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chapter fourteen
"Oye cómo va
Mi ritmo
Bueno pa' gozar
(Listen to how
My rhythm goes
It's good for enjoying) "
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NOW PLAYING: "OYE COMO VA" by SANTANA (1970)

___________

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the first time you heard of Daisy Jones?

RORY: Not really, to be honest. I was working with a huge variety of artists and making other connections in the music industry, so I heard of singers or bands coming and going all the time. I didn't hear about Daisy when she made her first album...

But I do remember when Billy asked me about her.

∴━━━ ✿ ━━━∴

BILLY APPROACHES RORY one day at Sunset Studios, nearly scaring the life out of her during her meeting with Anita Martín. Both women release exclamations of fright in their native tongues when he bursts into the room without knocking.

"Billy?" Rory asks, her face scrunching in confusion at the sight of him. She can't even form proper words— she and Anita have been speaking in Spanish for the past three hours, and it's a rough transition for her brain to spring into English on such short notice. "What are you... what...?"

"¿Quien es ese?" Anita questions. "¿Lo conoces?"

"Sí, él es mi amigo," Rory replies. Her inquisitive stare is still locked on said friend, noting how his eyes are wide and filled with outrage, while she waits for him to talk.

The Six's contract had been terminated months ago, well before Billy had returned from rehab. There is no reason for him to be here. And even less of a reason for him to barge in on her sessions with clients like he has any sort of influence in this place. The turn of the new year means that her first anniversary of signing her contract is around the corner. Right now, Rory has more of a say here than he does.

"What do you know about Daisy Jones?"

"Daisy..." Rory repeats as if on autopilot, then squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head to clear it. "How did you get in here?"

"I had a meeting with Teddy," he replies. "Daisy Jones. What do you know about her?"

"Billy, you can't just—" Rory motions to Anita, who's still watching him in confusion. "I'm with a client. I am working."

"Daisy Jones?" Mark, one of the sound engineers, asks from his place near the control panel, where he's been fiddling with the levels of the songs Anita has recorded so far. "She had a debut album with Runner Records. My buddy Andrew over at the Record Plant helped produce it." He scratches his head thoughtfully. "Think it was called First, or somethin' like that? Gave 'em one hell of a time trying to record it. She hardly ever showed up to her sessions."

Billy's face is stormy, his jaw clenched as he grinds out, "Great."

"Why?" Rory asks.

"Teddy wants another voice on the track," he replies. The words are reluctant to leave his mouth, almost like he has to reach down and claw them out while they fight his every attempt to speak them.

She can sense all of his unspoken, resentful sentiments about this, ones he might have voiced if others weren't in the room. He'd felt ready to bounce back. He'd written a good song, probably poured himself into it, too, and this kind of pushback has blindsided him. Billy doesn't like to share things with other artists. Especially truant ones like Daisy Jones, who he's never even heard of. He's used to being brilliant on his own.

So Rory grins, refusing to give him the type of response he wants. "Well, it's good that he picked someone with equal footing for the job."

Billy frowns and opens his mouth to argue that The Six and Daisy are not on equal footing, only for him to push his lips into a thin line when he realizes he can't. They both have debut albums. Just because Billy has the mind of a rockstar doesn't mean he actually is one.

And the song he'd written is just that— good. Though she hasn't been professionally songwriting for as long as some people in the industry, she's learned a thing or two about what makes a hit single. New artists and bands are popping up everywhere with one-hit wonders gracing the radio. You don't want to release something that will grow dull with time and eventually fade into obscurity. You want to put out something powerful. Something that will work its way into the ears of listeners for generations to come and stick.

In another life where The Six had been able to finish their tour on a high note and hadn't been dropped by their label, it could have worked its way into a sophomore album. But now it's going to take more than a simply "good" track to fix a betrayal like this. It's going to take something outstanding.

"Honeycomb" isn't that.

"Now please get out of here," Rory continues, turning back to Anita and putting her back to Billy. "I'm not getting paid to listen to your problems."

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RORY: Billy, I'm sorry that I never told you this and you're going to hear it this way, but I did not like the original version of "Look At Us Now" ... back before it was called that and it was just "Honeycomb." Daisy's changes added contradiction to the lyrics and made it memorable, dynamic, a powerhouse. A song about making it out of difficult times... well, that can be amazing when it's done well. But every single one of Billy's songs after SevenEightNine were like that. The same thing over and over. Copy and pasted. The songs were his reparation, his atonement for his sins. But they were consuming him.

