Whenever you're near, I hear a symphony.
Johanna found rhythm in just about everything. The fall of footsteps in the hallways of school, the (now painful) patter of rain on rooftops, the screech of sneakers against the waxed gym floors, everything. There was a syncopation that she would find nestled in the mundane everyday of life that would put a melody in her head. She planted her feet in the grass of her backyard, widening her stance. With her axe poised above her head she slammed it down, splitting the log she had set up on the stump. Winter was winding down into a thaw, but her mother had requested more firewood for their fireplace.
So Johanna had taken to the forest, one of her favorite places, and brought back some wood to chop. With her ear buds firmly planted in her ears she took to the task with fervor. In spite of the cool temperature she had only worn a small tank top. Sweat was glistening from every exposed inch of her skin, some of it dripping off and dampening the blades of grass beneath her feet.
It had been about three weeks since she returned from New York. The experience had been soul-lifting in more ways than one. The camaraderie of other like-minded musical individuals was amazing, and their ignorance of her past was doubly so. She was not "that girl who slept with girls" or "New Girl's Girlfriend" or "Rape Victim." She was just Johanna Mason, unlikely musical savant. She had gone home heavy with about fifteen different phone numbers of kids from all different paths of life, all of whom wanted to keep in contact with her if they were accepted.
A tender melody. Pulling me closer, closer to your arms.
When they were accepted. Johanna had gotten her acceptance letter in the mail two weeks later. The crisp, slightly yellowed piece of paper sat in her desk drawer on top of neglected notebooks and used up composition books. She had even withheld the acceptance from her mother. No moment felt right. That slight piece of paper would heavily impact all three of their lives in ways Johanna could barely wrap her mind around.
She wanted to be happy about it but with Katniss still in the dark about her application and acceptance, she couldn't. Nothing seemed worth having if Katniss couldn't share it with her. The axe dug into the wood once more, another syncopated rhythm that moved alongside the music in her head. She let the axe suspend in the wood, gathering the extra firewood in her arms and dumping it next to the house. She clapped her gloves, peeling them off to expose her sweaty palms to the cool air.
The crunch of leaves behind her made her whirl around on her heel. Her face lit up into a smile as she took in Katniss. She was wearing one of Johanna's flannel shirts, tied around her waist over her jeans. "I probably look a mess," Johanna noted, wiping sweat from her forehead with her arm. It was futile since her arm was slicked with sweat as well.
Katniss didn't move. From her stance a few feet away under the pierce of the sun's rays, Johanna couldn't tell what she was staring at. "Is your mom home?"
Momentarily dazed by the question Johanna blinked a few times in rapid succession. "Um, no? She's at the store. Why? Did you -" Katniss cut her off by grabbing her by the hand and pulling her through the back door. She didn't say one word as they climbed the steps to her bedroom, only stopping to close the door behind them. She didn't bother with the lock. Fastening the lock seemed to unnerve Johanna anyway.
Katniss surged forward and captured Johanna's lips in a fearsome, ugly kiss that was equal parts passionate and desperate. Her fingers snaked up Johanna's damp back to her hair, pulling the hair tie from her and grasping the newly freed locks. Her mouth kissed in staccato beats along her jaw, her tongue running from Johanna's cheek down her neck. Her fingers slipped beneath the hem of Johanna's tank top and pulled it over her head.
"Katniss, I'm all sweaty."
"I know." Johanna shuddered as Katniss's voice took on a vibrating bass. She was glad she had decided to forgo a bra. Katniss shoved her down on the bed, untying her own flannel shirt and discarding it on top of Johanna's tank top. Her denim-clad knees went to either side of Johanna's thighs. She reached down, unbuckling the belt from Johanna's waist. She tugged at it furiously until it gave way and she whipped it on to the floor.
Suddenly, your lips are touching mine.
She leaned down and took Johanna's lips in a fearsome kiss. Seeing her sweaty in the sun had been like running her hand on a live wire. Plus, this was a distraction from what she had come over to do: tell Johanna about Stanford. Her tongue lapped up the sweat on Johanna's neck. She tasted like salt and smelled like the earth. Her fingers stuck in Katniss's hair as they grabbed her head. Every part of her glistened with sweat and Katniss wanted to consume it. Her tongue ran laps along her clavicle, scraping the top of her canines against the skin.
