EM July topic - Habit
Oz never knew he was doing it unless someone pointed it out to him. And if they did he would glance at his fingers with mild interest and a soft 'huh' and stop for a few minutes. At least until his attention wandered to something else again and his fingers freed of the mind's influence would start to move again.
His fingertips plucked phantom music from every surface they brushed against. Edges of books, sides of tables, hems of fabric, they were all plucked with silent cords to echo the notes in the back of his mind. The callouses on fingertips built up from years of contact with metal strings made whispering noises as toughened skin tried to pull music from things not meant to make it.
When Oz was ten his parents had noticed the music in his restless fingers and gave him his first guitar. It was a small white electric that had died an honorable death five years later fending off a mugger on his way home from Devon's. Although he later realized that the mugger had most likely been a vampire since most of Sunnydale's living crooks were eaten in back alleys before they could commit crimes. If it was a vampire it was an even more honorable death.
It had been replaced by a red and white guitar whose strings pulled forth deeper sounds than Oz's first guitar. It's tones haunted him in class and while he slept leaving half of his mind trying to learn what new sounds he could coax from it.
When he left Sunnydale the second time the music died for a time with his heart. A habit he hardly even knew he had was suddenly gone and the stillness of his fingers kept dragging his mind back to the pain he just wanted to leave behind.
When a wolf is injured it goes to ground and waits to either die or get better. Oz buried his guitar under piles of clothes in the back of his van and broke the knob off his radio when it hurt too much to listen.
The day he made his first phantom chords against the edge of a diner table while waiting for his greasy fries he knew his healing had finally begun.
His fingertips plucked phantom music from every surface they brushed against. Edges of books, sides of tables, hems of fabric, they were all plucked with silent cords to echo the notes in the back of his mind. The callouses on fingertips built up from years of contact with metal strings made whispering noises as toughened skin tried to pull music from things not meant to make it.
When Oz was ten his parents had noticed the music in his restless fingers and gave him his first guitar. It was a small white electric that had died an honorable death five years later fending off a mugger on his way home from Devon's. Although he later realized that the mugger had most likely been a vampire since most of Sunnydale's living crooks were eaten in back alleys before they could commit crimes. If it was a vampire it was an even more honorable death.
It had been replaced by a red and white guitar whose strings pulled forth deeper sounds than Oz's first guitar. It's tones haunted him in class and while he slept leaving half of his mind trying to learn what new sounds he could coax from it.
When he left Sunnydale the second time the music died for a time with his heart. A habit he hardly even knew he had was suddenly gone and the stillness of his fingers kept dragging his mind back to the pain he just wanted to leave behind.
When a wolf is injured it goes to ground and waits to either die or get better. Oz buried his guitar under piles of clothes in the back of his van and broke the knob off his radio when it hurt too much to listen.
The day he made his first phantom chords against the edge of a diner table while waiting for his greasy fries he knew his healing had finally begun.