I've decided to put the remaining three Reviewer's Surprise words on hold. Never fear – they will be back! But I figured I'd make much better progress with the multiple ideas that have been stewing in my brain lately.
This chapter is a taste-test, really. I've always (always!) wanted to do an AU story where everyone's in a band…but Sylver very firmly informed me that it's a ridiculously cliché and overused idea. So, you owe her many thanks for that – if she hadn't enlightened me, this thing would be incredibly, painfully cliché and just...bad. :D
And now it's not.
I think. :D
This is a snippet I thought of while watching August Rush, and I wrote the entire thing while listening to the song "Bach Break" from it. After you read this, there's a link on my profile – go listen. Seriously. It's incredible.
If you guys like this, I'm quite seriously considering making it a full-fledged story. If I add a plot (which I sort of have half-formed in my mind) would you guys read a whole story about it? Let me know, yeah?
Finally: AU, Raven's point of view. And the lead singer is Dick, by the way. As if it weren't obvious. :P
--
Prompt # 16: Bliss
At eleven thirty at night, the music starts – and with it, her day.
The small bar crammed with wasted twentysomethings is unfamiliar, but this is nothing new. She's used to the traveling shows in tiny, obscure nightclubs with the band members whose names she doesn't know and the backup singers who once spat in her iced tea and ripped her favorite leather jacket to pieces. (It's kindergarten all over again. Once you hit twenty, weren't you supposed to grow out of all the immature temper tantrums?)
She doesn't remember the name of the band behind her, though she's been playing with them for more than five months now. The pianist is anonymous – the drummer's face is a shadowy smear in the corner of her vision.
They don't matter.
Nothing matters but the music.
She blocks out the messy emo boys passing their eyes up and down her body – she doesn't think to feel grateful that her black hoodie turns her figure from shapely to shapeless. She forgets the screaming crowd, the strobe lights throwing splintered shards of colored light into her eyes, the thrashing band behind her, the sweat dripping from every pore in her body. She's locked in her own private room – and as she feels the wild siren song surging along the guitar strings, she can't help the rapturous smile that splits open her face.
She feels the music under her fingers, feels the way the spun-glass melody shrills against the deeper chords underneath. It's ecstasy. It's bliss. The guitar trembles under her fingers, vibrating against her stomach, and her heart thump-thumps to the beat until it's her heart keeping time and her breath keeping balance, until her vision has narrowed to a pinprick of light, until she is the music. She's not Raven Roth anymore, she is the sound, she is the harmony, she is the big noise in the small room and for two minutes and forty-six seconds, she has become the crowd's entire world.
She hears the band behind her, feels the drummer's bang-bang-bang and the lead singer's wanton call – hears him strain his voice in a complex vocal rollercoaster – but she doesn't feel their music like she feels her own. She doesn't know them. She doesn't see them. She doesn't love them like she loves the guitar in her hands and the wild harmony in her throat and the blissful stage-blindness that has overcome her very identity.
But she feels it when the song crests. The lead singer clutches the mike, his dark hair hanging in sweat-slick spikes – the bassist flails – the pianist thrashes – and she is the clockwork that moves them forward, she is the emotion, she is the harmony that turns the singer's rollercoaster-voice into magic.
And then the music breaks.
It's a catastrophic ending. She always hated it. It's painful to hear the notes grate against each other – a B major pushing up against an A minor – harsh, ugly – and the song screeches along to the ending: a shrill stabbing note that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
The bliss has evaporated.
The music is over.
She stares blankly over the writhing crowd, lets the strobe lights play over her sweat-soaked skin. The final, wavering chords from the bass guitarist have melted into the shrieks of the crowd and she feels lost, terribly lost. There is no more music, no more stage-blindness, and the band members behind her are screaming back into the crowd and thumping each other on the back and throwing themselves to the crowded floor beneath the stage and the guys are tearing off their shirts and flinging them into the crowd. And she – the clockwork, the heartbeat – stands. She stands and she sways and she breathes, and she knows she will not fully exist again until she plays.
She feels the threads that connect her to this world break, like the Fates snipping away at the threads of life, and – snip, snip, snip – she feels herself flying, her feet locked to the ground, but her mind is soaring away because she's not entwined with the sound, she's not tangled up with the strands of the music.
She's slipping away, like she always does once the music ends. She never figured out if she likes the feeling or not.
Her vision flickers: her eyes lock onto the lead singer.
And her mind freezes.
He's standing, and he's swaying, and her breath catches because looking at him is like seeing herself, like seeing herself from a bird's-eye view. His arms hang slack at his sides. His rollercoaster-voice is hushed, but his eyes – the color of her ripped jeans, but brighter, better – are dazzling.
He half-turns – brushes at the back of his neck, like he can feel her gaze burned onto his skin.
His eyes, snapping with intensity, find hers.
A jolt.
They're like…lightning, his eyes…like electricity. Her skin stings. Her head buzzes. She stares back at him without seeing, listens to the shriek of the crowd without hearing. She is lost, because the music is gone, but – impossible – inconceivable – he is anchoring her to this place, he is anchoring her to this time. He is holding her back.
This has never happened before.
This never happens.
She doesn't know this boy – this man – this creature. She has never been held like this before. His eyes are twin blazes of fire, though their color is closer to ice – they bind her, bind her to the sticky stage floor when all she wants is to flee from this beautiful, terrifying man who has shackled her in place with invisible chains.
She struggles against it, struggles against the grasp of his eyes, eyes that fill her veins with electrified bursts of terror, wonder, shock…
And bliss.
His lips part – slow, rapturous – and his ice-fire eyes are unreadable.
He grins. His teeth are very white.
The invisible chains snap – she's left reeling for a sliver of a second. He walks towards her, one foot – two feet – slow, unsure. There's a crease between his eyebrows as he stares at her: a hint of frustration, or maybe uncertainty, flashes across his face.
"Hey," he calls, a doubtful half-smile on his face.
She runs.
--
Task number one: Is it worth making a story out of it?
Task number two: Listen to "Bach Break". There's a link, like, two mouse-clicks away on my profile. You have NO EXCUSE for not listening. At all. It takes up a grand total of two and a half minutes, people. :D
And finally, after probably the longest collective Author's Note in the history of FF, I'll leave you with this:
I love you guys.
Thanks for being awesome. :)
--Phina