Shout out to @conradporter for not only bringing me to Mexico, but also remembering that I’ve always wanted to go parasailing, and brining me for a birthday surprise! He even came up with me!
TAGGING: Sloane Holliday + Conrad Porter (Mentions)
WHEN: January 6th, 2017 - night to early morning
WHERE: Luna, Elise, and Sloane’s house
NOTES: After the Better Off Wed episode airs, Sloane becomes inspired.
Blaire Vanderbilt was someone that Sloane had met long ago. They’d crossed paths at a party where Sloane had performed and it was an instant friendship. The blonde’s cheery idiocy coupled well with Blaire’s need for someone to like her for more than her money. So, when Blaire asked Sloane to perform at her and Conrad’s wedding, Sloane was ecstatic. In fact, she even sat down with them and talked all about the little things that they loved about one another just so that she could write them a song.
What she didn’t realize was how much she felt for Conrad. Sure, she’d been friends with Blaire long enough to see how incredibly manipulative and vile she was, but once she’d met Conrad, she hoped things would change. Conrad clearly loved Blaire with every piece of himself, his answers to Sloane’s very personal questions being just as personal. And Sloane loved every second of it. After Blaire left Conrad at the altar, Sloane wasn’t sure she could handle being friends with the brunette anymore and slid Begin Again, the song she’d written for the couple’s wedding, into a folder that she hardly touched.
Conrad deserved better.
She wasn’t sure what had compelled her to order Chinese food and sit on the couch on a Friday night. It wasn’t a favorite thing for her to do. In fact, she usually spent Fridays out at bars or writing new music and sometimes both. She had just been flipping through the channels, trying to find something to catch her eye, when Conrad Porter’s face drifted into view. She pressed pause on the DVR and, well, as creepy as she felt, stared at him. It had been a while since she’d seen him in person and somehow with his face on her television, she felt like it wasn’t so bad for her to have missed him. She’d only missed the first 7 minutes or so and decided that maybe this could be worth watching.
And it was. To see what Conrad and Blaire’s relationship was like, to see what he must have felt that day, to see just how torn apart he was by her decision - it was eye opening. However, she had to admit that she felt kind of like she was a peeping tom, like she was delving into a world far too personal for television. The last shot of the episode was an intimate close-up of Conrad, clearly distraught, speaking candidly. “I never imagined we’d end like this,” was all that left his lips, the screen rolling credits. Sloane hurriedly sat up and scrambled for the remote, her tears rolling down her cheek as she rewound time and time again.
It was but ten minutes later that the girl ended up in her bedroom, door shut with the typical scarf hanging over the handle - her signature ‘I’m writing’ notion to Luna and Elise. There were fruit snacks strewn across her desk, words flowing from the pencil she held. If there was something that this girl was talented with, it was words. They slipped from her mind without a second thought, though she knew editing them would come later.
Sloane switched back and forth from her keyboard and headphones to lightly strumming her Fender. There was a certain amount of her soul that went into this, exhaustion tugging at her eyelids. She refused to stop working, her emotions wrapped up in what she was writing, tears flowing as the lyrics rounded themselves out. She hoped her singing wasn’t waking up the other girls - if they were even home. The blonde didn’t stop for anything but water and the occasional bathroom break.
The night turned to morning and Sloane couldn’t stop the music. Everything she had ever heard from Blaire and Conrad was being pushed into a song. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure why she felt so inspired by their ending - probably moreso than she had been by their beginning, but she knew that her muse had been sparked and that she needed to share this with Conrad. She knew that he needed to hear this. Or, at least, she knew that it might help if he knew that someone saw it all. That someone understood the words he possibly felt and wanted him to know that. Maybe it would help. If she was all wrong, she wouldn’t care.
If she was all wrong, then she didn’t know Conrad at all.
TAGGING: Conrad Porter + Sloane Holliday
LOCATION: Huntington Library + Botanical Gardens, January 24th, 2025
SUMMARY: Sloane has waited seven years for Conrad to get down on one knee. Instead, she’s going to do the duty.
WARNINGS: None so far.
SLOANE HOLLIDAY
Sloane was beyond nervous. Her and Conrad had been dating for over seven years and she still wasn’t positive on what his answer to her big question was going to be. After dropping his engagement ring in the toilet, Sloane was sure that everything was going to go terribly. If it wasn’t a sign that the ring was attracted to the abyss of the sewage system, then she wasn’t sure what it was. Nerves riddled her being, goosebumps shooting up her arms and her heart rate only speeding up with every moment that passed.
Nervously, she paced the public restroom of the Huntington Library - where they’d had their first date. The two of them had shared a small picnic that Sloane had prepared in the botanical gardens, walking around and enjoying nature together. It wasn’t abnormal for them to have romantic dates, it was just abnormal for them to be planned by the blonde. She would admit that he was likely better at this than she was, but she needed to do this. It had been in the works for over four months and the song finally came together a couple of weeks prior to this. Sloane figured this week would be rather difficult for Conrad. Death wasn’t exactly easy to deal with when you had lost your father less than a year before.
“My love, I want to show you the Ephemera Collection,” she spoke softly as she returned to her boyfriend’s side, her hand slipping onto his forearm. A wide smile danced on her face, her energy brighter than it had been in weeks. They hadn’t exactly seem each other much. “There are all sorts of lithographs and amazing transient documents that I think would be phenomenal to see,” she slid her hand down his arm, lacing their fingers.
“Let’s go.” she grinned, tugging him gently to lead him to where her guitar was hiding. Her song, her heart, was going to come before the actual proposal. That way, if her boyfriend publicly denied her, she’d at least not have planned for more. In fact, she had made sure that their security had roped off the area, no cameras except for a photographer with a signed nondisclosure agreement. “I love you, Conrad.”
