/…/
Weiss sat against the wall by the stage entrance door, head in her hands. Jaune paced back and forth in front of her, sweating profusely.
"How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?"
"I'm sorry, Jaune."
She lifted her head to look at him, his black Metallica t-shirt clinging damply to his body.
"Weiss, there is nearly a thousand people in that audience right now. And there's a lineup around the block. How many people did you invite?"
"I didn't invite anyone! I didn't even tell anyone either, except for my mom and my brother!"
"The bar manager's been up my ass about this. They don't have nearly the building capacity for this. She said the fire marshall might shut her down!"
She groaned.
"I wasn't expecting this."
"I wasn't either! I don't know if I can play in front of this many people!"
She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and flipped through her various social media accounts. Then she found it. A post from her brother's corporate account.
"Oh, hell."
"What?"
"Look."
She groaned and handed her phone up to him. Jaune read the post aloud.
"The Schnee Family is proud to announce that Weiss Schnee will be the featured guest artist of a local band, Colour Theory, tonight, March tenth, at the Rockette bar in Argus! Don't miss it, space will fill up fast! Are you kidding me?! Holy hell, this post has been shared eleven thousand times!"
"This must be revenge."
"Revenge?! For what?"
She sighed deeply and put her face back in her hands.
"I took vacation time to come play music with you guys and gave him zero notice. Just called him and said I was leaving. I told him yesterday where we'd be playing in case he or mom wanted to come."
Jaune handed her phone back to her, and she gripped it almost tightly enough to crack the screen.
"Is your brother really that vindictive?"
She sighed into her knees.
"Absolutely he is."
Jaune rubbed his face, one hand holding him against the brick wall.
"I'm going to put my hands around his tiny throat next time I see him."
"I wouldn't advise that, he'd probably enjoy it. I'm so sorry, Jaune."
Fingers stood a few feet away, calmly sipping his coffee, nearly burned out cigarette between his fingers.
"You two are such drama queens."
Jaune let out a pathetic laugh.
"Ezra, you're a professional musician, you're used to this. I'm not!"
The man shrugged, his suit jacket wrinkling.
"Eh, ten people, ten thousand people, it's the same difference. 'Sides, you won't be able to see them through the stage lights anyway."
Jaune trudged over to him and grabbed his coffee out of his hands, and drained it. Fingers let him, grinning wider than most humans could. Jaune coughed and put the mug down on the picnic table, knocking the ashtray onto the ground.
"What am I supposed to do to get used to it?"
Fingers put out his smoke against the brick wall and flicked the butt into the open trash can near the door. He turned to Jaune and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Don't play for the audience. Play for one of us instead."
"What do you mean one of you?"
For the first time since she'd met him, Fingers took off his sunglasses and stared at Jaune with piercing green eyes. He poked Jaune in the chest with the side of the glasses frame.
"Pretend the only person listening is one of your band. Like for example, the pretty girl with the Gretsch who'll be standing next to ya."
Jaune chuckled.
"I think that might make it harder, actually."
Weiss lifted her head and raised an eyebrow, suddenly interested in the conversation. Fingers laughed and put his sunglasses back on. The stage door opened and the manager, a large older woman covered in spiderweb tattoos, stuck her head out and glared at the three of them.
"Okay, I'm cuttin' 'em off. No more're gettin' in! The only reason I'm lettin' y'all get away with floodin' my bar like this's 'cuz of how much I'm gonna make tonight."
Jaune sighed and drooped his shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Missy."
"Y'all better be. Now get in here. I can't have riff-raff waitin' any longer."
She turned and left back into the building, flicking her grey-blond hair at Jaune pointedly. Fingers' smirk never wavered as he patted Jaune on the back and ushered him towards the door.
"I live for the day when Missy puts the safety of the public above profits. But today's not that day. Lets go knock her building down, eh kids?"
Weiss laughed, finally, and struggled to stand up, knees fighting her the whole way up. Jaune helped her the last few inches, and they stood for a moment, staring stupidly at one another. She could see the panic had left his face finally and he seemed not at ease but at least ready to go. Weiss shook her head, her nerves having changed to excitement.
"Yeah, let's."
She led them inside, through the short narrow hallway that snaked claustrophobically backstage. They made it about twenty feet into the building before Jaune stopped and doubled over. She halted, and Fingers nearly bowled over her.
