Summary: When Bad Omens' first headline tour is abruptly cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, Noah Sebastian reluctantly turns to therapy to navigate a future he never saw coming. Fallon Villa has dedicated her life to helping others, never expecting one client to challenge everything she believes about herself and the career she's worked so hard to build. Over the course of years, the two form a connection neither of them intended. One that forces them to confront impossible choices, blurred boundaries, and the painful truth that sometimes timing matters just as much as love.
Content Warning: (eventual) unethical relationship dynamics, mentions of trauma and mental health struggles (will be updated by chapter)
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Prologue Chapter 1
Fallon sat, Talia nodding along as she spoke through the Zoom call.
"I think a key part in Adam's work is going to be recognizing those cognitive distortions like you said," Fallon explained. "He catches them eventually, but only after they've completely snowballed."
"I agree." Talia jotted down a quick note before looking back up at the screen. "I'd keep reinforcing that. He's starting to challenge them on his own, which is a really good sign."
She clicked to the next page of her notes before pausing.
"I have to say..." A smile spread across her face. "The way you conceptualize cases has changed so much over the last year. You've shown a tremendous amount of growth."
Fallon looked down at her notebook, absentmindedly turning her pen between her fingers.
"...It doesn't really feel like it."
"No?" She laughed softly.
"I still leave sessions wondering if I asked the wrong question or missed something important."
Talia smiled knowingly. "That feeling never completely goes away."
Fallon looked up. "It doesn't?"
"Oh, absolutely not." Talia laughed. "I've been doing this for over twenty years and I still replay sessions in my head on the drive home."
"...Seriously?"
"Every therapist thinks they're secretly fooling everyone for a little while."
Fallon laughed. "I've been waiting for someone to realize they accidentally gave me a license."
"Oh, I've already submitted the paperwork to have it revoked."
Fallon fake groaned.
"I knew it."
Talia grinned before her expression softened.
"The difference is that a year ago, you came into supervision looking for answers." She gestured toward Fallon through the screen. "Now you come in with your own formulation. You're asking better questions. You're trusting your instincts. That's what growing looks like."
Fallon sat quietly for a moment. She hadn't thought about it that way. Maybe she had changed. Maybe it had happened so gradually she hadn't noticed.
"Okayyy..." Talia said, scrolling farther down Fallon's caseload. "Let's see..." Her eyes landed on another name.
"Ah. How's it been going with Noah?"
Fallon's face brightened almost immediately.
"Really well." She found herself smiling.
"He's been engaging in sessions so well. Really receptive to feedback. I can tell he's actually applying things between sessions. It's like... everything we've been working on is finally clicking."
She spent the next few minutes walking Talia through his recent progress, the cognitive restructuring they'd been working on, the way he'd started catching his own thought patterns before she even had to point them out.
"That's great to hear," Talia said, clearly pleased.
"He talked a lot about his music recently."
"Oh?"
"I listened to it."
Talia's eyebrows lifted.
"Since he specifically asked me to," Fallon added quickly.
Talia laughed. "I wasn't judging."
"I know." Fallon smiled sheepishly. "I just wanted to be sure I was making the right decision."
"And?"
Fallon leaned back in her chair.
"He opens up so much in his music. Not that he doesn't in session, but it's... different. More expressive. More poetic." She searched for the right words. "I think songwriting is one of his primary coping skills. It's where he processes everything before he can even put it into words."
Talia nodded.
"I also realized something."
"What?"
"He makes this kind of music for the same reason I listen to this kind of music."
A knowing smile spread across Talia's face.
"I wondered if that might happen."
Fallon's stomach dropped.
"...What?"
"Not the listening." Talia leaned forward slightly. "The connection."
She gestured toward Fallon's tattoos and black band hoodie.
"One of the reasons I gave you his referral is because I knew you spoke his language."
Fallon blinked.
"Music isn't just background noise to you. Most therapists would've politely nodded when he started talking about Motionless in White, anime, horror games, or screaming vocals." A grin tugged at the corner of Talia's mouth. "You knew exactly what he meant."
Fallon thought about that for a long moment. She had. Not because she'd studied it. Because she'd lived it.
"And..." Talia lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Off the record..."
Fallon already knew she wasn't going to like where this was headed.
"...I figured you might think it was kind of cool to work with someone in a famous emo band."
Fallon laughed despite herself.
"You're terrible."
"I know."
The conversation moved on, but Talia's words lingered long after the call ended.
Listening to Bad Omens had given Fallon another lens through which to understand Noah. Therapy had revealed the way he thought; his music revealed the way he felt. Some things simply couldn't be articulated in conversation alone.
