Fic: Another Round for You
Jul. 6th, 2010 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labyrinth2015A year ago, someone wrote me a comment that rebooted my world. Six months ago, someone wrote me a story which I treasured more that diamonds and pearls and cute little Pokemans. It’s my turn, now. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frackin_sweet: thank you for “Wheels”, for Lily, for the gift of your friendship. The age you are, every year? Is the perfect age for you. ♥.
Also for myquack - I hope you have the best day, sweetness.
There’s Another Round for You
Neal Tiemann/Lin Palmer, [PG-13]. Prequel to Wishing That Such Heights Were Lower.
Amazing, insightful betasimlikat & otherbella. 3,000+ words.
Life on the road makes it hard to hold on to anything - but there might just be another round for two like-minded souls.
For![[community profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo and ![[profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
schmoop_bingo : burns, cuddling by the fireside
Not for profit work of fiction. Neal Tiemann and David Cook belong to themselves; no libel or privacy violations intended. OFC and other AIRN characters belong to me. Title is from "Wheels", by the Foo Fighters, 2009. Fair use asserted. “Well I wanted something better; I wished for something new/Yeah, I wanted something beautiful, I wished for something true...
When the wheels come down (When the wheels come down)/When the wheels touch ground (When the wheels touch ground)/And you feel like it's all over/There's another round for you.”
She'd met him in a bar, the day after her last birthday. Those days she still talked to guys in bars. There was nothing quite like meeting a stranger's gaze across a brace of vodka shots and the flash fire of sexual attraction.
In and out, that was her. She'd paid her dues, worked as a grip and lighting flunky on the college band circuit; after her first big break with Kill Hannah in 2006, she could afford to pick and choose the bands she worked with. But life on the road made it hard to hold on to anything. Hello and goodbye, stage sets went up, the wheels went around - and when they came down, there was another town, another round or three of fiery drinks and attractive strangers, and then she'd leave them all behind. She was well into her third decade and some things might be all over for her, and, really, she was okay with that.
It was just business at first. Chi-chi cocktail events in L.A. were for pressing the flesh with industry execs who were eye-level with her rack, and carefully-coiffed agents who regarded her warily, as if she might throw her drink at them or rest it on their heads. Bars were where the real decision-makers hung out; the musicians whom she wanted to make her clients - the darker and seedier, the more interesting the music, and the music-makers.
She knew who he was the minute he sat down. Up-and-coming alt-rockers M8B had been on her radar for a while now. Their sophomore record "Amalgam" was one of RCA's best-selling albums of the year, going platinum in a matter of months. Also: she had a mostly-hidden thing for lead guitarists. (Not hidden from Lilah, though; her wing-man rolled her eyes and feigned interest in her glass of Merlot.)
She had an even-more-hidden thing for sci-fi ink, too. The bar lights shone on the red and green of his Klingon forearm tattoo.
"Neal Tiemann?"
Snakebites glinted in his lower lip. Who’d have known - that one she might even have hidden from herself. "Depends on who’s asking."
"I'm Belinda Palmer." She stuck out her hand; she saw the famous Kurt Vonnegut quote inked across his knuckles as he gripped and then released.
"I know who you are,” he said. “Zac Pereira said you worked with Wynn-Marsalis on the Fray Chicago dates last year. I like your sets – cool, but not too out there."
She'd heard about Tiemann’s meticulous attention to detail, but she was still pretty impressed: she wouldn’t have thought him this familiar with her technical world. Then again, M8B had spent two and a half months out of 2010 on tour in Europe; it was good to know someone had been paying attention. “Thanks. I really liked your new album. You guys touring again next year?”
“North and South America. We missed the stadium circuit when we toured in ‘09, and now Dave wants to play the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Huh.” Lin was reminded of M8B’s moody, volatile lead singer, which cooled her jets somewhat - that kind of fucking diva boss she could do without. “David Cook won’t find the Hollywood Bowl in Brazil.”