"Oh, I can't do this!"
The panic, which had vanished not thirty seconds ago, had returned to his face and turned it a sheet white. Weiss huffed, and pushed past the tall, lanky keyboardist and grabbed Jaune by the shoulders and lifted him up and pinned him to the brick wall.
"Jaune!"
"I can't do this, Weiss! I can't go out there!"
"Jaune!"
She shook his shoulders against the wall. He barely met her glare. It was usually hard for her to be intimidating, being ten inches shorter than he was, but with how much he was shaking she figured he was compromised anyway.
"Look at me!"
He did, his blue eyes darting around her face nervously.
"What was it you said on that day, Jaune? The day the war ended? When you were asked if you were scared?"
He quivered in her grasp as she put her weight into him, pressing his back harder into the wall.
"What?"
"Answer me!"
He shrunk further.
"I said–"
"Fear is an illusion held by those with something to lose! That's what you said! Now, tell me!"
She put her forehead against his, her eyes burning into his with a fire she hadn't used in many years. She held this pose for a moment, her hands gripping his shoulders harder and harder. Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she let go and took a step back, relaxed.
"What's there to lose?"
Jaune squinted at her, confused as he slid down the wall.
"Uh, nothing?"
She put her hands on her hips and leaned over him.
"Correct! You're a great guitarist, Jaune, and a great performer."
"But I've never performed in front of this many–"
"Which one of us embarrassed himself in front of his whole school by doing a synchronized dance in way too short a dress?"
Jaune sighed and hung his head.
"Okay, point taken."
"You're the bravest man I know, Jaune. Now get the hell up."
"Alright, Weiss."
Fingers leaned over the two of them.
"I'm sorry, what was that about a dress, bud?"
Weiss put her hand in his face.
"Ezra, it's a long story that we don't have time for. C'mon. Let's go play some music. Like we used to."
Jaune nodded.
"Like we used to."
Weiss extended her hand down to him. He looked up at her for a moment, their eyes meeting. A strength returned to his face, determination present deep in his gaze. With a breath, he took her hand and let her hoist him back to his feet.
"We've got this."
He nodded, rolling out his shoulders.
"Yeah. We do."
Weiss grinned and walked backwards toward the stage entrance, watching as Jaune followed. She turned around and guided them through the hallway, around a corner, and to the staging area that sat behind a curtain from the actual stage. The murmur from the crowd in the bar was nearly deafening. Moose and Fake Steve were waiting for them, sipping their drinks, which got put down as soon as their eyes met.
"Took you guys long enough," Moose teased. "We were about to do our two-man juggling act."
Weiss rolled her eyes.
"We just needed a moment to cool down, we're good now."
Moose grinned.
"Good, 'cuz neither of us can juggle."
"I can." Fake Steve interrupted.
Moose glanced at him for a moment.
"Huh. You learn something new every day. Anyway, here are your headsets."
Weiss took the monitor earpiece from the man and clipped it on, clipping the comms box to the back of her belt. After a few beeps indicating calibration, a quiet hum filled her right ear. Jaune and Fingers did the same, readying up. Moose picked up his bass, a satin black Schecter Studio-6, from a stand and the red guitar next to it, and handed it to her.
"Right, here's your axe. Big Ed said he'd loan you some of his for the show, they're in the rack next to your amp. Got it?"
Weiss nodded, slinging the Gretsch's strap over her shoulders. Moose handed Jaune his acoustic, a beautifully trimmed sunburst Gibson J45, and Ezra his Gambler hat.
"Tell him I greatly appreciate it."
Moose winked at her.
"Tell 'im yourself at our next show."
"Presuming that I'm coming, are we?"
The tall faunus grinned, leaning back and glancing through a gap in the curtain that separated the backstage area from the audience.
"If you can pull this kind of crowd every time, damn right you're coming back. 'Aight, let's go on, gents."
Weiss chuckled, adjusting her guitar strap, and watched as Moose, Fingers, and Fake Steve sauntered through the curtain and onto the stage, having to open the flap extra wide to accommodate Moose's antlers, and left her and Jaune alone for a moment. A cheer erupted from the audience, and the thick stage curtain did little to muffle it. Weiss glanced up at Jaune, and examined the look on his face. A mixture of focus, fear, and a handful of other things pulsed through him. She could honestly say she had never seen him like this before. Not in the Ever After, not during the war. She smiled up at him and grabbed his hand.
