Katniss could hardly believe how ridiculously slow the first year of college had gone. In July she had arrived in California with her Aunt Maysilee, broken-hearted and lonely and stifling in the heat. In late August she moved into her dorm with her roommate Madge Undersee, a well-meaning but sort of simple blonde girl with pale blue eyes. They had little in common other than they both had a strong distaste for the social aspects of college life. Most nights they each stayed in and studied or read books. Madge skyped her parents every other weekend and Katniss used that time to go for long walks around the campus. Stanford was beautiful. There was no nook or cranny of the campus that wasn't attended to. Rolling campus greens, trimmed woods, clean glass and brick buildings; everything very cut and dry.
Summer begrudgingly made way for autumn which quickly turned to winter but it was hard to tell in California. The air was slightly colder but there was no snow, no indication that the new year was just around the corner. Katniss was relieved when she had gone home and landed in the airport that was covered in a freshly fallen blanket of the white stuff. Home was comforting; the smell of her mother cooking her favorite meals, Prim - who looked like she had grown six feet - recounting the tales of her first half year in high school, the sound of her father's own piano being played quite well. But the piano echoed Johanna everywhere.
The void in her heart that she had constructed when she broke up with Johanna was never filled. The girls and guys who tried to flirt in her classes all seemed to fall short. No one was as beautiful, as kind, as enrapturing, as talented. No one's smile made her heart pool with warmth. No one's voice made her stomach clench with desire. It was like ships passing in the night; Katniss only wanted to be back on Johanna's shores.
Johanna hadn't even so much as texted her since she left for school. She knew, through Annie, that Johanna had arrived in New York safely and that she was already neck-deep in music. She had evidently met her roommate on her trip in and they had struck up quite a friendship. While Finnick was away Annie had gone to visit Johanna in New York and had told Katniss all about it. How happy Johanna looked, how surrounded by like-minded people she was. Most importantly, though, she said that Johanna didn't seem to take any interest in the many men and women who gave her attention.
In a quiet voice Annie had said the words that had made the small void inside Katniss fill only slightly. "She's happy, Katniss, but she misses you."
Those words had propelled Katniss forward into the latter half of her semester, getting her through the rigors of the end of winter and the slow melt of spring. Come that summer she was thrilled to be back home full time, spending her days with her sister and her nights with Gale. Unfortunately Johanna hadn't come home. Her mother had gone to New York for a month to be with her because Johanna had put together a group of four kids to split an apartment over the summer so they could continue their studies.
And, Katniss learned upon arriving at Stanford for her second year, Johanna had begun fronting another band. Madge was not a social butterfly but she was voracious reader. Books piled on her desk and magazines strewn everywhere were the hallmarks she had been in the room. In the few conversations they had, Katniss had talked about Johanna, about home, about her music. Madge was particularly interested in jazz and was well-informed in the upper echelon of jazz circles. It would have been nerdy and off-putting if it had not so painfully reminded Katniss of Johanna.
One afternoon following a dreadful Calculus course Madge had grabbed Katniss excitedly on her way into the room. She held out a magazine for Katniss to read; the title was some kind of musical pun that made Katniss roll her eyes. But as her gaze moved downward she nearly choked on what she saw. Johanna. Clad in a pair of black slacks, high heels that looked like they could slit a throat, a white blouse and a pair of suspenders - oh how Katniss missed those suspenders - she sat astride a piano bench, smirking at the photographer. On top of the piano was an extremely good-looking African-American girl in a sparkly dress, and flanked on Johanna's right was a nerdy boy in glasses with a saxophone. The title read: The Future of Jazz.
"It's all about your girlfriend," Madge exclaimed, ripping the magazine from Katniss's paralyzed grip. She quickly mashed through the pages until she found the spread about Johanna and handed it back to her. "Your ex, whatever. She's got this huge cult following in New York now. This band, her band, they're this brilliant jazz-fusion band. But like, they've got fans of all types. Come here."