She heard pieces of his history woven into songs like Glass Houses, Dethrone, and Enough, Enough Now- the grief, anger, and loneliness that still lingered beneath the surface. Others, like Limits and Burning Out, reflected the same intelligence, determination, and quiet resilience she had come to recognize in session. She'd spent hours working her way through their discography, sometimes sitting in thoughtful silence, other times stopping in genuine disbelief at a guttural scream or composition. Had she discovered Bad Omens under different circumstances, she knew she would've become a fan long before she ever knew the man behind the music.
________________________
Session 17
"So, management's trying to keep us visible," Noah explained. "We've been filming acoustic stuff, virtual sets... just trying to put something out there while we can't tour."
Fallon nodded. "How's that been?"
He let out a quiet laugh, though it lacked any real humor.
"I hated every second of it."
"What part?"
"The filming."
He moved a strand of hair behind his ear, eyes dropping away from the camera.
"I don't know... I just felt like I looked like shit the whole time."
Fallon tilted her head slightly but didn't interrupt.
"It's stupid," he continued quickly. "I know it is."
"What makes it feel stupid?"
"Because it's music." He shrugged. "People are supposed to care about the songs, not whether my hair looked weird or if I looked tired."
He paused before letting out another small laugh.
"But... they do."
"The comments?"
"The comments. The screenshots. Promo photos. Music videos." He sighed. "You're kind of the face of the band when you're the frontman. Whether I like it or not, people look at me first."
Silence settled between them.
"I know it's part of the job," he admitted. "I just hate how much headspace it takes up, how much time I spent that day thinking about how I looked like shit."
“Well first of all, I’m sure you -” For the briefest moment, Fallon forgot herself.
You looked fine.
The thought came so naturally it startled her.
More than fine.
She swallowed the words and gathered herself quickly.
"I’m sure you...experience a lot of pressure from your audience, and I want to acknowledge that, but also challenge you. What do you think a frontman looks like?" she asked gently.
Noah frowned, considering the question."I... don't know."
"You sounded pretty certain a minute ago." Fallon challenged.
A corner of his mouth lifted. "...Yeah."
________________________
After the call Noah sat for a moment, thinking. He noticed the warmth in his chest. Noticed how it was a feeling that he frequently felt following his sessions.
He placed his headphones on his desk and left his room, walking down the stairs to his roommates. Noah dropped onto the cushion beside Jessie without a word and directed his attention to the TV screen.
Jessie looked over.
"...What's going on with you?"
Noah frowned. "What?"
"You're in a suspiciously good mood."
"I'm sitting here."
"Exactly. Voluntarily."
Noah laughed, shaking his head.
“I’m serious, you’ve acted more human recently. You’re less scary to be around.”
Noah punched him gently on the arm, mumbling a quiet “shut up.”
Jolly chimed in. “Always holed up in his room talking to someone.”
Michael gasped dramatically from across the room. "Wait..." He pointed dramatically at Noah. "Is it a lady?"
The room erupted.
Within seconds Michael had decided Noah was secretly dating someone, Jessie wanted a name, and Jolly was already trying to figure out how long he'd been keeping it from them. Even Orie wandered out from the kitchen wearing the kind of smirk that suggested he found Noah's discomfort endlessly entertaining.
“You guys know I stream a lot,” Noah attempted to vindicate his hours spent chatting in his room.
“In the middle of the day on a Tuesday?” Jolly probed.
Noah parted his lips to answer but fell silent at the sudden stares in his direction.
The room erupted again.
"Oh, it's serious."
"Shut up."
Michael pointed accusingly across the room.
"I want everyone here to remember this moment. Noah Sebastian is voluntarily talking to a woman."
"Consistently," Jessie added.
Noah rolled his eyes, unable to suppress a smile. "I'm going upstairs."
Their protests followed him all the way to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, the muffled laughter fading into the background.
A girlfriend.
The thought almost made him laugh. They weren't entirely wrong. There was someone he'd begun looking forward to talking to every week. The realization should have bothered him more than it did. Before the pandemic, his calendar had been full. Flights. Tour buses. Recording sessions. Crowds of strangers every night. There had always been somewhere to be, someone to meet. Now his world had shrunk to the walls of the house. Days blurred together until Tuesday arrived. Tuesday meant therapy. Tuesday meant forty-five minutes where someone asked how he was doing and actually waited for the answer.
Tuesday meant Fallon.
He pushed himself away from the door with a quiet sigh.
He looked forward to therapy. That was all it was.
Nothing more.
It was just unfortunate that the two things were tied together.
________________________
Fallon finished the last of her Tuesday sessions and let out a long sigh, rubbing at her tired eyes before shutting her laptop. Every day had begun to blend into the next. Wake up. Sit in front of a screen. Talk to clients. Eat dinner alone. Repeat. Like most of the world, she missed people. Coffee shops. Concerts. Weekend trips. Anything that wasn't confined to the same four walls.