"C'mon. It'll be fine."
Jaune blinked out of his daze and looked down at her, then down at their hands.
"It'll be fine."
"You know why, Jaune?"
"Because you're always right?"
She nodded, a sly grin in her cheeks.
"Because I'm always right. After you, big guy."
She let go of his hand and tapped him twice on the back, gently pushing him towards the stage entrance. He held fast to the neck of his guitar with one hand and reached for the curtain with the other. She watched him take a deep breath, close his eyes for a moment, then finally open the curtain and step out onto the stage. Weiss shook her head with a grin, before following.
"Wooooo!"
She raised a hand to wave at the crowd out of instinct as she crossed the stage to her mic and amp. The stage lights blinded her, and now she understood why Fingers always wore sunglasses. The man's voice came through to her earpiece as soon as she plugged her guitar in, barely audible under the cacophony of cheering and screaming from the audience.
"Ready set. Levels to mid. Take it away guys."
Weiss grabbed the capo off the headstock of her guitar and slid it up to the third fret, then pulled a pick out from under the sweatband on her wrist. She looked over to Jaune. He nodded back at her.
"Showtime."
They let loose on their guitars, G major, down to D major, then back up to the C-add-9. The crowd erupted in cheers that threatened to drown out the music. Weiss glanced over to Fingers, standing next to an antique Lowrey d-575, and behind a beautiful woodgrain-trimmed VOX Continental set atop his Phantom-8, and watched him raise the level sliders to counteract the audience cheering. It wasn't The Who loud, not yet anyway. They played through the progression again, and Jaune leaned into his microphone.
"~Broke into the old apartment! This is where we used to live!~"
She kept her lead loose, bobbing along to the beat and trying to remember to keep her tongue in her mouth.
"~Broken glass, broke and hungry, broken hearts and broken bones! This is where we used to live!~"
Weiss stood on her effects pedal, almost too hard, and mellowed out her tone for the verse, dropping down to the E minor.
"~Why did you paint the walls? Why did you clean the floors? Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?~"
She kicked the effects box again, and nearly jumped off the ground for the next G major.
"~This is where we used to live! Why did you keep the mousetrap? Why did you keep the dishrack?~"
If he was still scared, the glow in his cheeks and the power in his voice hid it well as he powered through the song like he had written it. Weiss couldn't stop from smiling.
"~These things used to be mine, I guess they still are, I want 'em back!~"
They stopped for a beat, their silence filled with cheers, screams and whooping from the crowd. Then straight back down on the G major.
"~Broke into the old apartment! Forty-two steps from the street!~"
She glanced around as they played. Moose had his foot up on his amp, his bass slung low on its strap, almost below his belt, and Fake Steve was already beading up with sweat on his forehead. Both men were grinning ear to ear, clearly reveling in the attention from the massive crowd.
"~Crooked landing! Crooked Landlord! Narrow laneway filled with crooks! This is where we used to live!~"
She stood on a different effects pedal this time, for a more ethereal lazer-like tone. Jaune's big J45 needed no effects. It sounded sweet as-is.
"~Why did they pave the lawn? Why did they change the locks? Why did I have to break in? I only came here to talk! This is where we used to live!`"
She kicked the pedal back again, her G5220 lighting up like a firework with its tone. The whole time, no one in the audience was seated.
"~How is the neighbour downstairs? How is her temper this year? I turned up your TV and stomped on the floor just for fun!~"
They settled into the bridge, dropping to the E minor again. Fingers did something with the mic input and gave Jaune's voice a hollow tone like an old radio.
"~I know we don't live here anymore… We bought an old house on the Danforth… She loves me and her body keeps me warm…"
And everything was kicked back to overdrive.
"~And I'm happy again! But this is where we used to live! Broke into the old apartment!~"
Jaune stretched his voice as hard as it would go for the lyrics, his vocal quality nearly breaking up at the top end.
"~Tore the phone out of the wall! Only memories, fading memories! Blending in to a dull tableaux!~"
Weiss leaned into her mic to sing the backup harmony, as did Moose and Fingers.
"~I want them back! This is where we used to live! I want them back! This is where we used to live!~"
She fiddled with her tone knobs for a moment, settling in with them turned a little spicier. They all leaned into their mics for the final lyric.