Madge brought Katniss over toward her computer, and after a very quick Google search, brought up the website for Johanna's band. "This isn't even their official site. They don't even have one. This is a fan-run site. It's amazing. They have active forums, live streams of concerts, merchandise." Katniss's jaw was slacked and Madge looked up at her. "I can't believe you didn't know this."
"How could I? She doesn't speak to me anymore." Katniss left Madge's side and went to her bed, sitting cross-legged on the mattress as she began to read the article. It was true Johanna hadn't spoken to her in over a year, but Katniss had made no attempt to contact her either. If space was what they needed then space they would have.
It was the space that was going to kill her.
Leisurely she read the article, smiling a few bits of Johanna's interview that was just, oh so Johanna. A snarky reply to a somewhat innocuous comment, a downright rebuttal of the interviewer's misogynistic take on women in jazz, and a soft strain of sadness when they asked about some of the songs she had written.
"There is a commonality amongst the songs you've written that, even those without lyrics, paint quite a pained picture. Can you tell us a little bit about that?"
Johanna seems off-put by my question, raising an eyebrow at me. "Tell you about my pain?" she asks, amused. Her thumb curls underneath one of her now trademark suspenders as she crosses her legs. Everything about Johanna exudes a soul as old as time. Out of her mouth falls quotes from the classic authors of Hemingway, out of her voice comes a sound that harkens to Billie Holiday and smoke-filled jazz clubs. So her next sentence is no surprise. "All great artists carry pain. Every story worth reading has a plot twist," she says with a wry smile. "Everyone has a bit of brokenness inside them."
She takes a small, hand-rolled cigar from a tin next to her chair and makes a gesture towards me that is meant to ask permission. I tell her I don't mind if she smokes and she lights a match (she explains she enjoys the sulfur smell that one cannot get with a lighter) and ignites the cigar. The sweet aroma of vanilla fills the room as her wide brown eyes watch the smoke dissipate into the air.
Katniss read through the rest of the article slowly, trying to drink in every word. This man, this journalist, he had gotten to spend three uninterrupted days with Johanna. He described her sitting at her piano in her "unusual" attire of a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, he got to see her face as she composed, he got to hear her voice. Katniss began to hate the stupid journalist.
Until the last part of the interview.
She plays me an instrumental piece that she begins to sing some lyrics to that she improvises. They're melancholic and full of longing and it looks painful from where I'm sitting across from her. When she finishes she stares at the piano in a way I've seen her do on stage - as if she's imagining herself still playing somewhere else.
"There is someone." She says the words so softly, so unlike how she has been speaking since I arrived that I strain to hear her. "She broke my heart." Before I can ask her to elaborate she presses her fingers on the ivories, a dissonant chord. "It wasn't a mistake, though. I spent a while thinking maybe it was a mistake. But the mistake wasn't letting her break my heart." There is a long bout of silence before she speaks again. "The mistake was letting her keep it after she'd broken it."
There's another long silence, another legato string of piano keys. She doesn't look up from the keys as she takes a cigar from the top of the piano and lights it with a match. She smoke fills the air as she places one hand on the piano cover, almost to steady herself and the other hand to her lips. "I'll never love anyone else." Her eyes finally meet mine and she gives me a smirk that doesn't reach her gaze. "That's where my pain comes from."
When we were living together I thought that I knew you would stay.
Johanna couldn't believe how ridiculously fast the first year of school had gone. With a blur of notes and long nights and writer's block and inspiration it seemed that her freshman year and come and gone. Jasmine had put her in touch with some people and within a few months they had struck up a band. It was a fun project at first, but it rapidly began to consume her life. It was so breathtakingly cathartic to have an outlet for her pain. Not just because of Katniss, but because of Cashmere, of leaving her mother, of being unable to love Cressida...
