Jay & Cammie - late

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Cammie goes exploring late night in the barn and finds a restless musician, playing songs of old.

The quiet picking of practiced fingers pulled at the strings of a borrowed acoustic, the lone sound muffed by the straw in the loft. A piece of hay hung loosely out of the musician's mouth, one end chewed at a slight frown turned down with the incline of his chin. The tune was repeated over and over, soothing to the animals below but doing nothing for the young man in the black hooded sweatshirt who, in a vain attempt, blew away at his bangs every few minutes. The humming was scratchy at best and every attempt furthered his disappointment, one he was more than happy to shelter away from the mansion and pull a brisk facade smile over top of it.

Cammie was still exploring this place. It was starting to sink in, that she had a place she could call home. And that maybe the shit she had gone through on the streets was behind her. She heard music when she slid into the barn through the crack in the door. Animals of any size she didn’t mind. She had grown up in a country town. Half of her friends had farms. But the music had them calm.

She looked up at the loft, “So he does play. Is this a private gig, something I have to pay for or free?”

The music stopped.

"It's free," he said quietly after a long pause. "As long as the audience don't tell no one. Ladder's in the left stall."

“I don’t make a habit of telling people a lot of things,” she said, digging the ladder out and putting it in the right place and then climbing up. “So I get it if this is a private show. You’re half-way decent.”

He sighed and watched her climb up. In the darkness of the loft, shrouded by the hood of his sweater, Jay felt stripped down so quickly that he clutched the neck of the guitar. Spitting out the old piece of hay, he fetched another one from the bale he sat on and replaced it in his mouth.

"Ah don't sing," he said as an afterthought, a defensive warning.

“I’m not asking for you to sing,” Cammie returned sitting down a distance away from him. Well out of what would be her threat range and what should feel okay for him too – she hoped. “I just heard a guy playing the guitar. Girls are suckers for this sort of thing.”

He smiled faintly, dropping musical amusement to the strings. "Are they suckers for dark angels too?" he asked.

“As long as you don’t go all Twilight on me,” Cammie said. She tried to read those books and the writing had almost made her vomit. Nothing made her vomit. “But yeah. I’m all for things that aren’t the norm. Angels aren’t supposed to be dark. Girls aren’t supposed to be poison. But music is still music.”

"Some angels are. Guardian angels maybe?" He shrugged and changed the tune to something more to their topic, Stairway to heaven. "My mamma was like mah guardian, but man, could she tear a strip off mah back when she was in a bad mood. Ah'd say that was poisonous."

“She’s your mom though, that’s what Mom’s do. Or try to do,” Cammie said, sitting back and listening to the music, “What mine always tried to do. Not that I stuck around to listen to it.”

"No one listens to their mom cause most of the time, you think they don't know what their talkin' about." Most of the time, his mother had more life lessons than he did back then. Now, he still convinced she had it harder than he ever did. Still does. "A lot like people 'round here. You got a shitload of pseudo-parents you don't want and a whole flock of siblings that you either love or hate."

“Sounds about right,” Cammie said enjoying the tone of the guitar, “I’ve found myself with siblings I like, few I could chuck of a cliff and someone trying to shove himself into a dad-knows-best role,” and who had gotten punched in the face for it. “I have a hard time listening to would be moms and dads. I’m the problem child.”

"The thing with them siblings is, they gonna be there whether you want 'em to or not. It's when they start doin' the real stupid stuff, like drivin' cars off a cliff cause they know yer gonna save em, well, then you gotta worry about them right back." He still thought Forge was an idiot.

“Yeah, that’s some high class stupid. The would be dad/older brother poked too many buttons and I hit him for his trouble,” Cammie reflected, thinking about Jean-Paul. “I’m so very violent.”

"Some of 'em need to be hit cause they don't wanna listen. Just wanna see what they see and tell you how it should be - not how it ain't." He lowered the plucking of his strings and switched tunes, strumming out faint chord with the rough skin of his thumb.

“Yeah, but when I hit people, it’s deadly,” Cammie said simply. It was about as truthful as she ever got about anything, “I’m about as safe as a rabid dog some days.”

"Better to be lethal than the punching bag, Ah'd think. Just don't lose yourself to that, yanno?" he shrugged. He was one to talk but had nothing to say on that. Jay was quiet for a time, turning back to his light finger picking and lyrics floated through his head though he kept them quietly to himself.

She let the silence linger for a long moment, “When you got blood on your hands the arguments are petty,” she returned, flopping back to lie down. “What was it I said… dead is dead.”

He seemed to find that last bit funny but didn't comment on it. Instead, he picked at the first thing. "Blood stains pretty good, on the skin, on the heart...."