I think it was better for him in the end when Daisy showed up and burst his bubble. She challenged him to dig into that deep, raw part of himself that he didn't want to face— the part of you that makes you write fantastic songs, makes you create art and not just something.

She did what I couldn't. It made him a better songwriter.

∴━━━ ✿ ━━━∴

Rory decides to take her lunch break during their allotted recording time so she can watch this chaos unfold. The band is congregated in one of the recording booths, having just finished their instrumentals, when they turn and see her enter.

"Hey! It's our little Ro-Ro!" Warren cheers, giving her a smile that makes her heart do a flip inside her chest.

"Hi," she says. "Okay if I spectate? For... work purposes."

That's a lie, of course, and Teddy knows it. But he nods anyway, allowing Rory to dump her purse on the floor beside the control panel that Tobias, the assistant producer, is sitting at. She gives him a wave in greeting.

If she didn't know Billy so well, she might have taken one look at him and thought the instrumental recording had gone horribly. He stands with his hands on his hips, his head bowed so a tendril of curls flops over his forehead. His boots tap the floor restlessly. He gets antsy when he's irritated, and now is no exception. But the other members are lively— Eddie and Karen are cracking jokes, making Graham laugh, and Warren is as jovial as always. He's still pissed about the addition of a new voice.

That new voice walks in a moment later.

First, Rory wonders if Daisy is wearing cream-colored pants. Then, she realizes that no, Daisy just isn't wearing pants at all. Her men's button-down shirt hangs at the tops of her thighs, barely covering her backside. It makes Warren and Eddie's attention snap to her immediately. Her long red hair cascades down her back in loose waves, short bangs framing her square-shaped face.

The smile of greeting that she gives everyone is not what Rory had expected. From Mark's testimony of her not showing up to her recording sessions, she'd anticipated someone standoffish or rude. But so far, Daisy Jones is sweet as pie.

Teddy motions to the nearest microphone. "Daisy, you are gonna go right here, and Tobias will set you up."

"Great," she says, setting her large purse on the floor beside the mic stand. "Could I have a glass of milk and a whiskey? Or just a whiskey, if you don't have milk."

Teddy heads the control panel with a nod, and Daisy calls after him, "Or just a milk if you don't have whiskey."

Billy rubs at his mouth before following Teddy out of the recording booth. His movements are tense, his muscles taut like he's already trying to restrain himself from bashing his head into the wall. It doesn't help that the rest of the band's amicable reception of Daisy floats through the open door as Karen says, "So happy to see you, Daisy."

"Yeah, thank you for having me," Daisy replies.

Graham says, "You're welcome."

As Teddy sinks into his chair, his lips quirked into a small grin, Billy stares at him with an opposing, blank expression. "Why are you smiling?"

"I'm just, uh, generally delighted," Teddy replies.

Billy stares at him for a moment longer before replying, "All right," and turning on his heel, brushing past Rory to head back into the booth.

Rory rolls her eyes at this dramatic behavior. Her voice is slightly too upbeat when she calls after him, "Good luck!"

She digs into the small paper bag that holds her lunch and removes a sandwich wrapped in foil. When she glances at Teddy, they share a look of bemusement.

"How do you know Daisy?" Rory questions as she gently unwraps her food.

"I came across her performing one day," Teddy answers. "She intrigued me, even before she recorded her debut."

Rory pauses. He'd just... stumbled across Daisy? And wanted to work with her like that? It sounds like a far cry different from what The Six had experienced— running into him by sheer luck, begging for him to listen to them play, then working their asses off for eight months before he thought they were ready for an album.

But she isn't one to judge. If Daisy is Teddy-approved, Rory is certain that she'll be good.

"Okay, let's do this," Billy sighs as he returns to the booth. He reluctantly takes his place at his mic and puts the bulky headphones over his ears.

The other band members take this as their cue to leave, closing the door behind them. The small control room seems to shrink when they enter. Suddenly, Rory is pinned between the side of the soundboard and Warren's left hip, which digs into the bottom of her ribcage. It makes it more difficult to lift her sandwich to her mouth.

"Two bucks this goes up in flames," Eddie says.

"I can't disagree with you there, brother," Warren replies, plucking the sandwich out of Rory's hands and taking a huge bite. She stares at the ginormous chunk missing in dismay when he passes it back.