Love can inflict the most peculiarly keen kind of pain. There's the ache of unrequited love, the twisting steel rod of lost love, the painful temptation of forbidden love, the stinging sensation of star-crossed love. Nothing prepares you for the coring pain of not being able to love someone who loves you. Looking into the eyes of someone truly wonderful, someone so perfect for you it's close to believing in God - that you were put on the planet at the same time, in the same era, in the same geographical location - and then knowing your heart will never be able to love them.
She knew Cressida was in love with her. She knew it the night she stood up to Cashmere, the way Cressida had looked in her eyes and she knew, unmistakably, that she wanted her. Johanna wanted her too, and she almost loved her. She got so very close to that feeling but there was something missing.
Katniss.
Katniss who hadn't called or texted or e-mailed. Nothing. Silence. It allowed Johanna to funnel in on her work but it left such a gaping bullet wound in her chest that she felt everyone could see it. The band became more popular, the fans more eager, the music deeper, and the lonely nights filled with drinking and cigars. She hadn't slept with anyone since the last time she saw Cressida; it never felt worth it. All these girls with their soft, persistent bodies begging to be her "muse" but she found no room in her heart for them. No desire in her fingertips.
Still when you left me I tried to pretend we could make it some way.
She reabsorbed herself into music. She listened to everything that came her way - Indian microtonal music, Christian rock bands, hardcore death metal, honky-tonk country, avant garde contemporary classical. Anything and everything. Music swam in her veins. She ate it, slept on it, breathed it until she nearly choked on it.
The band blew up without her really thinking about it. They had an image - she with her suspenders, Donald with his huge nerd glasses, and Cleo with her giant afro. They were a team. They were the only people that Johanna relied on other than her roommate Jasmine, and her mother and Cressida by phone, to keep her grounded and give her feedback. However, suddenly they were selling out shows and Johanna was contemplating quitting school.
I don't care if all the mountains turn to dust in the air.
Music made her happy in a way most things could not. The only part that made playing her music in public so unbearable was that it bared her soul. Every night she'd have to pour forth her lyrics or her music and hear people sing it but they didn't understand. They'd never understand how rubbed raw her heart was.
But it wasn't all torture and agony. There was something uplifting about singing into a crowd and hearing them sing back. Something that she connected with deeply in seeing how delighted people were at her words, at her music. They wept at her piano solos, shouted her lyrics, touched her hand as she sat on the edge of the stage and sang to them. If she could fill her heart with their love maybe she wouldn't be so goddamn lonely.
It isn't fair that I should wake up at dawn and not find you there. What did you do to my life?
It's been a long time since I came around.
Los Angeles was nothing like New York. The city was bright, yes, and glimmered like obsidian as they rolled in their van toward the club they were playing. But it didn't have the soul. They unloaded their equipment and set up their stage, running through a quick soundcheck before Johanna buried herself in the bar. She wasn't old enough to drink but she was intimidating enough to get the bartender to serve her anyway. Nobody liked to piss off the bands that packed the house. So Johanna drank to forget her loneliness, to prepare herself for another performance, to get herself through another night.
The audience received them well. It was filled from top to bottom with men and women of all ages enjoying their music and shouting their names. Johanna had taken her microphone into the audience and sang to them there, letting them grope at her and touch her hair and shout in her ear. It wasn't conducive to the performance but they might only get one shot to be that close and Johanna didn't mind.
Been a long time but I'm back in town.
They came back on for an encore then retreated to the dressing room. Don and Cleo decided to make an early night of it and get a taxi back to the hotel but Johanna sat in the room, staring at the ceiling from the couch they had provided. It wasn't unlike her dressing room at Bogie's, but it wasn't hers. She didn't feel at home there. She didn't really feel at home anywhere anymore.
Someone knocked at the door and before Johanna could even open her mouth to tell them to fuck off a woman appeared in the doorway, closing the door silently behind her. Johanna nearly fell off the couch as her eyes traveled up the length of her body. A pair of floppy black boots, tanned legs, a ruffled black skirt, a navy blue blouse, and... Katniss.