"~I want them back…~"
Her guitar rang out over the rest, the music settling as they ended the song. The crowd exploded with cheers, shaking the walls and windows and probably nearly knocking them off stage if it weren't for their instruments and the mess of patch cords and data cables at their feet. Jaune smiled brightly at the crowd, his nervousness and fear from four minutes before had vanished. He lifted the strap of his guitar off and held it by the neck for a moment, waving at the crowd.
"Thank you. Thank you. My name is Jaune Arc. We are Colour Theory."
The crowd erupted into more and more cheering. She beamed as she watched him gaze over the sea of screaming faces. Far off in the back corner of the room, she caught the eyes of the bar owner, who gave her a thumbs up and a wink.
"On bass for you today, Meredith Raine. Playing the keys, Ezra Waterson, and behind the drums tonight, it's Stephen Stills. But not the real one of course."
He turned and looked in her direction. Weiss caught his eye and grinned.
"And the person most of you probably came here to see, our featured guest guitarist tonight is my good friend Weiss Schnee."
The crowd erupted into more cheers and whistles. Weiss flushed red, and waved and what she knew were her adoring fans. Most of whom had indeed come to see just her. She had a hard time not grinning, actually, as she pulled the guitar strap back off her shoulders and set the guitar down in the rack to her left.
"Maybe if you guys are good, she'll even sing for you tonight."
Weiss scoffed at Jaune's peculiar sense of humor as she reached for a different guitar. There, nestled beside Big Ed's two loaner Epiphones was her old Fender Telecaster. In the few days she had been in Argus, her, Jaune, and the boys had been on a hunt for parts to put the broken guitar back into one piece again. And they had managed. The snapped mahogany neck had been replaced with a trick rosewood one with a carbon truss rod, the fretboard had been reconditioned with all new bell bronze frets, and after finding out that the neck pickup's wiring had been pinched, even it had been replaced with a vintage nickel-top Gibson PAF in place of the factory open coil. They even managed to get a local carpentry shop to route and glue a body brace into the back to hold the bridge and nut in place again. Strung with a set of Ernie Ball strings, it was a true hot-rod guitar. Now it really deserved the title of 'Troublemaker'.
She slung the strap over her shoulders and stood up straight. Jaune had also swapped guitars, putting his J-45 into the rack and taking up his Player series Mustang 90, finished in what Fender called 'Burgundy Mist Metallic', but what she and the boys had been calling 'gloss pink' since he had unveiled it the day before. Irrespective of the colour, the guitar's powerful MP90 pickups carried a dark and sinister tone as he started to play their next song, starting on a somber and bluesy fingerstyle A minor, stepping down to A-minor-over-G, then D-over-F-sharp, then F major. His fingers danced around the chords so effortlessly. And as he pulled up to the G major and D major, the crowd started to cheer again.
Weiss adjusted her tone knobs one last time, before stepping up to the front of the stage as Jaune played one last cycle through E major. As soon as he pulled back up to the A minor, she layed into the middle of the neck, flowing a slick, almost sultry lead over Jaune's dark and rich rhythm. Her lead followed his chord changes, with minimal complexity for now, and she kept her string bending to an acceptable level for the time being. As they rounded out the progression, she leaned back into the final note as Jaune leaned into his mic.
"~Well I look at you all, see the love, there that's sleeping… while my guitar gently weeps…~"
Between lines she added just the faintest hint of a lead riff, just to taste.
"~And I look at the floor, and I see, it needs sweeping… still my guitar gently wee–ps…~"
She played another tasty riff and pulled the progression up to the A major for the chorus.
"~And I don't know why-hy-hy… nobody told you… how to… un-fold your lo-ove…~"
The cheers in the crowd had calmed down, as most people seemed to be mesmerized by the smoothness of the riff and licks she was feeding them between lines of Jaune's singing. Frankly, she was a little mesmerized by his singing.
"~And I don't know ho-ow-ow… someone controlled you… they bought and so-old you-ou-ou…"
She didn't quite understand how someone who wasn't a professional singer had such finite control of his voice. Jaune's ability to change from a buttery-smooth falsetto in the chorus to a deep and dark baritone in the verse rivaled some of the operatic singers she used to train and record with. And he could do it while playing guitar. She just smiled and fired out another nasty riff in key. She leaned into her mic to pickup the harmony vocals.
