, she picks at a hangnail and wonders quietly who would ever want to work in a place like this. It feels so impersonal and cold. Soulless, almost. Who even decided that they had to meet here of all places? Absentmindedly, she realizes that she doesn’t remember what’s even located in this building. A record label? Offices? Maybe her future coworker has their studio here? She accidentally picks at her skin a little too aggressively, pulling off the small strip of flesh entirely and hisses at the sting. The elevator opens with a jarring little ding!
The inside of the elevator is covered wall-to-ceiling by a mirror on one side and some sort of abstract sepia pattern on the other three walls. She presses the gilded button with the number 11 on it, still caught up in her own thoughts. Because she hasn't read the briefing, she has no idea who she’s actually working with, but she’ll probably be fine as long as she mostly has creative freedom. She vaguely recalls Zed telling her that it's another rock artist, a relatively new name in the industry in the same way that Kayn is. So, really, they're probably not that new to the industry, just newly mainstream. Ugh, whatever.
The elevator makes that awful little noise again and the doors open. She steps out and through the door to the right and comes face to face with her dear, sweet, extremely disgruntled looking manager.
“You are 25 minutes late,” Zed hisses, short strands of white of hair sticking in all directions. “Everyone else is waiting for us! I had to tell them that you got held up by an emergency. I think the manager bought it, but I don’t think Yone did. You better apologize and be on your best behavior.”
She drags Kayn down the hallway in silence, accompanied only by the rhythmic clicking of her sturdy, high heeled boots on the lacquered wooden floors. She leads Kayn to a large meeting room where four people are seated, lets go of Kayn's arm and raps her scarred knuckles against the glass door. Briefly, Kayn wonders for the nth time what kind of job Zed used to have before becoming her manager. She's asked her more than once but despite her modest size, Zed can be extremely intimidating and always refuses to tell her anything.
Zed opens the door, pulling Kayn from her momentary divergence as she steps inside and takes in the room. The inner wall that separates them from the rest of the offices is frosted glass and the rest are light and textured with large windows. Gray rainclouds hang heavy in the sky outside, obscuring any potentially nice view they might have otherwise enjoyed. The walls are bare with minimal decor, corporate to its core in its simplicity and impersonal two-tone beige interior. At the end of a large, wooden table are two men wearing suits, very clearly stakeholders from their respective companies. Kayn recognizes one of them from her own record label, she’s worked with him before. Kind of a pushover, but at least he’s nice. The other one must be from the other musician’s label.
On the opposite side of the door they just came through are two new faces. One is a large- no, a massive woman with a warm smile, dark skin and short, thick braids. She’s in a colorful patterned men’s dress shirt and what appears to be a red cardigan. Even through the multiple layers of clothing, Kayn can see her bulging biceps flex as she rearranges herself to sit with her large hands folded on the table in front of her. She looks kind but slightly intimidating as she sits there and politely takes up enough space for two.
Next to her is- oh wow. Kayn does a double take. Next to her is another woman who, in Kayn’s very credible lesbian opinion, might be the most beautiful person she’s ever seen. Her eyes are dark and piercing, framed by a simple winged eyeliner and long, black lashes. Her dissatisfied pout is wine red and glossy and her hair is loose and silvery white, stark like a ghost where it falls against her mostly dark clothing. She’s in a tight-fitting turtleneck that accentuates her slender neck. The sleeves cover her hands, drawing Kayn's eyes to her long, elegant fingers where they rest against the table. She’s tapping a shiny and immaculately manicured jet black nail against the polished wood and it makes a dangerous sound. Tap, tap, tap.
In a moment of self consciousness, Kayn remembers what she must look like in her current state. After swearing up and down that she was on her way during her brief, water soaked call with Zed, she had practically barrel rolled out of the shower and put on the first clean clothes she could find, rubbed a bit of eyeliner around her lashes and slicked back her hair, still dripping wet from the shower. Then, she had bolted out the door, empty stomach and industrial strength caffeine in her blood stream, mood like a storm cloud after a quiet night. Her hair is still wet, her mood is sour, she feels like absolute garbage and she’s kind of hungry. What a wonderful first impression she must be making.
She is torn from her stupor when she feels a dull pain in her left side, courtesy of Zed’s less than subtle and remarkably pointy elbow. Oh, right. She clears her throat.
“Sorry,” she says eloquently, the word foreign and bitter on her tongue. To her left, Zed sighs. The extremely beautiful woman raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow and opens her mouth but is immediately interrupted by the very large and kind looking lady.
