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 Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:31 pm
worthy
"Then yer ******** 'cause I'm not done with her," Chel responded. She gave a thumbs uo at the juice and sarcastically said, "Flowers? Fer me? Jack y'shouldn't have."
She gestured he come sit beside her, but had yet to make any mention of the secrecy. Chel may or may not have been debating chickening out.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:37 pm
PT
"You chop off my arm and take my fun away," she growled, "Yer a monster."
She felt very much like some kind of deformed, humped monster with the way the ice pack made her wiggle lopsidedly. It didn't sit right and stung when she moved it too much but admittedly it helped. Much better than the screaming pain it had been.
"I hate you," she informed him childishly, sticking out her tongue at him.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:44 pm
PT
Pleasantly he told her, "You knew that I was, going into this. You'll thank me when I can knock you against the wall and we won't have to stop because you have to b***h about your shoulder." He gave her good shoulder a pat followed by a kiss. "Now let's put a movie on and," he mimicked her tone, "<********' cuddle."
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:49 pm
worthy
Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Jack dropped the juice off on the counter and settled down as indicated. "How'd your weeklong slumber party go?" he asked. "You want to show me what you two have been up to?"
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:53 pm
worthy
With Jack in proximity the stagefright got worse.
"Nah I was just messin' around," she breathed, trying to hand the guitar off to him. "Nothin' to show." She was trying a little too hard to shrug it off.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:56 pm
PT
Chel sighed the most pathetic sigh. She weakly admitted, "I do like the wall."
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 3:55 pm
worthy
"What, were you making out with her for a week?" he teased. "Fingering her?" Maybe that was a bit much; Chel was obviously nervous, and she rarely ever was about anything.
Jack gently nudged the guitar back. "Come on. If you've got a progress report, I want to see it in action, Chel. Judgment free zone."
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 4:01 pm
Worthy
"I..." she sighed, turning back around. "Just one."
She looked ar him for a moment then said, "Turn around."
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 5:02 pm
worthy
"Excellent." He perked as she gave in and toed off his shoes, scooting onto the bed and sitting behind Chel. Back to back with her, he gazed at the wall and waited.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 5:50 pm
worthy
Chel initially faced his back, but found that difficult too and eventually settled on resting against him. She tried to encourage herself (failed), tried to pretend Jack was the wall (failed) and finally settled on Tenebrae's laughter as her motivator.
She played the introduction chords through twice before finally opening her mouth to sing. What came out was a quiet voice that grew with time, but diminished by the end.
Every once in a while the guitar would stutter and she'd mutter a frustrated, "darlin' became Jack Hawthorn, the only became my only once or twice). She skipped the entire "guitar solo," claiming, "This parts hard, so just ... yeah ..."
The entire song sounded very rough, very raw and didn't fit her low, raspy voice. But Chel sang it earnestly and although it was bumpy she found purchase in the body behind her.
For Chel who couldn't say love and wouldn't say babe a song was much easier to translate. She could pretend it was the song lyrics and not her own thoughts, allow herself the distance from the meaning while still transferring them to Jack. Maybe that was why she loved music so much. It was a medium with which to access communicating her feelings.
She strummed through the last chord and let the notes ring idly in the air. Completely aware of the world she was returning back to, the world of rejection and fear, she was frozen like a statue. She wasn't sure how Jack would react to such a personal song. It wasn't his playful Wild Thing and it was a hell of a lot more than Nikki Minaj. Possibly it was more than Paramore too, because it was Chel talking.
Despite Jack's previous grievances with her overuse of the word, Sorry is still hanging on her lips, waiting to be said. She's waiting for the mocking, the fist, the joke.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 6:44 pm
worthy
When he played, Chel closed her eyes and immersed herself in the experience. He longed to do the same, but that lower level of thought was superseded by something more high-functioning and compromising: memory. Jack knew if he closed his eyes he'd eventually find himself somewhere in the past, with this occasional indulgence or that, with hands that plucked strings and pressed levels and tickled keys. Part of him was grateful for her every mistake--Chel already captivated him in some paradoxical way, she didn't need to add one of his few weaknesses to the siren mix. Each muttered curse and wrong word and mistaken placement on the frets reminded him that she wasn't Lina, she wasn't the brunette with the blurry face and the smokey eyes in that Chicago bar, and she wasn't his classmate in Chem 325 with the mole by her lips.
Part of him was still strangely afraid, though. Music affected him in a way nothing else really could; if souls existed and it was possible to be born without one, then music was what let him feel like he could experience what that felt like. It was the most honest language anyone could speak, and here she was, changing the words, trudging through the melody, and making an earnest effort for his pleasure.
Something uncomfortably pleasant settled over his insides, and he knew that was the small, dauntless part of him that ate up romantic gestures and vomited back something equally as saccharine. Some god help him if that s**t got out of control.
When the last notes began to fade out of the air, Jack blinked out of his reverie and began clapping, just as she had after Wild Thing. "Well, damn," he said, turning his head and tilting it back just enough to partially lean on her good shoulder. "You learned to do that in just a week?" His voice is a little softer than usual.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 6:52 pm
worthy
"Yeah," Chel said, throat dry and eyes staring blankly ahead like a deer in headlights. Jack's response wasn't a response at all, it was a question and she couldn't work with that. She needs a fist or a kiss or something and he's giving her fear and tightropes.
"Sorry," slips out anyways and she reaches for it but it's too late. "Wasn't very good I know. Nothin' like you."
Now Tenebrae's noticed and he chimes in, < You poured yourself out for nothing, as usual little one. > She unconsciously puts a hand to her ear and presses like it would stop him. < But really, well done. >
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 7:06 pm
worthy
"Sorry for--" He cut off the echo with a small sound, half long-suffering and half-affectionate.
Lifting his head, Jack turned himself around and spread his legs on either side of Chel, then looped his arms. "Stop saying that," he chided her, pressing a kiss to the shaved part of her head. "You're right, it's nothing like me." Another kiss to her temple as he thought, And nothing like them. "It shouldn't. Those're your hands and your heart and your voice you're using, and I loved hearing them." Finally to her ear, ending with a hooked set of teeth in the outer rim giving it a slight tug, a playful insistence that Chel turn her head and let him thank her properly.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 7:36 pm
worthy
It's somehow not what she wanted and everything she wanted at the same time. Always both and neither. Each press of his lips is coaxing her off the tightrope, to come down and just exist without pretenses.
It's the tug that gets her because she knows it well. She set Barbara down on the floor gently beside the bed before turning in Jack's lap and straddling his waist. "Don't get used to it," she murmured jokingly, not without small parts curiosity. What did he think of the song? Of her? Why couldn't they talk about these things out loud? Why did she like it that way?
"Now do it right, Romeo."
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 8:10 pm
worthy
His kiss was a lot more tender than usual despite the rough beginning. (Cupped hands remembering old scratches in the skin of her cheek and jaw before sliding into her hair, lips crushed to and then melted against hers in an effort to translate an I love you that was more than just three simple words he could utter whenever.) If he knew how to explain himself, he could have tried. But Jack was content with the warmth between them, unspoken words sparked by their friction and burning like kindling. More than that, he was content with not saying everything at once. With using it as an excuse for not being able to express himself correctly.
The look in his eyes when he rested his head against Chel's was similar to the one he wore in the bathtub: slightly dazed and thoroughly pleased, like a cat just settling in the sun. "Things are going to get dangerously mushy if you don't stop me," he threatened her in a low voice, which the lopsided smile completely ruined. "'Girl with a guitar' is a very sexy look on you, by the way."
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