Her fingernails scraped gently along Johanna's sides, making her squirm with arousal and from the tickling sensation until she reached her pants. Tongue swirling around Johanna's breasts she fumbled with the button on her jeans. The sweat had made them adhere to her legs but Katniss was stronger than a little elbow grease. She yanked them down over Johanna's hips, shimmying them down until they rested at her feet. No time to worry about that. She returned her mouth to Johanna's abdomen, kissing and sucking the sensitive skin above her pubic bone.
She was about to head to her final destination when Johanna sat up on her elbows. "Wait, I'm ..I'm sweaty and gross." Her brown eyes darted to the bathroom door. "I should shower if we're -"
Katniss moved up, pressing Johanna down gently with her palm against her shoulder. "I don't care." She kissed the side of Johanna's neck, giving her earlobe a quick bite with her teeth. "You look so hot." Johanna groaned and gripped Katniss's back tightly with her fingernails, causing the other girl to gasp into her ear. She kissed her way back down the pale plane of Johanna's body, stopping to briefly adorn her breasts with kisses. Her tongue dipped into Johanna's belly button, tasting the sweat that had accumulated there. She slipped her hands beneath Johanna's body, gripping her backside with her fingers and burying her mouth inside Johanna's sex.
A feeling so divine.
Her mind hummed with pleasure as Johanna tensed and relaxed beneath her touch. She placed languid, open-mouth kisses all along her arousal-soaked lips, sucking the essence from them as she plunged her tongue inside the other girl. It had been so long since she had been able to take Johanna this way. Sex with her had always been passionate and a give-and-take of power and pleasure, but since her attack it mostly been Katniss allowing Johanna to do as she pleased.
But she knew, deep down, Johanna wanted to be possessed a little. She had looked so unmistakably brilliant in the sunlight, Katniss couldn't exactly help herself. Her muscles flexing with the axe, the sweat dripping from her body, the tight way her clothes were gripping her in all the right places. Her mouth moved upward toward Johanna's clit, circling the engorged bundle of nerves with a light tease. She ran her tongue from Johanna's entrance to her clit over and over again, swallowing her arousal and pushing it upward.
'Til I leave the past behind, I'm lost in a world made for you and me.
Johanna's ragged breaths began to come much faster, with much more purpose. Katniss gripped the edges of Johanna's hips with her nails and buried her nose in Johanna's sex, suckling hard on her overworked clit. Katniss was treated to not only a string of colorful profanity, but the hard bucking of Johanna's hips and the stream of liquid falling on her tongue.
Instead of moving from her she stayed in between Johanna's parted, shaking thighs, swiping at every inch of her folds with her tongue. She left a bit of arousal on her and moved up her body, planting kisses along Johanna's shivering skin. She placed her face on Johanna's neck and in an agonizingly slow movement, slid her middle and ring finger inside her girlfriend. "I don't think I can.."
"Shhh," Katniss cooed into her ear, moving completely in and out of her at a speed that almost seemed like she was still. "I just want to be inside you." Johanna's hand came up and wrapped around Katniss's neck, grabbing a fistful of her hair like it was the lifeline she needed to live. In compliance with her comment, Katniss moved achingly slow. There was no concerted effort to get her off. She'd move inside her and stay there, enjoying the warmth of Johanna's insides and the soft sighs of pleasure exhaling from her lips.
Johanna kicked off her shoes and pants with a few movements of her legs. With Katniss fucking her slowly she pulled her shirt over her head and discarded her bra. "Your pants," Johanna managed in a small voice. She unbuttoned Katniss's fly as the girl kicked off her shoes, still penetrating Johanna with slow movements. Finally, after some maneuvering, she was laying naked against her, feeling the sensation of skin against skin. Johanna gripped Katniss's naked back, rolling her over so she was on top of the other girl. She withdrew Katniss's hand from inside her and pinned it next to her hips.
Whenever you're near, I hear a symphony.
Katniss pouted in resentment as Johanna moved her legs around and held Katniss's hands firmly against the bed. She was about to protest the lack of contact when Johanna's slit came in contact with her own. Johanna hovered over her, slowly rubbing her sex against Katniss's, gasping as her clit made contact with Katniss's soaking wet sex. Katniss broke free of Johanna's grasp and wrapped her arms around her back. She flattened her palms against Johanna's muscles, feeling them move as she fucked herself against Katniss.