“Apparently we’re pretty big in Brazil,” said Neal, grinning, and she had to swallow a little. Definitely a thing.
“You guys need someone to work your tour stage?” she asked. This was just business, despite the dude’s ink, his guitarist’s forearms, his crooked, attractive smile. And if it wasn’t, well, there was a first time for everything. Hello and goodbye probably worked for clients too.
His grin grew thoughtful. “Yeah, we do. We start interviews next week, but why don’t you stop by the office Monday, come see the guys and Grant?”
“Show you what I got? Be glad to,” she said. Well, she wasn’t doing that well on the just-business front.
“I like that,” he told her, and she said, “That’s what they always say.”
Beside her, Lilah rolled her eyes again. Lilah would never say anything, but she was used to Lin’s bar-side manner; had seen this dance time and again – watched Lin catch alight in a brief conflagration of fire before it was time for the wheels to lift off once more.
Lilah’s snort wasn’t lost on Neal. Lin could see his gears shift, how the man’s manner became deliberately charming. Not just another dumb guitarist, not just a technically-minded rocker who could talk touring and stages. Lin watched as he introduced himself to her best friend, and made clever, cynical Lilah laugh despite herself.
Somewhere inside Lin, something caught fire; a wish for something better than the usual hello and goodbye.
Neal wrapped up his music-industry anecdote and settled back onto his bar-stool. His manner was deliberately casual. “Buy you ladies another round?”
She didn’t miss Lilah’s almost imperceptible nod of approval. “Why not?” she answered, and watched his eyes light up.
*
Four months later, in Sao Paolo, she watched something else catch fire.
It was Dave’s fault. Fucking diva front-men, she should have totally known better than to leave them to their own devices. The ring of fire laid into the stage footlights was a dummy, made of sparks and cunning light effects, but the braziers flanking the stage, the signature smelting columns of the White Gold Tour, had a real ignition point and burned with a real flame.
She’d told them this a dozen times. Dave and Neal had eyeballed the engineering themselves, they’d used the flaming columns in Rio and Bogota and Buenos Aires without incident.
Until the night that Dave, buoyed by the screaming Brazilian crowd, decided to try to climb the left-hand column.
Lin had no idea why the M8B lead singer had thought the plaster would be able to take his weight. Dave was probably high on something; it was an occupational hazard with the rock scene, though she had to say M8B seemed to run a comparatively clean ship.
Standing in her customary spot in the left wing of the stage, she had a perfect view of Dave as he made his run. He first jumped onto one of the high racetracks that bracketed the stage. The metal shook as he ripped into the guitar solo from “Addiction”. And then, as Neal joined him in the bridge, shredding chords from his guitar, Dave let his white Gibson hang loose and took a flying leap onto the ridge of the flaming column.
Of course the fucking thing couldn’t hold him up. Of course it fell over like a tree. Something shorted out, and the whole stage was plunged into darkness.
Dave kicked himself free of the column before it collapsed. Neal reached out to steady him; they crashed to the ground, and then there was fire on her stage.
She usually froze in a crisis. One night Johnny Radtke had trashed an amp and nearly started an electrical fire, and she’d been immobilized by shock while her guys had dashed to the rescue.
But tonight she surprised herself by being the first one out there.
The fire on the fallen column had guttered out – she’d always used a limited ignition source after the Kill Hannah near-miss – but somehow it had set fire to the corduroy lapels of Neal’s jacket. She didn’t pause, grabbed the jacket by its shoulders and pulled it bodily off Neal. Then the stage lit up again, Zac had re-routed the generators around the fused circuit, and someone grabbed the smoking jacket from her and the air filled with the fine spray of fire extinguishing foam.
She waved her hands in front of her face, coughing. Unbelievably, music started to fill the air, amplified by the re-routed power.