"Also, you don't have two bucks," Graham reminds him.

Warren nods, his cheeks still full when he says, "That, too."

From inside the recording booth, the microphones pick up the start of a conversation between Daisy and Billy. He holds the headphones slightly away from his ears so he can hear her, inquiring, "Did you want to talk through the song first?"

Daisy looks surprised that he'd asked. "Oh, I'm fine, unless you have something you want to..."

He cuts her off, apparently only having asked for her sake, not his. "No, I'm fine."

"Okay."

Tobias returns with her beverages. He clinks them together in a little cheers motion before setting them on the stool beside her mic. "There. Prost."

"Thank you."

"And, um, yes, your volume will be right there. And Billy's on channel two."

Daisy nods. "Yep. Thanks."

"Has she recorded something before?" Graham asks.

"Debut Album," Rory answers. "Called First. Almost got her contract terminated because she hardly showed up to her sessions, but she must've started putting in the work, because it was released a few months ago."

The boys make a thoughtful humming sound. She feels like they'd barely heard her— especially Eddie and Warren, who have scarcely taken their eyes off Daisy's mile-long legs. It makes the sandwich turn paste-like in her mouth when she notices Warren's enraptured stare. If she wore the same shirt as Daisy, it would probably end somewhere closer to her knees, and she'd look like she'd need a nightcap and a candleholder, not effortlessly sexy.

Daisy motions to the overhead lights. "Could we turn these off or lower them a little? They're, just, distracting..."

"Yeah, where are her pants?" Eddie pipes up.

"Who cares?" Warren replies.

Karen scoffs. "Shut up, you two."

Rory shifts her weight onto one foot and wonders if she's hungry anymore.

Teddy presses a button to activate the speaker in the booth. "Okay, Billy, can we give us a level, please?"

He begins the first verse of the song, his smooth voice floating back to them. "I don't know who I am..."

"Okay, that's good. And Daisy?"

"Baby, baby, baby..."

Rory raises her eyebrows at the slight rasp in Daisy's voice that she hadn't expected. It'll be interesting to see how that combines with Billy's vocals.

"Okay, let's get this started. This is 'Honeycomb', take one."

Tobias crosses the room and hits the button on the tape to begin recording. A moment later, the instrumentals float through the speakers, a mellifluous acoustic guitar that makes Rory want to start swaying in place— if she had any room to move.

As the music continues for a few moments, Graham reaches out and takes Rory's sandwich, biting into it. Eddie grabs it immediately afterward. Her brows furrow when she sees them eat her food like it's their own, her mouth twisting into a frown.

"This is not a communal sandwich!" she hisses through her teeth, snatching the half-eaten thing back from Eddie.

Meanwhile, the time has finally arrived for Billy to start singing. His eyes are closed, wholly focused on the music. "I don't know who I a— What? What?"

The interruption stems from Daisy poking him in the arm, prompting him to remove his headphones and stare at her incredulously.

Even though she tries to whisper, her voice is still clearly picked up by the microphones. "Do we need the... do we need the audience?"

She's pointing at the small crowd gathered near the control panel. Billy glances at the boys' hungry stares passively. "You mean the band?"

"Is she talking about us?" Eddie asks.

"It's our song," Warren laughs.

"Right?"

Rory and Karen look at each other as if to say, Boys.

Daisy continues, "They're just kind of looking right at me."

Karen is the one to spur things into motion. "Let's just, um, give her some space, don't you think? Do you wanna go and talk to Deb?"

"Debbie's working today?" Warren asks. "Oh, shit."

Their attention thoroughly captured by something else, the boys leave the room, allowing Karen to shut the door behind them. Daisy gives her a small smile of thanks. Rory also feels better without them staring Daisy down and cataloging her every movement. As someone who knows what it's like to have men looking at her, she can't imagine being comfortable if she were trying to perform like that.

"Okay," Teddy says with a sigh. "'Honeycomb', take two."

The music begins again. Billy nods along to the slow beat, his eyes closed again, the pinnacle of focus. And this time, he makes it through the first verse without interruption.

"I don't know who I am
Baby, baby, baby
Do you know who you are?
Is it out of our hands?
Tell me, tell me, tell me
How we made it this far."

Daisy joins him for the bridge, and Rory's heart almost drops clean out of her chest.