Between Katniss's slow tease and this new sensation Johanna's head tipped forward as she felt the oncoming twinge of orgasm begin in her groin. "Holy shit." Katniss cursed from beneath her, nearly breaking her skin with her hard she grasped Johanna's back as she came. Johanna moved against her more furiously, attempting to draw Katniss's orgasm out and bring on her own.
She kissed her hard, her hips jerking as she came, beyond her control. Another staccato rhythm for her brain. "Mm, I love you," Johanna mumbled against Katniss's lips as her hips dropped over Katniss's leg in exhaustion. Now she would definitely need a shower, she thought to herself. Her arousal was coating the inside of Katniss's thigh as she laid half on top of her.
Each time you speak to me, I hear a rhapsody of love now, baby.
They laid like that in sticky silence for a few minutes, enjoying the fall and rise of each other's chests. Both slicked with sweat, Johanna was reminded of the hot day they first met. Katniss in her unseasonable leather jacket, which Johanna had now come to equate that smell with her. The moment their eyes met and Johanna knew, she just completely knew, no one would make her feel like Katniss did in that moment.
She was the type of girl authors wrote about. The type of girl composers wrote their symphonies for. The type of girl that would drive a man crazy and when you saw the picture of her, she was the kind of beautiful that he lost his mind, you'd understand why he went crazy. You'd have gone crazy, too.
"Jo, I got accepted to Stanford."
The warm, post-coital haze Johanna was swimming in was suddenly swirled down the drain. She lifted her head up off of Katniss's shoulder to look her in the eyes. "You what?"
Katniss squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to will the world away. She didn't want college or distance. She wanted this. Johanna's nearness. Her sweat. Her eyes. Her hands. "Please don't make me say it again."
"Stanford that's.." That's in California. I'm going to be in New York. Her voice dropped and she rolled on to her back, untangling herself from the heat of Katniss's body. The sweat and arousal on her body suddenly felt sticky and stifling. "That's a long way from New York." Katniss immediately propped herself up on her elbow, her gray eyes taking on an unmistakable intensity. "I got accepted to Julliard."
Katniss shook her head as if trying to physically shake away the information. The settling of the scent of sex around them suddenly seemed inappropriate. "Is that what you did in New York?" What she really said was: You lied to me?
Johanna nodded. "I had to audition in person. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was scared."
As you stand holding me, whispering how much you care.
"Scared of what?"
Johanna's throat moved as she dropped her chocolate gaze to the bedsheets. "I was scared you'd want to leave if you knew we'd be separated." She moved onto her stomach, lifting herself up with her elbows. She reached down and took Katniss's hand between her own, pressing her lips against her knuckles. "I think we can do this."
"Live across the country?" Katniss looked away from Johanna's piercing stare toward the ceiling. A tear pushed forth from the corner of her eye and slid down the side of her face. "Jo I hated when you went to New York. How am I going to cope with you thousands of miles away?" She used her free hand to run it through Johanna's hair. "Don't get me wrong, I am so proud of you."
Johanna paused, holding Katniss's fist to her face. "We can do this. We'll Skype and write letters like it's the 19th century. And we'll work and save up and come home as much as we can." Johanna tightened her grip on Katniss's fingers. "If we promise to work at it, we'll get through this." She shimmied closer to Katniss, dropping her fist so she could kiss her on the nose. "You're my girl, Katniss. Always."
A thousand violins fill the air now, baby. Don't let this moment end.
Her friends are so jealous you know how bad girls get.
As usual Johanna sluggishly got her things together at the end of her classes, even going so far as to wait for a student to ask an inane question before he left. Johanna sat on the desk in front of Cressida's desk, banging her legs against it. Cressida moved behind her desk, sitting down in her chair. She pulled out a stack of papers bound with tiny metal clips on the side.
Johanna canted her head to examine them. "Whatcha got?"
Cressida looked up from her papers and sighed. She placed two hands on the top of the stack of them and frowned. The stack of papers - a summation of her time as an English major and the lost year she spent in Los Angeles - was near to her heart. However, as the year yawned on, she knew the younger girl in front of her was also crawling near to her heart. It was thrilling and upsetting at the same time. "A screenplay."
"Yours?" Cressida nodded. "That's pretty bad-ass."
