🎫 JOSEPH’S GIRL
content warning: sickening fluff
an: loved writing this 🥹 requests are always open! i have a lot of wip rn so be ready !! hope you guys enjoy this
The venue smells like beer, cleaning product, and the particular kind of anticipation that only exists in rooms where something is about to happen.
You’ve been to enough of these to know the feeling by now; the way the crowd shifts and thickens about twenty minutes before doors open, the way the sound guys start doing their last checks and everyone pretends not to notice, the way the energy in the room changes almost molecularly when the lights drop.
You know the drill. You love the drill.
You’re standing near the barricade with your camera around your neck, a film one. The same beat-up Canon AE-1 you’ve been shooting with for three years.
Jake is next to you eating a granola bar like he didn’t just inhale an entire plate of fries backstage.
“You’re going to be right here?” he asks, mouth still mostly full.
“Where else would I be?”
“I’m just asking.” He finishes the granola bar. Shoves the wrapper in his jacket pocket. “Joe’s going to look for you.”
“Joe always looks for me.”
Jake grins. It’s the kind of grin that means he’s about to say something annoying. “He made me check the barricade setup twice this afternoon. Twice. Said he wanted to make sure you’d have a clear sightline.”
You feel the warmth hit somewhere in your sternum and you do your best to look unbothered. “That’s very practical of him.”
“He also said, and I’m quoting, ‘she’s going to be taking photos, make sure the lighting isn’t weird on that side.’”
“Okay—”
“He said it like lighting was a structural concern. Like we were going to move the stage.”
“Jake.”
“I’m just painting you a picture.”
“Go do your soundcheck.”
He leaves laughing.
The opening act is good.
You take a few shots, nothing major. Just testing the light. You spend the rest of the set letting the music loosen something in your shoulders you didn’t realize had been knotted all week.
Work had been relentless lately. The kind of relentless that bleeds into your sleep, the kind where you wake up at 3am with your jaw clenched, already composing emails in your head.
You’d told Joe about it on the phone two nights ago. He’d listened for a long time without interrupting, which he was better at than people might expect, and then he’d said, just get to the show, baby, everything else can wait.
He was right. It usually could. You were getting better at believing that.
The lights drop between sets.
The crowd around you surges forward slightly, a collective lean, everyone tilting toward the stage.
You lift the camera.
Then the intro starts. It’s that specific piece of recorded sound that Post Animal and Djo have been opening with on this run, layered and strange and a little dissonant.
The crowd loses it, and you feel it in your chest. Everyone walks out on stage and the first note hits. You’re already grinning before Joe even gets to the mic.
He finds you in about thirty seconds.
You don’t know how he does it every time.
The lights are in his eyes, the crowd is moving, you’re in a sea of people, and he finds you in thirty seconds.
His gaze lands on you and his expression does that thing, barely perceptible, the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t paying attention.
It shifts from performer to person for just a moment. Just long enough to matter.
Then he’s back into it, and you raise the camera.
He’s good tonight.
You’ve thought this before, obviously. You’ve thought it at shows and in studios, at the kitchen table when he’s got headphones on and he doesn’t know you’re watching. But there’s something specific about live performance that makes it hit differently, something about seeing how completely he disappears into it.
The way he moves, the way he and the guys orbit each other up there, years of knowing exactly where everyone else is going to be.
Jake and Wes on either side, Dalton locked in from behind everyone, Matt and Javi doing that thing he does where he looks like he’s having the time of his life.
It’s a unit.
It’s a real, functioning, good unit, and Joe is at the center of it. You think sometimes that people who only know him from other projects don’t quite understand this part. That don’t understand that this is where he’s completely fluent.
You take a lot of photos.
Between songs he drinks from a water bottle and runs a hand through his hair. You catch Dalton glancing over at you with that soft look he gets— the one that says I’m glad he has you.
Joe leans into the mic to say something between songs; some rambling thing about the city, something that gets a laugh. Then, without warning, he turns and looks directly at you.
“This one’s for my girl,” he says, grinning like a kid.
The crowd reacts. You feel heat rush to your face.
Wes, from his side of the stage, mumbles “Joseph’s girl.”
And somehow that makes it worse, or better, your face is fully red now, you can feel it.
The people around you are looking and grinning. Someone two spots down goes oh my god is that her, you just raise the camera and hide behind it.
The song starts. You concentrate very hard on framing.
He kisses you from the stage.
It happens during the third-to-last song.
He’s moved down to the edge of the barrier, which he does sometimes, and you’re right there, camera down now, just watching.
He crouches and takes your face in both hands, he kisses you. The section of crowd immediately surrounding you erupts. You grab his shirt collar because you need to hold onto something.
It lasts about three seconds. It feels longer.
He pulls back grinning, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, he has some on your lipgloss smeared on his face now. He points at you once like you did something, and goes back to the mic.
“Animal behavior,” Jake says into his mic, to no one in particular.
The crowd screams.
You cover your face with your hands.
Backstage after is its specific brand of chaos.
There’s the cool-down period where everyone’s still buzzing and a little sweaty. Someone has already cracked beers. The sound guy is saying something to Matt, Dalton has his arm around Wes, and Jake is talking too fast to Javi about something that happened during the last chorus that apparently you could only notice from the stage.
Joe finds you immediately.
He always does this too; he could be in the middle of a conversation, a handshake, a meeting, and the moment you’re in the room, he orients toward you like something magnetic.
