Sleepless in Paris – Part Two
Conor Curley x female reader
Still sleepless. Part three coming soon!
The day seemed to be doomed with gloom, the clouds covering the sky only darker and the rain heavier, the coffee in his mouth bitter and the cigarettes he smoked burning way too quickly. It hadn't been the worst day – the opening riff for "Favourite" was finally solid and ideas were cooking up pretty fast, but the overall vibe of the day was bordering on lethargic. After a week in this place, it seemed to be for the first time that everybody's mind was just someplace else.
Sliding his eyes over the pages in front of him, he wasn't focusing much on what he was reading, Grian sitting on the sofa opposite of him, gazing at a paper of lyrics.
His paper of lyrics.
"What if we blend it?" he proposed, causing Conor to turn his eyes away from the book and then towards him.
"Blend it?"
"Yea," he nodded, "The chorus."
"In my dreams - I just wanna hear you call,
I can't help it - waiting for a while,
in my dreams - you know I'm not cynical,
seen it coming - I give into a smile,
in my dreams - but I just wanna feel it,
I can't help it - waiting for a while,
in my dreams - wish that I could feel it,
turns to nothing."
He read out the words monotonously, almost matter of factly, then continued, "You sing the main and I come in as a sort of a background."
"I sing?"
"Yea, it's your song."
"Maybe you've forgotten, but you're the singer in this band," Conor chuckled.
Him singing lead vocals? Not gonna happen.
"So?" Grian shrugged, his eyes once again aimed at the paper with the lyrics, "The guide vocals you did for this were spot on. I'm not gonna sing your love confession for you."
"My what?"
"Is it not?" he lifted his eyes and stared at Conor, "Is it not a.. love song? The break-up and all.."
He stayed silent, staring at his friend and bandmate. What should he say to this? Of course it was a love song, but it wasn't what Grian thought.
"It's not about Hannah," he muttered after a moment, his book lifted to cover his face.
"I know," Grian only answered, not even looking at him.
It took a moment until the singer's words registered, Conor then closing his book and sitting up on the sofa, staring at his friend in confusion. What did he mean by he knows? Had he been so obvious this entire time? All these months, had he been so easy to read to everyone around him?
He watched as Grian finally set the sheet of paper on the small coffee table between them, then got up and announced that he was going to have a smoke. Nothing else. Not a single question or any other comment about the song, the lyrics, the subject matter. Just a casual I know that made Conor feel as if he had suddenly been exposed to the entire world. He knew that Grian had a knack for reading people, especially people he knew well, but he also had a knack for knowing when to push people and when not.
And right now he wasn't pushing, that subtle I know positioned as an open invite – if he wanted to talk, he was there, and if not, that was fine too. And Conor had thought about it, already for months he had wondered if talking to someone would bring some clarity, but he didn't even know what it was that he should say about any of this or the way he really felt.
Most profoundly though, he felt like shit.
"How did you know?" he questioned, lighting a cigarette for himself, his eyes aimed at the darkened skies.
"I have eyes for one," the singer chuckled, "Doesn't take a scientist."
"Great," Conor only muttered, shaking his head and exhaling the smoke of his cigarette.
From one hand, he felt relieved. He felt relieved that there was someone, who understood the torment he had been going through, the torment he ironically enough, had subjected himself to, but from the other hand.. It made him feel even worse, made him understand that if Grian could read him, probably everybody else could as well, and that meant that they had probably spent months feeling sorry for Hannah while all he did was behave like the biggest coward in the world.
At first, things had been fine.
He woke up the morning after the gig and the night that followed, all of it seeming like a weird fever dream. As if he had been swooped into some strange parallel universe that decided to spit him out with the arrival of the first morning light. It was all so stupid, he decided, immature and stupid, just the last rotten fruit of nostalgia, and he needed to get over it. And for a while he managed to ignore it, the little nagging voice in the back of his head that was telling him that there was no way back from this.
She followed him back on Instagram and he knew that it was out of politeness, just her replying to his friendly gesture, and he left it at that. The two months that followed were fine, he managed to force her and that voice so far into the back of his consciousness that he almost thought he had succeeded. But it all came crashing down as soon as he saw her at Josephine's birthday, having no prior knowledge of her even attending. She was supposed to be in Paris and suddenly, she manifested right in front of him in London, their old stumping ground that held so many memories.
He was alone, Hannah visiting her parents in the countryside, and he tried to keep a healthy distance at first, but with every consumed bottle of wine he got closer to her, her smile and laughter so inviting along with her perfume. Being with her was still so easy, the conversation flowing so effortlessly, the shared memories they discussed making him feel warm and fuzzy while the glimpses of the life she lived now, the life she had without him, made him jealous and disappointed, in himself above all, as if he was missing out on something so crucial and pivotal for his survival in this existence.
They ended up spending that whole evening together, just talking and drinking, right until the sunrise that sobered both of them up enough to understand that perhaps what they were doing wasn't exactly appropriate. Both of them fell more and more silent, the previously loose and fun chatter fading away and the air between them thickening with words that now remained unsaid.
Nothing had happened, and yet, somehow everything had suddenly changed.
And after that, he couldn't shake these feelings anymore, couldn't shake that nagging voice in the back of his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reply to Hannah's affection the same way he had before, the guilt consuming him more and more with every touch and every "I love you" that rolled off of his lips, hoping that saying it out loud would make it true while he knew that it would not.
"You know, if you want her so bad, then the least you could do is to respect me enough to at least fucking end it with me."
He didn't know what to respond to those words, didn't know how to react. What was there to say even? Because she was right.
For months he had strung Hannah along due to his own cowardice, due to his own guilt and illusion that eventually things would go back to the way they were and he would be able to look past her. Due to his own fear of revealing his feelings to her, because what if she would reject him and he would end up with nothing at all. He knew how incredibly selfish and immature this whole thing was, but his mind and his heart had been on very separate paths already for a while.
Looking back, he didn't even know why they had broken up in the first place. It wasn't a fight, wasn't some big unresolvable issue. It was fear and immaturity, both of them finding it easier just to give up instead of pushing forward. Fontaines was touring after the pandemic, he barely made it home for over a day every few months and she deserved better than that. The dreams each of them held for their lives didn't add up and they found it easier to hide behind the mentality of the timing just being off.
It was all bullshit.
A phone call that lasted 4 hours, both of them saying things their heart and soul wasn't actually agreeing on. And then it was over and done with, her tears on the other side of the phone ripping him into shreds.
It was the only time in his life he had ever cried over a girl, him spending the next six months that followed trying to keep himself from picking up the phone again and begging her to start over. And then spending the next six months kicking himself in the ass for not doing so.
He couldn't help but to feel as if he didn't deserve her anymore, not after letting her slip away like that.
Staring at the ceiling later in his room, Beach House echoing in his headphones, his heart was racing as he couldn't stop thinking about Grian's words from the conversation they shared earlier.
"If you ask me, having nothing to lose is an incredible position to be in."
He sought out his phone, opened his contacts and stared at her name. Would she even pick up? It was 12 AM after all. And what would he even say?
He didn't know, but he did know that things could not go on the way they were unless he wanted to drive himself completely mad.
Fuck it.
He quickly pressed on the tiny phone icon, right before he could change his mind, his whole body engulfed with anxiety that couldn't measure even with the biggest crowds he had stood in front of.
As ridiculous as this might sound, nothing suddenly seemed more like a matter of life and death.