“You could write a song with that,” Cammie said, “Bleach won’t even get it out at that point. Things like that don’t go away.”

"No, they don't. But we cover 'em pretty damn good, don't we?" he mused, changing the tune to something even lighter. He wasn't into playing heavy things tonight. It was too dark, too quiet in the barn and his music fell in solitude of that feeling.

“You have to. People stare if you walk around covered in blood,” Cammie returned. “Even if it’s the stuff they can’t see.”

"Sometimes the stains stand out though. Hard to cover up stains that look like big metal shiny wings," he said. "Or blue skin. Or yellow eyes." He looked up at her finally. "Or green hair."

She smiled looking up at the ceiling, “Well, you’ve got my number. After all these years, I’m still a sucker for a guy with a guitar. Even if I wouldn’t have a chance,” she said. He played better than Greg could ever hope to. Who she was convinced had learned just to appeal to her musical tastes. “There’s more than enough of the blood to go around though. ‘Least here I don’t have to hog it.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. "Why would you think that? It sounds like a self esteem of someone who don't think much of themselves." Oh yes, he was definitely one to talk there.

“People who spend more than three days in close contact with me risk getting extremely sick,” she returned easily. “Facts of life.”

Jay's music changed someone, though he was not looking at the strings, he still maintained the song as he spoke. "You know, Ah dated someone who's powers were to decay organic matter within seconds. You think we didn't find ways around that? All he had to do was touch mah skin and he'd shave a good portion of skin and muscle off."

“Sounds like a problem for liquid latex,” Cammie said. “It’s not all in the skin for me. Right now, things are slowly seeping into the air. Unless you got a thing for gas masks it’s out of the question.” She didn’t even blink sideways when Jay mentioned a boyfriend.
"Yeah? And do you see me effected?" he asked a little too heated. "Ah've had this talk before Cam. With him, over and over. It gets old real fast. Especially when you gotta fight to be with someone." It was an old song he was already tired of singing.

“Cute. Have you been sleeping in my bed for three days? Have we been getting it on when I haven’t looking?” Cammie asked. “Now, don’t get me on, the wings are awesome but I think you’re a bit young and I get the feeling you don’t play for the right team,” she said that with a grin, “Close physical contact. It’s okay as long as it’s not sharing sheets and bodily fluids.”

"Ah'm just makin' a point," he admitted. "But yeah, mixin' with your fluids won't do nuttin' for me. Not that it matters now." He slowed and looked down at the neck of his guitar, picking his way through a complicated song. "You just need someone with a healin' factor or somethin' like that."

“I don’t need anyone,” Cammie returned, “I suppose I could find that here, if I was interested. Relationships aren’t my cup of tea.”

"Yeah. Wish Ah could say the same. Ah got the hopeless romantic disease. There ain't no cure for it either."

“Hey, I used to be one of those. You wouldn’t like the ‘cure’ though. It’s worse than the disease,” Cammie pointed out.

"You?" he smiled behind the hair in his eyes. "You a romantic?" As if it was hard to believe.

"In my younger not so wise days," Cammie said with a laugh. "And I wasn't hopeless, I suppose. Just romantic." Being in love did that to a person.

"But you're not now? That's hard to believe. Everyone's a bit of a romantic. Even when they say they ain't."

"Hard to be romantic when you kill your boyfriend," she said flippantly. Trying to make it into a joke.

That sobered him up. He pursed his lips, taking in a breath. "Hard to be when your boyfriend killed himself because of you." They shouldn't have had this much in common.

“Yeah, that would sour it too. So fuck romance. Play a nice sad song and realize from a distance we’re all doing the same thing and doing it badly. Then you can laugh at everyone else doing it,” she said with a twisted grin. “And then you wonder how you even did it in the first place.”

He still smiled despite their conversation but recognized a forced tone when he saw one. She might have not been over what happened with her boyfriend, but Jay was over Kevin. Both Kevin's in different ways. He'd come to terms with the death of his first long ago and the second, Dani made him deal with it. But while they spoke, it didn't mean that he'd miss them any less. Only that he'd accept where he was now and move on.

"Ah dunno," he carried on in that conversational tone. "Ah think we're doin' pretty good now, huh?"

“Yeah. Better than we could be, that’s for sure. You’re a good kid,” Cammie said. She wasn’t. Not by any stretch of the imagination. She didn’t think she’d ever come to terms with what she did to Greg. Each day it was just a little bit easier to think that maybe she wasn’t a monster. Or it could’ve been her forgetting what she really was.

He nodded to her in acknowledgement. "Yeah, you're good people too," he said quietly and let the constant of his music fill in the rest of the silence that hung between them. Sometimes it was good to talk, sometimes it was better to just listen.