“Ah, not to worry! Accidents happen to anyone, we are happy that you made it. Let's kick off this meeting, shall we?”
She’s got a melodic accent and a strong voice that bounces off the walls and sends warmth through the room. Next to her, the extremely beautiful woman seems to loosen up ever so slightly, relaxing her shoulders and putting her hands in her lap instead. Her expression remains cool, as if she isn’t quite convinced that Kayn is worth her time yet. This sort of high and mighty attitude usually irks Kayn beyond reason, makes her defiant for the sake of defiance, but Kayn can’t quite bring herself to take offense when something like faint recognition glimmers at the very back of her mind. She flops down into one of the empty plastic chairs in front of her, following Zed’s example.
These feel remarkably cheap for a place this lavish, Rhaast remarks. Kayn is inclined to agree.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Zed leads, extending a heavily tattooed hand across the table to shake everyone’s hands. “I’m Zed, Kayn’s manager.” Kayn follows suit, introducing herself as she goes.
“I’m K’sante, Yone’s manager. Pleasure is all mine!” the large woman booms with a smile. Kayn immediately decides that she likes her.
“Yone,” the extremely beautiful woman says, a small but sincere smile on her glossy lip that catches the artificial light from the ceiling spots as Kayn leans across the table. This close, Kayn can see the two large scars that run from the corner of her left eye and across her cheek. One continues past the corner of her mouth and onto her chin. They’re faint and rosy, easy to miss from afar. Kayn doesn’t let her gaze linger, but she wonders.
“Kayn,” she says, hoping desperately that she comes across as steady and nonchalant. To her surprise, Yone’s hand isn’t as soft as it looks when she wraps her slender fingers around Kayn’s. They’re calloused like her own, though much more well kept. She’s got a small tattoo right above the knuckle on her middle finger that resembles the upper half of a mask, angular and horned. The piece is impressively intricate for its size, thin black lines standing stark against her pale skin. Yone’s smile grows crooked, a subtle thing that betrays her amusement when she raises an eyebrow.
“I know,” she says. She doesn’t elaborate. Her voice is deep and husky but with a velvet undertone and carries a hint of something recognizable that Kayn can't quite place. She feels an odd sense of déjà vu, somehow familiar with the situation, but she can’t seem to place how.
“Alright,” one of the suits in the corner says. Kayn jumps slightly and immediately lets go of Yone’s hand. She feels warmth in her face when she sits back down, suddenly acutely aware of how long she must have been hovering like that for. She’d forgotten where she was for a moment. How embarrassing. The suit procures a stack of papers and flips to the third page. “According to the stipulations-”
Kayn isn’t listening. She can’t seem to let go of that nagging feeling that she’s forgetting something important. Has she seen Yone before? There’s no way she would forget a face like that. But that tattoo she has…
She lets her eyes wander again, away from the suits and back to the woman across from her. Yone’s eyes are fixed on the suit with the papers and she’s listening attentively, nodding professionally from time to time. She folds her hands in front of her and rests her chin on them as she listens. Then, just as Kayn is about to give up, Yone’s eyes suddenly catch hers from across the table. She freezes, effectively caught staring, but Yone doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, she sits back in her seat and slides a stray lock of hair from her face. Her expression is odd, something like amusement in the curve of her cupid’s bow when she gives Kayn another subtle smile.
And then it finally hits her, like a bullet to the brain right there in the beige meeting room. The suits are droning on and on about deadlines and rehearsals and royalties but Kayn is somewhere else entirely. She's six months back in a ratty club with shitty music. She's looking across the bar and making eye contact with a woman with white hair and a glossy dark lip. Her smile is subtle and she tucks her hair behind her ear and saunters over to Kayn. From there, it’s a blur between drinks and dancing and clothes on her apartment floor. She'd woken up alone, lipstick staining her thighs and neck and the majority of the events of the night before.
The rest of the meeting goes by in a blur. Kayn doesn’t retain much of what happens, but it doesn’t really matter. Zed is gonna give her a recap in the car anyway, she knows that Kayn hates meetings and has the attention span of a very persistent goldfish. All she remembers is watching the sway in Yone's hips on her way out, the way her hair dances softly when she moves, the loud clicking of her stiletto heels on the corporate floors and the slivers of fair skin visible through the holes of her black skinny jeans. The glimmer in her eyes when she looks back over her shoulder at Kayn one final time.