"Did we unravel a long time ago?
Is there too much we don't wanna know?
I wish it was easy, but it isn't so..."

Their voices fit together perfectly. It's almost as if they were destined to sing together, with Billy's smooth vocals contrasting Daisy's roughness, sanding out the edges. The song has been transformed. Even from these few lines, Rory's interest in it has increased tenfold, clinging to every word that falls from their mouths. Her sandwich is forgotten in her hands.

Karen looks back at Teddy to gauge his reaction, but he's staring at the two artists with a different kind of focus, almost like he's waiting for either an explosion or everything to click into place.

And when the chorus hits, it becomes clear why: Daisy and Billy start singing two different sets of lyrics. While Billy follows the original set he'd performed for them on Christmas — "Oh, but I know we can get it all back" — Daisy launches into, "Oh, we could make a good thing bad."

She looks sideways at him in confusion when she hears their voices diverge down separate paths, but it's not until the repetition that follows that things come to a halt. Billy motions to Teddy and Tobias, asking, "Can we stop?"

The music cuts off. It's clear that there's some miscommunication here, but with the way Teddy's expression has grown apprehensive, almost maybe anticipatory, Rory realizes this was inevitable.

Billy moves one side of the headphones away from his ear and says, "Those aren't the lyrics that you're, uh, singing. Uh, d-do you need me to write 'em down? Can you... can I grab a pen?"

Daisy, who has completely shoved the headphones off until they're hanging around her neck, appears incredulous. "I mean, I know what the lyrics are."

"Well then, why aren't you singing them?"

She reaches down and produces an open notebook that Rory recognizes at once as a songbook. And then realization slams into her at full force. Why Daisy is here, why she's singing different lyrics.

Teddy hadn't just brought her along for her to sing along with Billy. She'd changed the song entirely.

And Billy has no idea.

Rory doesn't realize that her sandwich has fallen out of her hands until it hits the carpet. She looks down at the displaced bread and ingredients before scooping them up, shoving them back into the aluminum foil, and rolling them up into a ball.

"I am singing them," Daisy insists, holding the book out to Billy. She shoots Teddy a perplexed expression through the glass, only for him to avert his gaze from hers. She notices the way Billy is regarding the lyrics as if he's never seen them before. "You didn't see this? He didn't get this?"

Billy looks back up to his mentor, his face stricken. "What the fuck is this, Teddy?"

"Billy, why don't we give her version a go and, uh... just see how it sings?" Teddy suggests placidly.

"Her version's like a completely different song, Teddy."

"Can I ask you a question?" Daisy says to Billy. When he turns to her, she gently takes the songbook out of his hand. "What do you think the song's about?"

Billy blinks at her. "What do I think the song is about? What, that I wrote?"

"Yeah, what is the song about?"

"What do I think the song that I wrote is about? It's about starting a new life, Daisy. It's about redemption."

"Redemption from... from what?"

Rory grabs a bag of grapes from her paper bag and holds it between her and Karen, keeping her eyes on the shit going down in the recording booth while she crams fruit into her mouth like it's popcorn.

Billy skirts around the heart of the question by answering, "From letting people down."

"So, guilt," Daisy says. "It's about guilt."

"No, it's not about guilt."

Rory pulls a face of disagreement. Billy may say his song is about hope and moving forward from the darkness of the past, but it has to stem from regretting said past. And the reason why she hadn't been so keen on his lyrics is because he's avoiding all of the parts of himself he doesn't want to face. He's not digging into the nitty-gritty of what he did to Camila, Julia, the band, Rory, the fans.

As much as she doesn't like to think about it, "Bloodshed" became a hit because it makes people feel things. She had dug into the trenches of her darkest feelings and bled them out on paper. If she hadn't poured her heart into "The Black Veil," it probably wouldn't have soared to the top of the charts.

"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pry or anything," Daisy says. "I'm just trying to, you know, get us on the same page and understand the story better so that I can help, which is... I think that's why I'm here. I'm assuming it's about you?"

Billy scoffs, turning away from her, which is a confirmation that spurs Daisy on.

"Okay, so, you let somebody down. Right? And now you're... you're saying everything's fine, look at us now, everything's in the past..."

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?" he asks.

"I don't believe it," she answers instantly, her brutal honesty making Rory raise her eyebrows. The only person so unabashedly truthful with him is Camila. "And it doesn't sound... honest. And it sounds simple. And I don't know you very well, but you don't seem simple to me."