“You okay, Lin?” A narrow, concerned face appeared at her elbow: Grant Delano, M8B’s workaholic chief tour manager. “Neal, let’s get you offstage. Guitar Sub One, you’re a go –“
Someone ran past her, picking up a cable and jacking in as he went. She let Grant hustle her into the wings, Neal beside her. She sat down on a folding chair as if her legs couldn’t hold her up. A rush of activity swirled around and past her, leaving her untouched in its wake.
Dimly, she heard the fans continuing to go crazy outside, shrieking even louder than before. She didn’t believe Dave was all right, that he was more than all right - he was still on stage, playing and singing like a madman. Fucker must be made of flame retardant material.
In a chair beside her, Neal was complaining loudly about the ministrations of the tour medic. “Damn it, Grace, I’m fine! – It looks worse than it is -!”
“Damn it, you only play a doctor on stage!” Dr. Grace was saying crossly. “Hold still, or I’m gonna send you to the Sao Paolo emergency room, where you don’t want to be, believe me!”
Lin tried not to stare. She’d thought she’d only pulled off Neal’s jacket, but she’d taken Neal’s shirt with it. She obviously didn’t know her own strength. Neal was all lean muscle, pale skin under the colorful ink of the myriad tattoos, blotchy around the chest where he’d been burned, or maybe that was just from her ripping his shirt off him.
“Are you really okay?” she asked him. She had no idea why her voice sounded so angry; he looked at her, surprised and a little amused.
Dr. Grace snorted. “He’s lucky David didn’t set fire to his head. Lin, can you stop him from going out there again? He can let Monty sub for him until encores. I’m gonna see if I can find out where the nearest hospital is.”
Lin nodded, and Grace bustled off.
“I’ll live,” Neal said to her, and Lin suddenly realized she was shaking, with a hot, toe-curling rage that made it difficult to see straight.
He realized it too, because he took her hand. “Seriously, Lin, no harm done,” he said, grinning a little, and she totally wanted to smack him for it.
Instead, she said, “I am so gonna kill him.”
She meant grandstanding, high-on-whatever Dave Cook, and Neal grinned more.
“Boss-icide? That’ll go down well on your resume.”
“Fuck the resume,” she said. “Someone could’ve really been hurt. You could’ve been -”
For some reason, she couldn’t continue. Her world shivered around its edges. She really needed to stop shaking, or she might actually start to cry, and that would really fuck the resume.
“Me? Not on your watch,” he said, and seriously, she was really having problems seeing straight; it looked like his face was getting closer…
…and then she felt the cold of his lip-rings, the warmth of his lips, and had to shut her eyes. She let him cup her face in his calloused hands. His kiss burned itself into her bones.
A heartbeat or three later, he pulled back. His gaze was a smear of blue across her vision. “Is that...are you okay?” he asked her.
“No harm done,” she whispered back, and he chuckled.
“You’re such a romantic. How about another round?”
How about it? She’d been wishing for something new; she’d been looking for a reason. “Why not,” she said.
He kissed her again, and her world stopped turning; the wheels touched ground.
*
Fast-forward to this year. She and Neal have been together for eight months. She still can’t believe the wheels haven’t lifted off. He grounds her, and the best part of it is she doesn’t mind.
They both have meetings that morning – the Foo Fighters are heading on their 2012 winter tour and want her to be part of the team – but they meet up in the afternoon to catch Toy Story 4.
Neal looks tired. Lin knows he’s been having a hard time lately getting back into the writing groove after the White Gold tour, and lately diva Dave has been jetting around the world pretending to be a movie star. Lin’s been trying to cut Dave some slack: it must be hard taking your old life seriously when you’re busy hanging with Daniel Craig.
Lilah had warned Lin that Toy Story 4 would make her cry, and it does. Neal holds her; she kind of suspects he likes it when she acts like a sniveling female because it doesn’t happen a lot. She kind of likes it herself when he acts like a protective proto-male, because she totally doesn’t let him do it a lot, either.