She carried her plate to the sink before settling onto the couch, pulling a blanket over her legs and opening TikTok.
Dance trend. Swipe. Another Tiger King joke. Swipe. A recipe she'd never make. Swipe.
Then a title caught her attention.
Top 5 Up-and-Coming Metal Bands You Need to Listen To
The title caught her attention.
The creator counted down through a handful of bands she'd already heard of. Code Orange. Trivium. Spiritbox.
Finally,
"Number one: Bad Omens."
Footage from one of their music videos filled the screen. Fallon sat forward. It was strange seeing Noah like this.
Hours ago, he'd been sitting in an oversized hoodie, quietly talking through insecurities over a grainy webcam.
Here, he commanded the screen.
His shoulders were squared, every movement deliberate, his voice carrying a confidence that almost felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. The harsh vocals she'd listened to the other night somehow seemed even more powerful paired with the visuals. He looked powerful.
She couldn't reconcile the two versions of him. One agonized over whether his hair looked bad during an acoustic performance. The other stood under blinding stage lights in front of thousands of people without seeming nervous for a second. Her therapist brain caught itself. Or maybe he did. She knew enough by now not to mistake confidence for comfort.
The video ended.
Without thinking, she continued to scroll., and what do you know?
The next clip wasn't another performance.
Noah being Noah for 45 seconds
It was a rapid-fire compilation. Clips jumped between formats; Noah answering questions with dry, deadpan humor in interviews, then cutting to a Twitch stream where he screamed at the top of his lungs as he lost the game. Another clip showed him mid–Instagram story, someone from the band filming him backstage while he tilted his head back, having a 5 hour energy poured into his mouth before gagging. Him meowing with cat ear headphones on.
Fallon felt herself smiling.
"...Okay," she laughed quietly. "I didn't expect you to be this funny."
Or maybe she should have. He'd made her laugh nearly every Tuesday for months.
The algorithm worked quickly. Another clip appeared.
This time, he ran around and rolled on the floor, playing with a small tan dog he called Max.
The comments scrolled underneath.
"He's actually so attractive it's unfair."
"CUTIE PIE ANGEL BABY"
"The things I would let him do to me."
"I swear this dude is so ."
Fallon smiled to herself.
They're right.
Another swipe.
A live performance.
Another.
Fan-shot footage from the barricade.
The comments flew by almost too quickly to read.
"How are they not huge yet?"
"This band deserves so much more recognition."
"Noah's vocals are unreal."
"I've never connected to lyrics like this before."
That one made her pause.
She clicked into the comments.
Hundreds of people described how the music had carried them through breakups, depression, anxiety, grief. She found herself smiling.
Good.
He'd never spoken about wanting fame. Recognition, yes. Success, absolutely.
Underneath all of that, what he really wanted was for people to hear what he had to say. And they did. It was amazing, but it gave a lot more weight to his perspective, the things he had shared in session.
A constant stream of strangers feeling entitled to dissect everything about you.
No wonder filming an acoustic set had consumed his thoughts. No wonder he felt pressure every time a camera pointed his way. She locked her phone for a moment, letting it rest against her knee.
It was odd. She'd spent months getting to know Noah Sebastian. Yet tonight felt like she was meeting him for the first time. Not because she was learning something new, but because she was finally seeing all the different versions of him.
The frontman. The songwriter. The sarcastic friend who constantly messed with his bandmates. The quiet client who still questioned whether he was enough.
The phone buzzed softly in her hand.
Without thinking, she unlocked it again.
One more video.
Then another.
By the time she finally glanced at the clock, nearly forty minutes had disappeared.
"...shit," she muttered, locking her phone for good this time. "I guess the algorithm won."
She set it face down on the coffee table before reaching for her PlayStation controller.
As the console powered on, one thought lingered in the back of her mind. The person the internet thought they knew and the person who showed up every Tuesday weren't different people at all. They were simply different pieces of the same one. Much like the fans, she longed to know him more.
________________________
Session 19
Fallon and Noah had just barely begun the session when something brushed across the webcam, blocking Fallon out entirely.
"...Excuse me."
A fuzzy striped tail swished directly in front of the camera before disappearing.
Noah laughed. “He hasn’t made an appearance in awhile.”
“He waits until I'm talking to someone before demanding immediate attention."
Right on cue, a quiet meow echoed through the room. Noah chuckled.
“For the record, he is HIPAA certified,” Fallon said with a laugh.
Noah grinned. "Oh, good. I was worried about confidentiality."
Fallon shook her head, amused. "He takes his job very seriously."
Her cat gave one final, indignant meow before hopping off the desk.