This time I'm not leaving without you.
There was a nervous smile on her face that Johanna immediately felt deep within her heart. "Oh gee whiz, Johanna Mason. I'm just your biggest fan." Katniss stepped inside the room and looked around at the dressing room. It was nicely decorated and clean; bottles of water in neat little rows on the boudoir's table next to some candy. Junior Mints, one of Johanna's favorites. "This is a different world than your room at Bogie's."
"It's a different life," Johanna replied, finally meeting Katniss's gaze. Katniss sat on the end of the table and faced Johanna. She looked older to Katniss, but her eyes... She felt the same inevitability she had the moment they met in the humid store back in Panem. How tragically easy it is to snap back to that affection. "What are you doing here?"
You taste like whiskey when you kiss me, oh.
Katniss snorted quietly. "I can't drive six hours, take a weekend off school, and get a ticket to the hottest show in town?" Johanna shot her a droll look from across the room. She stood from the sofa and crossed toward her. Katniss felt her breath catch inside her chest as Johanna drew closer. Her smell, that amazing combination of pine and leather, filled her nostrils and threatened to fill her eyes. Johanna reached and for a moment, Katniss thought she was going to be touched, but Johanna reached behind her and picked up a cigar. "When did you start smoking cigars?"
Johanna chuckled as she struck a match and lit the end of the cigar, watching the fire bounce around in Katniss's eyes. She was completely breathtaking, still, making Johanna's heart thump at a speed she didn't expect. "I stopped feeding one addiction and started feeding another."
"What addiction was that?" Katniss looked at Johanna through the haze of sweet-smelling smoke.
I'd give anything to be your baby doll.
Johanna felt like she was swimming in a dream. Seeing Katniss now, after nearly two years of her absence, made her stomach stirring and her heart spasm. Everything felt like it was thick, to thick to move. "What are you doing here?" Johanna asked again, more tiredly.
"You always hated this part." Johanna raised an eyebrow as she filled her mouth with the smoke and blew it directly in the air upward to keep it out of Katniss's face. They were close enough that she could've put her hand on her cheek if she wanted. Stroke that tanned, soft skin she loved to touch. "After the show. The mingling. You know there are still people waiting outside for you."
"Well they're waiting for Godot because I'm not going out there. I'm going back to the hotel, then I'm going home."
"Home," Katniss repeated. "New York?"
Johanna tilted her head. She could detect Katniss's tone from a mile away and from a mere foot it was clear as day. "It's as home as I can get these days." Because my home is only with you. Johanna hoped her emotions weren't as clear in her eyes as they were in her mind.
This time I'm not leaving without you.
Katniss became suddenly fed up. A surge of complete impatience tore through her like it used to after her father died. These bouts of nerves were something her psychiatrist - how briefly she had seen him - had drawn up to some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. "Why haven't you called me? Texted me? E-mailed me? Did all the things you said would be so easy if we were together?"
Johanna's mood, tipping on anxiousness, turned completely over to anger like a tide swallowing a rogue ship. Her cigar flew across the room and smacked into the door, smoldering on the floor as she turned her angry gaze to Katniss. "Are you fucking for real? You didn't call me, either. Nothing. You break up with me and I'm expected to send you Christmas cards?"
"You act like this was only my decision but -"
"It was only your decision. You let your life get led by someone else and I got caught in the crossfire and I have never recovered." She stepped closer to her. "Don't you think that I wish that I could get rid of you? That you weren't seeped so deeply inside me?"
It's been two years since I let you go.
Katniss felt the tears well up in her eyes and she darted her gaze to the ground beneath them. She had meant for this to be a peaceful conversation, like they had on the boat the last time they saw each other. "You think I don't feel the same?" Johanna shrugged and Katniss felt it like a stake in her heart. "I did what I thought was right for me, for us, at the time. Truly. I want to be with you, I wanted to then and I want to now. And - and I thought living my father's dream would fill what you left but it hasn't. I haven't felt for anything, anyone, since I left you."