After the movie, they have dinner at his apartment. Neal doesn’t spend a lot of time there. She knew he’d bought it just so he could be near to the recording studios and to Dave’s house in Hollywood Hills. Dave’s brother had lived there for a while before he’d gotten his own place. Lin has never asked Neal about Drew, she figures she knows all there is to know, anyway, and she’s okay with that.
Neal's apartment is bigger than hers, and cleaner – like all rock-stars, Neal employs a housekeeper – and has a stainless-steel-lined, space-aged faux-fireplace which is like a metaphor for pretentious, temperate L.A.
Neal’s housekeeper has cooked a delicious gourmet meal from scratch, and for dessert Neal brings a tiny birthday cake out of the kitchen, its lemon surface a wash of candlelight.
When he sings to her in the scratchy voice that adorns a dozen M8B backing vocals, she has to bite the inside of her cheek. Damn it, she’s only allowed one round of sniveling per day.
She blows out thirtysomething candles. “It’s the smoke,” she explains stupidly, dabbing at her eyes.
“Come sit by the fireplace,” he says. “No smoke there.”
The fake flames are strangely comforting. She rests her head on his shoulder as he attempts to feed her cake. “You know,” she tells him, “What you should really get is a real brick fireplace with organic wood, sequoia oils, the works.”
“We’ll have to move somewhere colder for that,” Neal says.
They stare into the fire for a while more, then Neal murmurs, "Hey, how about Yosemite? Always wanted to live there."
She thinks about it. Living in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the heart of an ecosystem that had stood for millennia. Imagines watching the colors of a real fire like she’d done when she was a girl growing up in the Chicago suburbs.
Then she realizes what he’d said, what he's asking her.
"Oh," she says. A little weakly, she adds, "I guess that'd be interesting."
He disengages, slides off the sofa and sets the plate on the floor. For some reason it takes her a while to realize he's gotten on one knee.
He hands her a scarlet Cartier box, which takes her a few tries to open because she's shaking like a leaf. Not from anger, not this time.
The diamond shines with its own arctic fire, the same fire of Neal's blue eyes.
“I love you, I wanna live with you forever. Let's get married, how about it?"
For some reason, she's having problems getting the words out. "Why not," is what she manages, at last, and laughs helplessly as he kisses her tears away.
A year ago she’d felt some things might be over; now it seemed there was another round for her, for both of them.
"You're such a romantic," he tells her, and she wipes her face on his shirt and takes hold of his collar and whispers fiercely, "I'm yours, I'm never letting you go, is that romantic enough for you?"
She kisses him like she means to take his breath away, and he groans against her mouth, "I’m not complainin’."
She lets him tug her to her feet. She’s almost as tall as he is, but he lifts her into his arms as if she weighs nothing at all.
He carries her to the bed and lies down beside her. She lets him catch his breath, leans her head into the groove of his shoulder and holds her left hand up into the light.
The ring curves like infinity around her finger.
“Thanks. I wanted something beautiful,” she tells him, very softly.
“Me too,” he says, tracing the line of her arm. “Took a while. But I got it now, sweetheart.”
[end]
This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.
frackin_sweet: thank you for “Wheels”, for Lily, for the gift of your friendship. The age you are, every year? Is the perfect age for you. ♥.Also for my
quack - I hope you have the best day, sweetness.There’s Another Round for You
Neal Tiemann/Lin Palmer, [PG-13]. Prequel to Wishing That Such Heights Were Lower.
Amazing, insightful betas
imlikat & otherbella. 3,000+ words.Life on the road makes it hard to hold on to anything - but there might just be another round for two like-minded souls.
For
hc_bingo and schmoop_bingo : burns, cuddling by the firesideNot for profit work of fiction. Neal Tiemann and David Cook belong to themselves; no libel or privacy violations intended. OFC and other AIRN characters belong to me. Title is from "Wheels", by the Foo Fighters, 2009. Fair use asserted. “Well I wanted something better; I wished for something new/Yeah, I wanted something beautiful, I wished for something true...