"~Well, I look, at the world, and I no-tice it's turning… Still my guitar gently weeps…"
Since she knew it was going to happen automatically, she let her face contort into funny shapes as she played the lead interludes, and let her posture get just as weird.
"~From every mistake, we must sure-ly be learning… Yeah! But still my guitar gently wee-eeps~ Weiss Schnee, everybody."
This was her chance. They had all agreed to stretch this section of the song out for her, to give her a longer solo. She certainly was going to take the opportunity given. So as Jaune played the rhythm, Moose's bass filled in the bottom, Fingers' synth added a lovely depth, and Fake Steve kept them all in time, Weiss opened up her entire soul for a solo. She bent string, she grabbed harmonics, she dialed her ability up beyond eleven. Even her body got into the solo, joints folding and hips undulating as she powered out the slickest, sexiest, smoothest solo in A minor she could muster. Her Telecaster sang its heart out through the custom mismatched pickups, as if the years it had spent in pieces had been spent waiting for this exact moment.
She bit down on her bottom lip and slung her guitar sideways as she approached the edge of the stage. The tightly wound extra-light gauge strings dug into her fingers as she fired them up and down the neck of the shining white Telecaster. It had been far too long since she had played like this, played this hard and felt such attachment to the music. Felt this kind of passion. She put her foot up on the amplifier at the very edge of the stage and leaned way over the edge, playing almost entirely by instinct, bringing her right hand up to the neck to join the left with string tapping. Sweat poured down her face. Was it the heat from the stage lights or from the emotion she was putting into her instrument, she didn't know. Not that she cared about the difference.
As the band came around again, and her time for solo was finished, she relented and let the final note ring out. Jaune's singing filled the gap as she stepped back from the edge of the stage to a chorus of cheers and hollering. She felt high, her head spinning as she muted her strings and looked to the other members of the band. They kept playing, but returned a bewildered stare. The few times they had practiced this song in Jaune's sister's basement, she had only played the lead the same way as a certain blind guitarist from Patch, Jeff Healey, might have. But on this day, in front of this crowd, she played with much more intensity and complexity than clearly her bandmates thought she was capable of. On that evening, she played like she always wanted to.
Like a goddamn rockstar.
/…/
Their set was nearly done. They had been playing for nearly an hour straight, and having just come down off of both 'Land of Confusion' and illScarlet's 'Nothing Special', two very high intensity songs, it was time for a break. The crowd cheered and hollered as she and Jaune took off their guitars and panted for a moment. Jaune waved at the crowd and leaned into the microphone.
"Thank you. Thank you. So we're nearly done for the night. Just a couple more songs left. So right now we're gonna take a little breather. Give my boys a moment to go get a drink of water."
He gestured to their bandmates. They waved at the crowd as they departed behind the curtain again. Weiss took a drink from her water bottle on her amp and wiped her brow with a hand towel. It smelled like sweat and electronics.
"So something special, just for you guys, Weiss and I are going to play you a song that means a lot to us."
Weiss smiled, set down her water bottle, and crossed the stage to the other side where two chairs and two mics had been set up. Jaune picked up his big Gibson acoustic again and joined her, sitting down to her left. He handed the guitar to her, and she saddled it neatly in her lap as she sat down. She took a quick second to familiarize herself with the guitar, impressed by the custom electric-style narrow neck and super tight action.
"Many many years ago, we had this friend at school with us. A lovely woman, from right here in Argus. She taught us about strength, about friendship. About how to get gracefully punched really, really hard in the face."
A few chuckles crossed through the crowd. Weiss too snickered as she tuned down a half-step quietly. Jaune grinned at his own joke, then settled his face back down to a more somber one. She slipped on a thumb pick and two index picks, since she had cut her nails a little too short to forgo them.
"But she also taught us how to lose someone just as gracefully. We miss her very much. This is for her."
Weiss began immediately, picking away on the B minor, lifting then dropping her middle finger, before switching down to the G major and A major. Jaune leaned into his mic.
"~A hundred days have made me older, since the last time that I saw your pretty face…~"
She played through the chords again, keeping time with her left heel against the floor.