He wraps both arms around you from behind, rests his chin on your shoulder. He’s warm and damp, he smells like stage lights and the cedar thing he wears. You lean back into him.
“There she is,” he says, quietly. Just for you.
“There you are.”
He squeezes tighter. “God, I’m glad you’re here.”
You turn in his arms and look at him. His eyes are still bright from the set, they always are after shows. His hair is a disaster and he’s got a mark on his collar from the tangle with your hands, he looks completely happy.
“You were really good tonight,” you tell him.
“Yeah?”
“Like, legitimately good. The new stuff is clicking differently live.”
He does this thing where he doesn’t quite believe compliments from most people but he believes yours. You can see it settle in him.
“Wes added something in that bridge that I think is going to stick. We’re going to—” he stops. Runs a hand through his hair. “Sorry. I can debrief later.”
“I want the debrief, Joe.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I always mean it.”
He smiles. Slow and a little soft. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll find you.”
The after party is at a bar three blocks from the venue. It’s the kind of place with dark wood and mismatched chairs and a jukebox that actually works, which Joe had noted with genuine approval on the way in. “A real jukebox.” Like it had resolved something for him.
You’re at a long table in the back, the whole group of you, and there’s a pitcher of something on the table. Jake is already in the middle of a bit, you’re laughing too hard at something Javi just said to fully follow the plot.
“Okay but you have to understand,” Jake is saying, pointing at you specifically, “that Joe told the tour manager to make sure there was a power strip at barricade height so you could charge your camera between sets.”
“That’s not—” Joe starts.
“He sent a rider note.”
“I sent a note. It wasn’t a rider note.”
“It was in the rider.”
“It was in an email.”
You look at Joe. He is very carefully not looking at you.
“Joe,” you say, giggling.
“It’s a practical concern,” he says to the table.
You press your mouth together so you don’t do anything embarrassing like tell him you love him in front of everyone.
Wes raises his glass. “To Joseph’s girl,” he says. Very seriously.
Your cheeks go red, same as they always do, every single time.
“Every time,” Matt says, watching your face. “It gets her every time. It’s incredible.”
“It’s a thing,” you say.
“It’s a joke,” Jake agrees. “It’s a well-documented joke.”
“It’s not a joke,” Wes says. “It’s just true.”
Joe puts his arm around your waist, pulls you slightly closer, and says nothing. He’s smiling at his drink.
The night stretches.
The jukebox cycles through things that are inexplicably perfect, some Fleetwood Mac, something you don’t recognize but immediately want to, a Bowie track that gets Dalton singing under his breath.
You take photos. You always take photos.
Matt posing with his beer like a Renaissance painting. Jake mid-sentence, gesturing at something, completely unaware. Wes and Dalton with their heads tilted together, laughing. Javi watching the room with that quiet steadiness that makes him look like the most competent person in any space he occupies.
Joe, looking at you.
You catch that one by accident— you’re not even aiming at him, you’re looking through the viewfinder at someone else, then there he is, already looking, and you take the shot on reflex.
You’re going to get that one developed.
By midnight you’ve become somewhat horizontal on Joe’s shoulder.
This is not unusual. You have a capacity for energy at shows, shows pull something out of you, always have. Then you crash like a stone. Joe has accommodated this so naturally you barely notice him doing it anymore.
He just rearranges so his arm is properly around you. He gets shorter, somehow. He tucks better.
“Sleepy,” you inform him.
“I know.” His large hand moves slowly through your hair. “Five minutes.”
“You always say five minutes.”
“And it’s always five minutes.”
“It’s never five minutes.”
“It’s within the same order of magnitude.”
You close your eyes. The bar noise washes over you;Jake telling some story that involves Matt doing a sound effect, Javi saying something dry that makes Wes laugh, the jukebox switching to something that sounds like it was recorded in 1974, which is exactly what you’d want.
You’re aware of Joe’s hand in your hair. Of the steady weight of his arm.
He says something quiet to the table. You catch Javi standing up, going to the bar. You catch Jake ending his story. The table settles slightly.
“Come on,” Joe says softly, his voice gravely.
You stand up. Your legs are trustworthy. Barely.
The hotel room is quiet.
Joe makes you drink a glass of water because he always does, and you change while he takes off his stage clothes and washes his face.
By the time you’re in bed he’s found his book, he always travels with one, a beat-up paperback with the spine cracked at three different points.
The bedside lamp is on, and his glasses are sliding to the end of his nose. He’s frowning at the page like it said something he slightly disagrees with.
You lie on your side and look up at him for a moment.
He reaches over without looking up and puts his hand on your hip. Just to confirm you’re there.
“Good night?” he asks.
“Really good night.”
He turns a page. The glasses slide further. “You took good photos?”
“A lot of them. Some of them might be good.”
“You always say that and then they’re all good.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s mostly true.” He looks down at you then, over the glasses. There’s something in his face that is very simple and very complete, you’ve been trying to find the right word for it for a long time.
You think maybe the word doesn’t exist, exactly. You think maybe you just have to keep collecting evidence.
“Thank you for being there,” he says.
“I wanted to be there.”
“I know.” A beat. “Still.”
You reach up and push the glasses back up his nose. He wrinkles it. Turns back to the book.
You close your eyes.
His hand is still on your hip.
The lamp makes a warm halo at the edge of your vision.
Somewhere down the hall, very faintly, you can hear Jake’s voice, still going, telling someone something with great enthusiasm.
You fall asleep to the sound of a turning page.