"Well, thank you."

She tilts her head to the side. "Also, why did you call it 'Honeycomb'? You know that that's a Ricky Nelson song, right?"

Rory wants to laugh at the sight of Billy getting torn down like this. Daisy is unrelenting with her attacks, not allowing him to suggest he knows best. She's clearly spent a lot of time with the lyrics and decided which of them were bullshit. Now she's calling him out on it.

Daisy says the first thing that comes to her mind out loud. Whereas Rory would hold those thoughts in and take a moment to reflect before she speaks, Daisy doesn't bother with that filter.

"Is she always like this?" Karen asks.

Teddy tries to mask his smile, but its appearance tells them everything they need to know. This is just the surface of Daisy Jones.

"If you don't like the song, why are you here?" Billy asks.

"Oh, I love the song. I love it. I think it's a beautiful song. It's just that you — you wrote a speech, Billy, when, at the very least, I think it can be a conversation."

Finally at the end of his rope, he rips his headphones off and tosses them onto the table in front of them, sending Teddy a rueful glare through the glass. Then he storms out.

Karen sighs before following him into the hallway. Teddy and Tobias join her, but Rory heads into the recording booth instead, catching Daisy just as she's removing her own pair of headphones.

"Hi," Rory greets, causing Daisy's head to snap up to look at her. "I'm Rory. I'm a friend of the band."

"Hey," Daisy says. "Is he always like that?"

Rory grins. "You have no idea." She glances at the open songbook and finds her curiosity getting the better of her. Her hands itch to flip through the rest of Honeycomb 2.0, finding all of the changes to Billy's work. If Daisy thinks the song should be a conversation, then she wonders what kind it will be. "I'm a songwriter for Ellenmare. Can I...?"

She motions to the book. Daisy says, "Oh! Yeah, here," and passes it to her, allowing her to see the scrawled words written in pencil, shining in the dim lights. As she reads through the song, she finds herself wanting to laugh, but not because the lyrics are bad. She wants to laugh because Billy is going to hate this song.

"And if this was your plan,
Tell me, tell me why
You've been crying in the dark."

How had Daisy seen into Billy's soul without even meeting him? How had she spotted the bullshit and uncovered the truth behind it, even to a painful degree? Because while Billy may still act like he has everything together, she will never forget how he'd sobbed when they played with Julia. That degree of raw emotion isn't something that simply goes away.

"You said you're a songwriter?" Daisy asks. "Who have you written for?"

"Oh. Um." Rory tucks a section of hair behind her ear nervously. Even after a year, thinking about her first job here fills her with a pool of anxiety that turns her stomach acid into rocks. "I co-wrote 'The Black Veil' for Sticks 'n' Stones, the single by Jukebox that came out last year, a debut album for Sandra Lake, and right now I'm working with Anita Martín."

Daisy's eyes grow a bit wide. "Well, shit."

"Also, don't tell Billy, but..." Rory rises up on her toes to reach Daisy's ear, whispering conspiratorially, "I like your version a lot better."

∴━━━ ✿ ━━━∴

RORY: [Grinning] Sorry, Billy.

_______

a/n:

my soul escaping my body when i listen to "look at us now (honeycomb)":

WHEN THE DRUMS AND ELECTRIC GUITAR KICK IN

HOW DID WE GET HERE? HOW DO WE GET OUT????? *EPIC RIFF* 🎸🎸🎸🎸

ps: to the people who have only seen the show, i added daisy's musical background here because i didn't like how teddy recruited her when she had no professional recording skills yet. learning to sacrifice some of her creativity for a debut album was an important lesson for her. i'm going to continue sprinkling in book details, so if you notice things being changed, that's probably why.

WE ARE FINALLY DONE WITH EPISODE 3! welcome to the chaos, daisy. it's going to be a wild ride. i'm excited to work with daisy and rory's dynamic because they're two extremely different people, but still, girl power! rory is a girl's girl and she is ALL FOR daisy joining the band. we love to see it.

we ALSO love to see rory telling billy off at the beginning of the chapter like lol get rekd william

— kristyn

TRANSLATIONS:

¿Quien es ese? ¿Lo conoces?: Who is this? Do you know him?

Sí, èl es mi amigo: Yes, he's my friend.

( word count: 4.3k )