Fallon watched him disappear before turning her attention back to the screen, the smile lingering on her face.
"Now that my coworker has finished supervising," she teased, "where were we?"
Noah chuckled, settling back into his chair.
They spent the next several minutes returning to the conversation they'd been having before the interruption, revisiting the frustration he'd been carrying over another canceled project and the familiar disappointment that seemed to follow every setback. Fallon listened carefully, occasionally reflecting his thoughts back to him, until the conversation slowed once more.
"When things don’t go the way you hoped," she said gently, "what do you usually tell yourself about it?"
"Life sucks…and then you die."
Fallon froze for half a second, clearly trying to stay composed.
Then she broke.
A startled laugh burst out of her, quickly turning into full-on cackling as she covered her mouth.
"I'm…I'm sorry-" she managed between breaths, shaking her head. "I wasn't expecting that."
Noah grinned, clearly pleased with himself. She tried to regain control, but another laugh slipped out.
"That was... incredibly bleak."
"And accurate."
She exhaled, still smiling as she finally settled.
"I'll pretend that wasn't your official coping strategy."
"And I'll pretend you didn't just laugh that hard at it."
“You really do make me laugh,” she admitted. She meant it. Not as a way to boost her clients confidence or feed his ego, but genuinely.
The admission lingered between them. Fallon wasn't in the habit of saying things like that to clients. Not because it wasn't true, but because most sessions never called for it. Yet with Noah, the words hadn't felt therapeutic or carefully chosen. They had simply... happened.
Fallon began to wrap up the session. She opened her planner to look at the date before she confirmed their next session.
“Next week is…Oh! August 11th. My birthday,” she said casually, huffing a laugh.
“You’re not taking the day off? No plans?” Noah asked casually.
“No not really, not that there’s much to do right now,” Fallon said, gesturing to the world around her.
He agreed, then left her with a “see you next week” and she exited the call.
________________________
Session 20
“So before we end-” Noah said, seeming a little hesitant. “Everything in these sessions is always...totally confidential, right?”
“Yeah?” Fallon’s heart began to race a little.
“I was sent something, to give some feedback.” A slight smirk appeared on his face.
Fallon’s nerves relaxed and she smiled. “Oh?”
“It’s a demo…from a friend. Landon? From The Plot in You.”
Her eyes widened. One of her favorite bands of all time.
“I know it’s your birthday. And I know I can’t get you anything, but hypothetically….what if I played it?”
Fallon stuttered. Words did not exist to explain how bad she wanted to hear it, and she wracked her brain for any way to justify it clinically.
“Well I mean, I guess-”
“I am the client. Can’t I share whatever I want?” He said with a teasing smirk.
“I guess you’re right.” She said, shaking her head and shrugging.
He took off his headphones and pulled out his phone, then began navigating through it, adjusting the volume before holding it up to the mic. Fallon’s lips parted in disbelief as she listened to the song, nodding her head as it came through the speakers. She got to hear the inner workings, the first ever version of it. She was listening to it before any other fan would even know it existed. The song ended and Noah fit his headphones back over his ears.
“Feedback? Any suggestions?” Noah asked, raising a brow and laughing at the stunned look on Fallon’s face.
“I have no words. I can’t believe I just heard that,” she sat for a moment shaking her head, “I mean I wish the breakdown was a little longer?”
“I agree,” Noah said. He clicked through his phone and typed for a moment before hitting send. “Noted.”
Fallon was still speechless. She’d forever have a tiny grain of involvement in the song's making. In its history. Noah had given that to her.
“Wow.”
“I knew you’d think it was cool,” Noah said, a softness to his voice, “Happy Birthday.”
“Thank you. Really Noah, that meant a lot.” Fallon said, sincerely.
Fallon left the call and leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. Somewhere across Los Angeles, Noah was probably already moving on with his evening.
Recording.
Ordering dinner.
Talking to the guys.
Completely unaware that a 2 minute song demo had somehow become the nicest birthday gift she'd received in years.
She sat at her laptop writing her progress note for Noah’s session, a soft smile still on her lips. She completed the content for the work they had done, and her mind drifted to the last few minutes of the call. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she thought about how to document it, how to make the exchange seem therapeutic. Nothing came to mind, so she left it out. That moment was just for her. For them.
Author's Note: SURPRISE! I was gonna keep the posting schedule for this fic as Wednesday nights but had client cancellations and got home early and felt like disappearing into a fake lil world. I would LOVE to hear what you guys think of the plot and these characters and any PREDICTIONS HEHEHEE, lmk!!!- Lila
The scene in Shrek 2 when the Fairy Godmother sings I need a Hero when the giant gingerbread man attacks the castle is still the greatest scene in cinema of all times