"I think that went well," she says and slouches in the passenger seat. Next to her, Zed clicks her tongue. She keeps her unnerving yellow gaze on the road but there's disapproval in her slight frown. Not enough to be alarming, but enough that Kayn knows to back down before Zed turns her into an expressionist couch cushion.
"You're lucky K'sante is the most gracious manager I've ever met. For a moment Yone looked like she was gonna walk out on us and if she'd done it I would not have stopped her."
Kayn has no doubt in her mind that Zed isn't bluffing. Still, Kayn has never been particularly good at picking up the signs of when it's time to stop, so she clears her throat awkwardly and starts nonchalantly picking at a piece of dry skin on her finger.
"Right, right. Won't happen again. But uh, can you give me a rundown of the details? I wasn't paying attention, honestly."
She expects Zed to sigh and just give her the rundown. Hell, she's even prepared for Zed to start lecturing her so she can pretend she's taking any of it seriously and brush it off in 15 minutes like she always does. Kayn doesn't really do remorse or apologies, she's too punk rock for that-
"I don't think I will."
She blinks, stunned. Rhaast's laughter rattles against her skull, an eternal reminder that she's still there no matter how much Kayn pretends she can't hear her.
Looks like someone is screwed now.
Before Kayn can quip back, Zed pulls over on the side of the road and turns off the car. They're on a side street somewhere a few miles from the neighborhood where Kayn's apartment is located. She swallows as she watches Zed roll down the window and light a cigarette. She takes a long drag before letting her arm rest on the car door, hand nonchalantly hanging out of the window as she completely disregards the rain that keeps on falling. The smoke from her cigarette draws at thin line through the early afternoon gloom. No one says a word. Then-
"If you fuck this one up, I'm not scraping your ass off the pavement."
Her voice is firm and calm when she speaks but the words feel like a gunshot in the silence of the car. Kayn crosses her arms in indignation. Her face burns hot with something akin to embarrassment.
"I'm not gonna fuck anything up! I just don't like meetings-"
"You don't have to like them," Zed cuts her off. "You just have to be professional for once. If this opportunity goes down the drain because of your attitude, you'll only have yourself to thank."
The embarrassment makes way for anger. Kayn resolutely keeps her eyes trained on the crumbled up KitKat wrapper in the side compartment of the car door, imagining herself crawling inside the plastic and sealing it back up. She picks at her chipped black nail polish, scratching away at it absentmindedly. She hears Zed take another drag of her cig.
"Kayn," she starts again. Her voice is gentler now, with an exasperated edge. Kayn hates this side of her, much prefers it when Zed cracks the whip and lets the irritation and lectures sit like welts on her back rather than this genuine concern. If Zed is really disappointed in her, then… then…
"Do you know why I said yes to being your manager way back then?"
"Because you saw me in a dive bar somewhere when I was 17 and felt sorry for me?" Kayn says darkly, feigning nonchalance. It sounds disingenuous, even to herself. She scratches off the final bit of polish on her index finger. Then she moves on to the next. Zed takes another drag of that horrible tar stick she's lit. She scoffs.
"Don't be dramatic. It was your raw passion and drive to succeed that convinced me. You threw yourself into every single project with all you had. It's always been what everyone finds so attractive about your art. You've never been one to do anything without committing 100% but this past year or you've seemed so… lifeless. As if you don't care anymore. So what happened?"
Kayn is quiet for a while. Zed lets her be, just smokes her cig and watches the concrete jungle in the distance. Kayn picks the polish off of her ring finger. Moves on to the next. Zed finishes her cigarette and throws it into a shallow puddle outside. She turns on the car again and gets them back on the road. Neither of them say anything for the remainder of the trip and Kayn is grateful when she finally steps out of the car and fumbles for her keys in her pocket.
"Hey."
She jumps a little when Zed's cool voice cuts through the tense quiet and right into the back of Kayn's head. She turns her head, almost nervous to look her manager in the eye.
"At least do some research before Thursday. Studio time at noon. I'll text you."
It's hard to find it if you're going in blind, but Kayn feels the tenderness between the pins and needles in Zed's words and smiles softly despite herself, nodding just once before she turns around and waves back at her on her way in.
It’s still raining by the time Kayn steps into her apartment. She does some superficial googling on Yone but quickly remembers why she hates the internet. Instead, she pulls up Yone’s latest album and puts on her headphones, wondering what kind of person is hiding in the distorted guitar riffs and deep power vocals.