Johanna's gaze narrowed. "I can't say the same." Gray eyes looked up at her with a piercing gaze. "I slept with someone I really care about a few weeks after we broke up. I would say I'm sorry but I'm not. I was in a lot of pain and she helped me through it. Loved me through it."
"Who?" Katniss knew it was an unfair question but the jealousy crawling inside her made it an inevitable question to ask. She wasn't at all thinking of sending at arrow into that woman's eye socket.
"Does it matter? I couldn't love her and God, Katniss, I wanted to." Johanna turned away and crossed her arms over her chest. "I wanted to love her but I couldn't because of you. Because my heart hasn't been my own since the day you walked into my mother's store." Johanna turned on her heel and clenched her jaw tightly. "Cashmere said she wanted to ruin me and for a while, she did. I mean, I guess she succeeded. I can't be in a room with a locked door, I can't stand hearing the rain... There will be small parts of me that won't ever recover. But you..." Johanna let her voice trail off as she shook her head.
I couldn't listen to a joke or a rock 'n' roll.
"No, go on," Katniss urged, pushing herself up off the desk and coming face to face with Johanna. "What did I do?"
Johanna looked up at her, defiant eyes full of challenge. "You ruined me."
Katniss rolled her eyes with incredulity. "Oh did I? Did you not go away to the college you wanted? Play the music you wanted to play? Succeed in what you are so good at? It's not my fault you never moved on. Oh, wait, you did. You fucked someone weeks later, isn't that right? Typical fucking Johanna, hopping into bed with someone to ease her pain."
Johanna's jaw fell open. "What? Do you have any idea how painful sex was? I enjoyed every minute of having sex with you because I love you but it took a lot out of me after Cashmere raped me. For you to stand here and act like me making love to someone else is my way of coping is absolutely fucking ridiculous." Johanna paused and made sure her eyes were as focused as she could get them. "I had sex with her because I had feelings for her, not because of my feelings for you."
Muscle cars drove a truck right through my heart.
Katniss grabbed Johanna by her shirt as her fists trembled in anger. "Who. Was it?" she demanded through gritted teeth, ignoring the tears streaming down her face.
"You don't deserve to know," Johanna sneered. Even here, stewing in anger, Johanna was caught between wanting to slap Katniss and wanting to kiss her. She loved this stupid, angry woman and every inch of her person wanted to move forward and be in her arms again.
Katniss seemed to read her mind and her gaze softened and she let go of Johanna's shirt. She smoothed the material out with her fingers gently, slowly. "Why is this so hard between us? I'm in love with you, and you're in love with me and that should be it. Right? Isn't that what all the stories are about? What life is about? Finding someone that you can't live without?"
Johanna stroked her fingers very slowly through Katniss's hair, enjoying the sight of Katniss's eyes fluttering closed. "That's the thing. I think you're supposed to be able to live without that person. You just don't want to and you fight like hell not to. But you should be able to function." From her pocket she withdrew a small handkerchief and gave it to Katniss. These gestures, unbidden and unspoken, were the tenets of their relationship that Katniss so sorely missed.
"Well I can't, okay?" Katniss backed away and dabbed at her eyes with the cloth. The cloth smelled like Johanna and she briefly held it to her nose. "I hate college. I don't want to be there anymore. I just want to be with you. And write. I can't get any writing done because there's always deadlines and term papers and exams. Everything snowballing and I never seem to get out of the way."
Somethin', somethin' about the chase.
"So write darlin'." Katniss smiled faintly at the familiar term. "Drop out. Write. You could live on a commune or with your aunt or something for a year and just get it all out. Because look, I want to be with you. More than I want anything in this world." She reached forward and took Katniss's hands in her own, squeezing them gently. "But I can't if you're not yourself. I fell in love with you. This wonderful girl with a gift for words and a beautiful heart. A girl who lives on her own terms. Don't you remember when I didn't want to tell everyone we were dating?"
