(Untitled)

[dingdongdoodily]

Pickles had spread out a blanket and had grabbed a couple bottles of booze, including the expensive-as-hell one. He'd also gathered driftwood and built a fairly impressive little fire between them and the water. It was really just to keep himself busy, since as much as he said it didn't bother him, and as much as he'd been playing it cool

Comments

[cheevy]

Miniver finally slips one hand out through a sleeve and reaches backwards over his shoulder to hold Pickles' hand.

"Yeah. There are songs my dad used to sing to my mom when I was little... one especially, I can't..." He laughs as his voice gets a little choked just THINKING about it. "Y'see?" he says hoarsely. "Wow. Yeah. I'd like... someday... to write a song with you that's got that kind of power. With you or for you or... something."

[dingdongdoodily]

Pickles nodded, squeezing Miniver's hand. "You know I'm hard to rile up." He chuckled then, "But you could try. I really don't got a good, y'know. Emotional output."

He pulled off the main stretch of road, having long since gotten off the coastal highway and onto another which led to Napa. The two-lane, barely-paved road to the camp site was bumpy and twisting, but from Miniver's side of the car, there was a lovely view of hills full of orchards bathed in moonlight, speckled with trees down the hillside. On Pickles' side of the car, there were just trees.

[cheevy]

Miniver keeps talking, even though his eyes are riveted to the view out the window.

"But see, there's the gorgeous and brilliant thing about music. It's one thing to write a song that gets your audience shedding crocodile tears by the end. It's another thing to have a song that means something because of reasons completely unique to the people it means something to. There are songs that can do both... there are songs that just are kind of prone to being heard in the right time and place and given adopted meaning. Danny Boy does it for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. There's two songs I can't sing without falling apart by the second line." He pauses, taking a deep breath.

"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen." His voice shakes a little.

Another pause, another deep breath.

"Carrickfergus." That one is easier, quicker, shorter.

Yet another pause, yet another deep breath, letting it out slow and silent as he watches the hills pass by.

"God. It's even hard to say the names. Christ, babe, these hills are gorgeous."

[dingdongdoodily]

"Say goodbye to 'em fer now, Cheev, we're takin' the next left." He grinned.

"I just don't sing those songs, y'know, if I go on tour. A lotta people have asked me why I don't sing 'em and I tell 'em that gettin' it out of my system the once was good enough fer me. Singin' it again and again would just keep rehashin' it in my head. Catharsis don't work like that."

He took a turn and up into the woods they went, on a dirt road, right on past a little office cabin with the light still on. He'd already made reservations. "Could you go into the glove box and pull out that little red slip of paper? It should be right on top, there."

[cheevy]

"Catharsis," Miniver echoes, tasting the word. "I never... y'know. Maybe someday. Maybe. It just... doesn't feel like the right time yet."

He uncurls and opens the glovebox, retrieving the red paper. "What's this?"