"~A thousand lies have made me colder, but I don't think I can look at this the same…~"
Jaune kept his gaze out across the audience, as if he was looking for someone. She just looked down at her fingers, dancing between the strings.
"~But all the miles that separate… disappear now when I'm dreamin' of your face…~"
She dropped down to the D major. Jaune opened up his voice.
"~I'm here without you, baby… but you're still on my lonely mind, I think about you, baby, and I dream about you all the time…~"
She stepped back up to the D major, finger picking every string and letting the big Gibson sing.
"~I'm here without you, baby… but you're still WITH me in my dreams… and tonight, girl, it's only you and me-ohhh…~"
As she played through the chords again, she lifted her head and looked out over the crowd. Silent, and reverent, many of them held their lighters high and slowly swayed them back and forth to the slow beat. Her fingers walked up the strings, back to the B minor.
"~The miles just keep rollin', as the people leave their way to say hello… I've heard this life is over-rated, but I hope that it gets better as we go…oh-oh-yeah, yeah…~"
His guitar played so smoothly. A custom order for his birthday, it had the tight, easy to play action and thin neck of her Gretsch hardtop, but the depth of sound and tonal strength of the Les Paul acoustic she used to love. A hot-rod guitar to match her Fender, she thought as they played through the chorus again. She easily danced back down to the B minor as they moved into the song's bridge.
"~Everything I know, and anywhere I go, yeah, it gets hard but it won't take away my love…~"
Weiss leaned into her mic as well to sing along as she strummed out the chords for this part, opting to not try and fingerpick and sing at the same time.
"~When the last one falls… when it's all said and done, it gets hard but it won't take… away… my love… woah-oh-oh-oh-ohhhh…~"
She leaned back and returned to the fingerpicking, playing through the chords of the verse one last time, dropping down to the D major.
"~I'm here without you baby, but you're still ON MY lonely mi-ind, I think about you baby, and I dream about you ALL the time~"
She was suddenly pulled back into the memory of the little music store in Mantle. That night where Jaune had grown up and accepted the loss of their friend. He had held his heart in his hands and showed just how much he had cared. He truly still missed her. But he had accepted it. It was present in his voice, and the way he sang to the sea of swaying lighters.
"~I'm here without you baby, but you're still WITH ME in my dreams… and tonight, girl, it's only you and mee-yeah… yeah, yeah… oh-oh-woah… I'm all a-lone…~"
She let the last B minor ring out over the audience, who erupted into a respectful applause, and they waved back at them. Weiss smiled and lifted the guitar out of her lap, handing it over to him. He smiled at her as he saddled it up, and leaned back into his mic.
"Thank you, Weiss, that was some very good guitar playing."
She tried not to either tear up or blush as she leaned into hers.
"You're very welcome, Jaune."
The rest of the band had returned from their little break and had picked up their instruments once more.
"Do you want to sing one for the nice ladies and gentlemen?"
"I think I would," she said, turning to face the crowd. "This is a song from, ooh, thirty years ago, that I only heard recently and I realized just how much it resonated with me."
Jaune tuned the guitar back up again as she spoke.
"After the war ended, I had to mend a good deal of personal relationships. Including two that never should have broken in the first place. But we managed. And we're a family again. And all is well."
Jaune laughed as he put away his tuner, away from his mic. Weiss side eyed him, grinning.
"But I am going to strangle one of them for that social media post you all saw and flooded Missy's bar to way over capacity."
A chuckle crossed the crowd, and Jaune actually snorted into the back of his hand. Weiss laughed along too, and sighed.
"But seriously, we greatly appreciate you all coming tonight. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Jaune, take it away."
Through the cheers and clapping, Jaune started to pick away at his guitar in a slow and resonant rhythm. A simple and very common chord progression, just C major, G major, A minor, then F major over and over again. She let him play through the progression twice, before she leaned forward in her chair and grabbed the mic with both hands.
"~I've got… money in my pocket… I like the colour of my hair…~"
She elbowed Jaune gently.
"~I've got a friend who loves me, got a house, I've got a car, I've got a car~"
He snickered down at his fingers. She kept singing, smiling brightly and employing all of her lung strength.
"~I've got a good mother… and her voice is what keeps me here… feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward, be yourself…~"
With her vocal range, she didn't need to use falsetto to reach the upper register. But she chose to, using it to keep her tone soft and demure.