When the wheels come down (When the wheels come down)/When the wheels touch ground (When the wheels touch ground)/And you feel like it's all over/There's another round for you.”
She'd met him in a bar, the day after her last birthday. Those days she still talked to guys in bars. There was nothing quite like meeting a stranger's gaze across a brace of vodka shots and the flash fire of sexual attraction.
In and out, that was her. She'd paid her dues, worked as a grip and lighting flunky on the college band circuit; after her first big break with Kill Hannah in 2006, she could afford to pick and choose the bands she worked with. But life on the road made it hard to hold on to anything. Hello and goodbye, stage sets went up, the wheels went around - and when they came down, there was another town, another round or three of fiery drinks and attractive strangers, and then she'd leave them all behind. She was well into her third decade and some things might be all over for her, and, really, she was okay with that.
It was just business at first. Chi-chi cocktail events in L.A. were for pressing the flesh with industry execs who were eye-level with her rack, and carefully-coiffed agents who regarded her warily, as if she might throw her drink at them or rest it on their heads. Bars were where the real decision-makers hung out; the musicians whom she wanted to make her clients - the darker and seedier, the more interesting the music, and the music-makers.
She knew who he was the minute he sat down. Up-and-coming alt-rockers M8B had been on her radar for a while now. Their sophomore record "Amalgam" was one of RCA's best-selling albums of the year, going platinum in a matter of months. Also: she had a mostly-hidden thing for lead guitarists. (Not hidden from Lilah, though; her wing-man rolled her eyes and feigned interest in her glass of Merlot.)
She had an even-more-hidden thing for sci-fi ink, too. The bar lights shone on the red and green of his Klingon forearm tattoo.
"Neal Tiemann?"
Snakebites glinted in his lower lip. Who’d have known - that one she might even have hidden from herself. "Depends on who’s asking."
"I'm Belinda Palmer." She stuck out her hand; she saw the famous Kurt Vonnegut quote inked across his knuckles as he gripped and then released.
"I know who you are,” he said. “Zac Pereira said you worked with Wynn-Marsalis on the Fray Chicago dates last year. I like your sets – cool, but not too out there."
She'd heard about Tiemann’s meticulous attention to detail, but she was still pretty impressed: she wouldn’t have thought him this familiar with her technical world. Then again, M8B had spent two and a half months out of 2010 on tour in Europe; it was good to know someone had been paying attention. “Thanks. I really liked your new album. You guys touring again next year?”
“North and South America. We missed the stadium circuit when we toured in ‘09, and now Dave wants to play the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Huh.” Lin was reminded of M8B’s moody, volatile lead singer, which cooled her jets somewhat - that kind of fucking diva boss she could do without. “David Cook won’t find the Hollywood Bowl in Brazil.”
“Apparently we’re pretty big in Brazil,” said Neal, grinning, and she had to swallow a little. Definitely a thing.
“You guys need someone to work your tour stage?” she asked. This was just business, despite the dude’s ink, his guitarist’s forearms, his crooked, attractive smile. And if it wasn’t, well, there was a first time for everything. Hello and goodbye probably worked for clients too.
His grin grew thoughtful. “Yeah, we do. We start interviews next week, but why don’t you stop by the office Monday, come see the guys and Grant?”
“Show you what I got? Be glad to,” she said. Well, she wasn’t doing that well on the just-business front.
“I like that,” he told her, and she said, “That’s what they always say.”
Beside her, Lilah rolled her eyes again. Lilah would never say anything, but she was used to Lin’s bar-side manner; had seen this dance time and again – watched Lin catch alight in a brief conflagration of fire before it was time for the wheels to lift off once more.
Lilah’s snort wasn’t lost on Neal. Lin could see his gears shift, how the man’s manner became deliberately charming. Not just another dumb guitarist, not just a technically-minded rocker who could talk touring and stages. Lin watched as he introduced himself to her best friend, and made clever, cynical Lilah laugh despite herself.