Cressida smirked and turned it around, handing it to her. Johanna looked over at her in surprise and the blonde nodded her head once more. "Go ahead. Unfortunately, I'm missing a key element." She got up from her seat, crossing her hands behind her back. Her heels clacked against the tile as she moved closer to Johanna. "I'm writing a film that has some ...musical elements." She watched with keen interest as Johanna's eyes lit up and looked at her. "And since I lack development in that area, there are about eight rather large gaps in the script."
Sometimes it's not so easy to be the teacher's pet.
Johanna thumbed through the paper, finding the treatment in the first few pages. As she read, she spoke. "You want original pieces?"
"I must. The characters' development depends on it." She sat on the edge of the desk Johanna was on, the side of her body flush against the younger girl's. "This may sound a tad bit forward but, would you consider writing for me? With me?"
Johanna's eyes widened in thought. That seemed like an awful lot of responsibility. "Really? Me?" She felt the heft of the script in her hands, the pages feeling about ten times heavier than they were.
Cressida smiled and nudged her student. "You're the most talented musician I know. I'd be honored if you'd help me." At night, when Cressida went home to grade papers with an embarrassing amount of wine, her mind often wandered to the black-haired girl in her last period class. She'd surmise, by the fifth glass of wine, that they would have been friends had they attended high school at the same time.
Part of her wished they had. As Johanna's life became clearer to her, she wished to be of more help with the people who gave her looks and made snarky comments. Being one of - Cressida had assumed - maybe five homosexuals in the school was harrowing enough. Being proud and open was quite brave. Cressida paid no attention to the other, persistent, dreadful, cliched feelings that swam inside her stomach.
Temptation, frustration, so bad it makes him cry.
"I'd love to."
"Wonderful!" Cressida clapped and snapped herself from her reverie. She placed her hand on the copy of the script in Johanna's hands in her lap. "You keep this one. Read it, devour it, let it marinate inside your brain. I don't have a specific aesthetic in mind but I think you'll gather my point after you read it."
Johanna smiled widely and nodded her head. "What's the Cliff's notes version?"
Cressida's hand stayed on the script in her lap as she looked up and pursed her lips. "It's sort of a love story. Kind of a tragic, like Orpheus and Eurydice."
Johanna raised an eyebrow and stared down at Cressida's hand in her lap. Her fingers were long, soft, like someone whose life had been a little too easy. Soft like summers on a private island somewhere. Her nails were short and perfectly rounded, painted in a soft green color. Johanna noticed she changed them for the different seasons: red at the beginning of the year, navy blue for winter, green for spring. She imagined a dusty pink for summer.
"So one of them poofs and disappears?" The question, delivered with such an adorably straight face, made Cressida nearly fall off the desk in laughter. Johanna had a way of taking complex things and boiling them down into the simplest terms.
"Virgil is rolling in his grave right now." Cressida withdrew her hand from the script, lighting brushing against Johanna's knuckles as she returned her hands to her own lap. The way she and Johanna had clicked, like two toy trains with magnets on the ends, had made the physical closeness between them almost ordinary. It occurred to Cressida on several occasions that it was probably inappropriate. No teacher should be this close to her student. But Johanna's old soul made her feel like the age difference was obsolete. What was a decade when they were both recycled souls anyhow? They were really thousands of years old, two of those people who don't remember their lives but they manifest inside them anyway.
Wet bus stop, she's waiting. His car is warm and dry.
Johanna snorted and kept flipping through the pages, skimming the dialogue. "As if there'd be enough of him to roll around anyway."
"Touche," Cressida replied. She eyed Johanna's hands as they went through the script quickly. "I just hope that, if this comes together, we get taken seriously." Johanna looked up at her and Cressida was immediately taken aback by how close they were. The desk barely fit the two of them on it anyway, and their faces were within a few inches of each other. She could see the faint scar just above and below Johanna's lips of unknown provenance. "When I was in Los Angeles a few years ago, I had a hard time getting anyone to take me seriously as a screenwriter. Hence the teaching."
"But you're brilliant," Johanna defended with confusion in her tone. Cressida rolled her eyes but Johanna's gaze was insistent. "Let not our proposal be disregarded on the score of our youth."