Katniss frowned. "And I told you that you didn't get to make the decisions for both of us. And then I made a decision for both of us."
Johanna let out a small chuckle and held Katniss's hands firmly in her own. She felt lighter than air just at this small amount of physical closeness. "Yeah, well, I've always said you were brainless." Katniss gave her a sour look and Johanna continued. "But you got me through it. Look I know that... that you made a poor decision when we broke up but it ended up being somewhat beneficial. I would not be who I am, where I am, if not for you."
"You're welcome for my extremely poor actions."
Johanna smiled. "I held on to a lot of anger. I felt betrayed by you but, as it was pointed out to me, that it was probably because I knew this would be hard, too. Being with you and not able to see you, to touch you, would've been more difficult than I let on." Katniss was visibly surprised and didn't make any attempt to hide it from Johanna. "But now that you're here, that you're with me and I can feel you, God, please don't leave."
Katniss knitted her eyebrows together in confusion and tilted her head to one side. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying... come to New York with me. Come live with me. I'll take care of you and you can write every day. You can write from dawn to dusk." She disregarded Katniss's hands for her face, cupping her cheeks and wiping away a few hot tears with her thumbs. "I was right, the distance was defining. But it only defined how much I need you. How much we need each other. It's fucking pathetic and stupid and I don't really give a fuck, to be honest. I'm pathetic for you, Katniss Everdeen. You big dumb asshole who broke my heart. I'll let you break it again and again, I don't care. But I won't live without you."
I'm a New York woman born to run you down. Still want my lipstick all over your face.
That was a lot to consider. Of course her immediate thought was to accept and kiss Johanna until they were seeing stars. But practically, it didn't make any sense. She couldn't just drop out of school. What would her mother think? Gray eyes lit up. "I'll finish out this semester. And then, you'll come home this summer? And we can.. we can get back to each other." Katniss swallowed the lump in her throat as Johanna's wide, innocent eyes stared at her with unabashed hope. "And I'll figure out how to break to my mother that I'm moving to New York."
The last thing Katniss saw before Johanna's lips crashed against hers was the immediate wetness of tears in her eyes. Johanna pulled her in for a ferocious kiss that made them both stumble back and crash against the boudoir. She could feel Johanna's tears on her face as she moved her tongue along her lips, tasting the salt of them and the hint of clove from the cigar. She could hear Johanna's voice whispering "I missed you" and "I love you" over and over again against her skin as she moved her lips along her jaw and to her neck, her fingers buried deeply in her hair.
Somethin', somethin' about just knowing when it's right.
After years of no contact this sensation was overwhelming but not unwanted. Every night Katniss had gone to bed dreaming of Johanna's lips and hands and her voice. She had hoped that somewhere, way across the country, Johanna was thinking of hers. It hadn't occurred to her that Johanna would sleep with someone else.
Johanna's teeth biting at her shoulder shook her thoughts as she groaned and held Johanna's neck as her ...girlfriend's? Ex-girlfriend's? Whatever she was, her arm went completely around Katniss's back and held her firmly against Johanna's body as she moved their lips back together, giving her a deep, soul-touching kiss as she held her close.
When she had bought the ticket to Johanna's show and taken Madge's car the six hours from Stanford to Los Angeles she didn't think she'd end up with Johanna's lipstick on her face and her scent in her nostrils. She had only wanted to see her, speak to her again. This was ...immeasurably better.
Somethin' about baby, you and I.
Author's Note: I'm really sorry this took so long but with work and like ...the fact that I got distracted by like 3910321 AUs and fics that I'm attempt to write all simultaneously, I slacked. So we're back! AND OUR GIRLS YAY.
Music: "What Did You Do To My Life?" by Neil Young and "You and I" by Lady Gaga.