Somewhere inside Lin, something caught fire; a wish for something better than the usual hello and goodbye.
Neal wrapped up his music-industry anecdote and settled back onto his bar-stool. His manner was deliberately casual. “Buy you ladies another round?”
She didn’t miss Lilah’s almost imperceptible nod of approval. “Why not?” she answered, and watched his eyes light up.
*
Four months later, in Sao Paolo, she watched something else catch fire.
It was Dave’s fault. Fucking diva front-men, she should have totally known better than to leave them to their own devices. The ring of fire laid into the stage footlights was a dummy, made of sparks and cunning light effects, but the braziers flanking the stage, the signature smelting columns of the White Gold Tour, had a real ignition point and burned with a real flame.
She’d told them this a dozen times. Dave and Neal had eyeballed the engineering themselves, they’d used the flaming columns in Rio and Bogota and Buenos Aires without incident.
Until the night that Dave, buoyed by the screaming Brazilian crowd, decided to try to climb the left-hand column.
Lin had no idea why the M8B lead singer had thought the plaster would be able to take his weight. Dave was probably high on something; it was an occupational hazard with the rock scene, though she had to say M8B seemed to run a comparatively clean ship.
Standing in her customary spot in the left wing of the stage, she had a perfect view of Dave as he made his run. He first jumped onto one of the high racetracks that bracketed the stage. The metal shook as he ripped into the guitar solo from “Addiction”. And then, as Neal joined him in the bridge, shredding chords from his guitar, Dave let his white Gibson hang loose and took a flying leap onto the ridge of the flaming column.
Of course the fucking thing couldn’t hold him up. Of course it fell over like a tree. Something shorted out, and the whole stage was plunged into darkness.
Dave kicked himself free of the column before it collapsed. Neal reached out to steady him; they crashed to the ground, and then there was fire on her stage.
She usually froze in a crisis. One night Johnny Radtke had trashed an amp and nearly started an electrical fire, and she’d been immobilized by shock while her guys had dashed to the rescue.
But tonight she surprised herself by being the first one out there.
The fire on the fallen column had guttered out – she’d always used a limited ignition source after the Kill Hannah near-miss – but somehow it had set fire to the corduroy lapels of Neal’s jacket. She didn’t pause, grabbed the jacket by its shoulders and pulled it bodily off Neal. Then the stage lit up again, Zac had re-routed the generators around the fused circuit, and someone grabbed the smoking jacket from her and the air filled with the fine spray of fire extinguishing foam.
She waved her hands in front of her face, coughing. Unbelievably, music started to fill the air, amplified by the re-routed power.
“You okay, Lin?” A narrow, concerned face appeared at her elbow: Grant Delano, M8B’s workaholic chief tour manager. “Neal, let’s get you offstage. Guitar Sub One, you’re a go –“
Someone ran past her, picking up a cable and jacking in as he went. She let Grant hustle her into the wings, Neal beside her. She sat down on a folding chair as if her legs couldn’t hold her up. A rush of activity swirled around and past her, leaving her untouched in its wake.
Dimly, she heard the fans continuing to go crazy outside, shrieking even louder than before. She didn’t believe Dave was all right, that he was more than all right - he was still on stage, playing and singing like a madman. Fucker must be made of flame retardant material.
In a chair beside her, Neal was complaining loudly about the ministrations of the tour medic. “Damn it, Grace, I’m fine! – It looks worse than it is -!”
“Damn it, you only play a doctor on stage!” Dr. Grace was saying crossly. “Hold still, or I’m gonna send you to the Sao Paolo emergency room, where you don’t want to be, believe me!”
Lin tried not to stare. She’d thought she’d only pulled off Neal’s jacket, but she’d taken Neal’s shirt with it. She obviously didn’t know her own strength. Neal was all lean muscle, pale skin under the colorful ink of the myriad tattoos, blotchy around the chest where he’d been burned, or maybe that was just from her ripping his shirt off him.