"She plays classical music and quotes Virgil?" Cressida slid off the desk. "Where were you when I was in high school?" In her high school experience people like herself were hard to come by. She spent her youth buried her old novels, living between the yellowed pages of print and losing herself in the old smell of pulp and ink. Her mind ostracized her. "Is there anything she can't do?"
Cressida sat back down her in teacher's chair, crossing her legs. Johanna hopped off the desk and walked around Cressida's and sat on the edge of the desk next to her. She leaned back on her palms, propping her feet up on the metal bar that held the markers for the dry erase board. Inside Cressida's mind a tableau of this exact scenario occurred, but with much less clothing. She blinked rapidly and shook those thoughts from her head. Thank goodness this girl was graduating in two months.
Don't stand so close to me.
"Don't think for one moment I buy this 'poor me, I was a loser in high school' thing you've got going on," Johanna said with a smirk. Cressida raised an eyebrow in offense. "You're brilliant. You're funny, sometimes. You've got crazy good taste in music and cars. And you're gorgeous. Girls like you don't suffer in high school. Girls like you make life for girls like me hell."
"For girls like you?" Cressida repeated, taking her pen from her desk. She felt as if she needed something to do with her hands. Nervous habit, couldn't quite shake it. "Mason, you fall into all those categories as well." Johanna rolled her eyes in unmasked disbelief and planted her gaze on the globe in the corner of the room. "High school was difficult for me. Nobody wants to be friends with a brainy girl with pictures of Oscar Wilde and Emily Dickinson in her locker."
Johanna's lips curled into a smirk as she looked back at her teacher. "I would've been your friend."
"You wouldn't have paid any attention to me, trust me."
"If you haven't noticed I sort of having a homing system for beautiful women."
Cressida laughed and sat back in her chair, twirling the pen between her fingers. This situation was getting rapidly out of her control. She should not be flirting with some student like she was some undersexed teenager. "I have also noticed your girlfriend."
Johanna read between the lines: You're treading on thin ice. She liked to flirt with Cressida and push her buttons. There was nothing either of them could do, but it was a delicious exercise in futility. "I'm just having a little fun with you." Johanna stood up from the desk, taking the script in her hands and putting it in her messenger bag. In her mind she was already scoring the film; sweeping horns and lilting pan flutes. "Besides, you and I would've been quite a team in high school."
"Perhaps." Johanna made her way toward the exit. "But make no mistake, Miss Mason. You would've broken my little teenaged heart."
It's no use, he sees her. He starts to shake and cough. Just like the old man in that book by Nabakov.
After getting home from taking a long, hot shower with Johanna, Katniss had fallen into a melancholy. Revealing her acceptance to Stanford had been a weight lifted off her chest, but she still felt pressed down by the prospect of a future without Johanna. Gale had tried to get her to go out hunting with him, but she had refused him three times. Prim tried to get her to play some board games, but she wanted to be in her room.
Alone on her bed with her acceptance letter staring her in the face like a bad omen. Take this acceptance and only see Johanna over chilly winter breaks and hot summers. Spend each day wondering if there was someone else making her laugh, causing the corner of her mouth to turn upward in a smirk, putting that light in her eyes that Katniss had only seen with herself and music. There'd be other friends, friends with more in common, probably prettier and smarter. Johanna would slowly begin returning her phone calls late, not picking up on the first ring. Letting her voicemail go unanswered because she was up all not composing with another musical genius, or out to an off-off Broadway show with friends.
They'd begin the painful process of uncoupling, neither of them having the courage to just rip the band-aid off. But this, this painful thought that threatened to shred her heart inside her chest, was less painful than the thought of disappointing her family. The look in her mother's eyes if she said she was turning down the acceptance, and the rather large financial aid award... It would be far too much for Katniss to bear. Like losing her father all over again.
But the look in Johanna's eyes if she told her that they should see other people. That would probably destroy her, too. At least Johanna was still alive to mend things with. Her father was dead, a corpse in the ground, the only warm, living part of him residing inside Katniss's heart. No, she couldn't kill his dreams. She needed that part of him alive inside her.
It would be the only thing to keep her warm when the sunlight of Johanna was extinguished.
Author's Note: Ehhhh I'm not thrilled with this chapter, mainly because I want to get to the next one. But please let me know what you think. Our girls are going through some growing pains which, while important, is also kinda boring.
Music: "I Hear A Symphony" by the Supremes, and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by the Police.