"~and I… I've never wanted anything, no I've… no I've… I've never wanted anything, so bad…so ba-ad~"
The rest of the band joined in, Fake Steve playing a slow folk beat with a set of brushes, Fingers bringing in just a hint of organ in the background, and Moose filling in the bottom on his bass.
"~Cardboard… MASKS of all the people I've been… thrown out… with all the rusted, dented, tangled, god-damn miseries!~"
Jaune upped the strength of his playing to match her voice as she started to open her voice up.
"~You could say I'm hard to hold, but if you knew me you'd know… I've got a good brother… and his strength is what makes me fly!~"
Obviously she had altered one lyric of the song from it's original, and if the writer had known the story she most definitely would have approved of Weiss's creative license.
"~Feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward, be yourself!~"
Jaune returned the intensity back down to the gentle fingerpicking, as she brought her voice up to the soft falsetto once again.
""~and I… I've never wanted anything, no I've… no I've… I've never wanted anything, so bad…so ba-ad~"
She regretted not actually inviting her mother. But she figured someone was recording the show, and she would see it eventually. Actually, she trusted that her brother had probably sent someone specifically to record it right under her nose. She smiled at the thought and kept singing.
"~I've got… money in my pocket… I like the colour of my hair…~"
This time Jaune elbowed her as she sang.
"~I've got a friend who loves me, got a house, I've got a car~"
She elbowed that dolt right back.
"~I've got a good mother… and her voice is what keeps me here… feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward, be yourself…~"
The band rounded out the chord progression as they finished out, and the crowd erupted again in applause and cheering as her and Jaune stood up from their chairs and bowed deeply. The floor and stage rumbled as the huge crowd jumped up and down, camera flashbulbs blinding and screams and cheers deafening them as they waved. It was magical. Weiss realized that the last time she was on stage, there was no cheering, no weeping, and no cameras. And she certainly hadn't felt this… free.
She glanced up to Jaune, marveling at the stars in his eyes. She watched as he pulled the microphone out of its clip with one hand and brought it up to his mouth.
"Thank you! We were Colour Theory! Goodnight!"
Weiss blew a kiss to the cheers of the audience as they both turned and crossed the stage again, slipping through the curtain and out of sight. The cheering and applause continued, unaffected by their absence. As they reconvened backstage, she took a moment to wipe the sweat off her brow and finally take a deep breath. Moose punched her in the shoulder.
"And you said you weren't a prodigy!"
She laughed, punching him back.
"I'm not!" she turned to Jaune, who's smile stretched far and wide. "Feel stressed anymore?"
He beamed.
"I feel amazing!"
She cocked an eyebrow.
"Good enough for an encore?"
He nodded.
"Hell yeah."
Moose leaned around them.
"Encore!? We didn't practice anything else!"
Jaune shrugged.
"Then play along! You'll figure it out. Weiss?"
She winked at him.
"I think I know of something."
She turned and led them back on stage. As soon as the curtain parted and the audience saw them, the cheering increased in volume and intensity two fold. Weiss and Jaune strode right back up to the front of the stage, waving gleefully. Jaune leaned into his mic.
"Alright…"
She reached down to the rack of guitars next to her amp and picked up her Telecaster again. On the other side of the stage, Jaune grabbed his pink Mustang again, and slung it on. Saying nothing more, she turned up her volume knob and dialed back her tone knob, and began quietly strumming out on B major, lifting and dropping her middle finger on the fourth beat of every bar. She looked to Jaune, who nodded knowingly, as did Fingers, Moose, and Fake Steve, the latter of whom recognized the song instantly and began playing along the appropriate swing sixteenths on the hi-hat. Jaune grinned and leaned into his mic, as the cacophony of cheering and applause continued.
"~They shot a movie once… in my hometown…~"
She dropped to A major as Moose's bass joined in, filling the bottom.
"~Everybody was in it… for miles around…~"
Back up to the B, and Jaune pulled in a spicy lead under his own singing, gain knob on his amp turned up.
"~Down at the speedway… some kinda Elvis thing… Well I ain't no movie star… but I can get behind anything~"
She and Jaune both hit a hard A major and let it ring. Jaune grinned wide, waiting for a moment, before taking a breath and leaning back in.
"~Yeah, I can get behind anything!~"
/…/