“Are you really okay?” she asked him. She had no idea why her voice sounded so angry; he looked at her, surprised and a little amused.
Dr. Grace snorted. “He’s lucky David didn’t set fire to his head. Lin, can you stop him from going out there again? He can let Monty sub for him until encores. I’m gonna see if I can find out where the nearest hospital is.”
Lin nodded, and Grace bustled off.
“I’ll live,” Neal said to her, and Lin suddenly realized she was shaking, with a hot, toe-curling rage that made it difficult to see straight.
He realized it too, because he took her hand. “Seriously, Lin, no harm done,” he said, grinning a little, and she totally wanted to smack him for it.
Instead, she said, “I am so gonna kill him.”
She meant grandstanding, high-on-whatever Dave Cook, and Neal grinned more.
“Boss-icide? That’ll go down well on your resume.”
“Fuck the resume,” she said. “Someone could’ve really been hurt. You could’ve been -”
For some reason, she couldn’t continue. Her world shivered around its edges. She really needed to stop shaking, or she might actually start to cry, and that would really fuck the resume.
“Me? Not on your watch,” he said, and seriously, she was really having problems seeing straight; it looked like his face was getting closer…
…and then she felt the cold of his lip-rings, the warmth of his lips, and had to shut her eyes. She let him cup her face in his calloused hands. His kiss burned itself into her bones.
A heartbeat or three later, he pulled back. His gaze was a smear of blue across her vision. “Is that...are you okay?” he asked her.
“No harm done,” she whispered back, and he chuckled.
“You’re such a romantic. How about another round?”
How about it? She’d been wishing for something new; she’d been looking for a reason. “Why not,” she said.
He kissed her again, and her world stopped turning; the wheels touched ground.
*
Fast-forward to this year. She and Neal have been together for eight months. She still can’t believe the wheels haven’t lifted off. He grounds her, and the best part of it is she doesn’t mind.
They both have meetings that morning – the Foo Fighters are heading on their 2012 winter tour and want her to be part of the team – but they meet up in the afternoon to catch Toy Story 4.
Neal looks tired. Lin knows he’s been having a hard time lately getting back into the writing groove after the White Gold tour, and lately diva Dave has been jetting around the world pretending to be a movie star. Lin’s been trying to cut Dave some slack: it must be hard taking your old life seriously when you’re busy hanging with Daniel Craig.
Lilah had warned Lin that Toy Story 4 would make her cry, and it does. Neal holds her; she kind of suspects he likes it when she acts like a sniveling female because it doesn’t happen a lot. She kind of likes it herself when he acts like a protective proto-male, because she totally doesn’t let him do it a lot, either.
After the movie, they have dinner at his apartment. Neal doesn’t spend a lot of time there. She knew he’d bought it just so he could be near to the recording studios and to Dave’s house in Hollywood Hills. Dave’s brother had lived there for a while before he’d gotten his own place. Lin has never asked Neal about Drew, she figures she knows all there is to know, anyway, and she’s okay with that.
Neal's apartment is bigger than hers, and cleaner – like all rock-stars, Neal employs a housekeeper – and has a stainless-steel-lined, space-aged faux-fireplace which is like a metaphor for pretentious, temperate L.A.
Neal’s housekeeper has cooked a delicious gourmet meal from scratch, and for dessert Neal brings a tiny birthday cake out of the kitchen, its lemon surface a wash of candlelight.
When he sings to her in the scratchy voice that adorns a dozen M8B backing vocals, she has to bite the inside of her cheek. Damn it, she’s only allowed one round of sniveling per day.
She blows out thirtysomething candles. “It’s the smoke,” she explains stupidly, dabbing at her eyes.
“Come sit by the fireplace,” he says. “No smoke there.”
The fake flames are strangely comforting. She rests her head on his shoulder as he attempts to feed her cake. “You know,” she tells him, “What you should really get is a real brick fireplace with organic wood, sequoia oils, the works.”
“We’ll have to move somewhere colder for that,” Neal says.
They stare into the fire for a while more, then Neal murmurs, "Hey, how about Yosemite? Always wanted to live there."
She thinks about it. Living in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the heart of an ecosystem that had stood for millennia. Imagines watching the colors of a real fire like she’d done when she was a girl growing up in the Chicago suburbs.
Then she realizes what he’d said, what he's asking her.
"Oh," she says. A little weakly, she adds, "I guess that'd be interesting."
He disengages, slides off the sofa and sets the plate on the floor. For some reason it takes her a while to realize he's gotten on one knee.
He hands her a scarlet Cartier box, which takes her a few tries to open because she's shaking like a leaf. Not from anger, not this time.
The diamond shines with its own arctic fire, the same fire of Neal's blue eyes.
“I love you, I wanna live with you forever. Let's get married, how about it?"
For some reason, she's having problems getting the words out. "Why not," is what she manages, at last, and laughs helplessly as he kisses her tears away.
A year ago she’d felt some things might be over; now it seemed there was another round for her, for both of them.
"You're such a romantic," he tells her, and she wipes her face on his shirt and takes hold of his collar and whispers fiercely, "I'm yours, I'm never letting you go, is that romantic enough for you?"
She kisses him like she means to take his breath away, and he groans against her mouth, "I’m not complainin’."
She lets him tug her to her feet. She’s almost as tall as he is, but he lifts her into his arms as if she weighs nothing at all.
He carries her to the bed and lies down beside her. She lets him catch his breath, leans her head into the groove of his shoulder and holds her left hand up into the light.
The ring curves like infinity around her finger.
“Thanks. I wanted something beautiful,” she tells him, very softly.
“Me too,” he says, tracing the line of her arm. “Took a while. But I got it now, sweetheart.”
[end]
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 05:07 pm (UTC)Also, I'm fingerguns on DW - I never post there though. I should see if my account is even still around!! I didn't know you had a DW account. Are you posting anything exclusively there? I should friend you.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 10:17 am (UTC)Um, good calls on both counts, there.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 06:02 pm (UTC)It was gorgeous and sweet and precious and its fun reading something....different from you once in awhile.
<3 Missed your writing.
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Date: 2010-07-07 02:06 am (UTC)Skibmann. Cuddling in vehicle. Will be written!
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Date: 2010-07-07 02:32 am (UTC)I do read most stuff you write - I haven't read a lot of your most recent Cookleta but...yours is among the few I do read.
<3
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Date: 2010-07-07 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 06:15 pm (UTC)I really like your NFT portrayal, ESPECIALLY with Lin. He's just...he's kind of a badass but he's also a little softer, more protective, charming and even a little playful.
I know I've read it, but I really really like this. (Plus, it's a nice, happy, cheerful aside to such a dark story. They're like the sunlight in the long dark tunnel)
♥
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Date: 2010-07-07 02:19 am (UTC)I totally see Neal like this when he's in love: protective, playful, charming. It's amped up especially because Lin is so non-girly, if that makes sense.
And you were so, SO helpful, bb! Thank you SO MUCH! I really value your opinions on characterisation and voice. Also, if not for you, Lin would be singing paeans to Neal's guitar shredding abilities and they would be in Botoga ♥
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 02:42 am (UTC)SO SWEET. I CANNOT DEAL. Het fic is my fav. Het fic with Neal/OFC is also my fav.
This was wonderful and sweet and the ending was fabulous!
Schmoop is my favorite thing to happen in forever.
♥.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 03:16 am (UTC)And Frack self-insert fic isn't gonna write itself!Also a plus: getting to set Neal on fire XDno subject
Date: 2010-07-09 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 11:04 am (UTC)