Blue jean baby.

[emo_mutant]

It didn't really feel right to rip into an angry song with Sola on the blanket next to him, just like it didn't feel right to wail mournfully about drinking away the memory of some woman in a bar. Especially not when she babbled right along with his guitar. Jesus, if her next few words came from one of those songs, Padme might kill him

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[all_happening]

They were chords she would have recognized anywhere.

Penny had been on her way to the compound, the walk with records and coat and camera becoming routine by now, when she heard it and subsequently froze, then swallowed. Nearly five months it had been since they sang it leaving Topeka, after the night the band nearly split, music blaring from the bus speakers and everyone, William and the roadies and the other girls, singing at the top of their lungs. There weren't many songs that could get to her, she would've liked to say, but however many there were, "Tiny Dancer" was one of them, just for those few short minutes when everything had been perfect, and it took a moment, but eventually she breathed deeply and willed herself forward along the path until she saw the source of the music. And it wasn't a sight she wanted to disturb, so she kept a few feet away, smiling wistfully as the song continued. Count the headlights on the highway.

[emo_mutant]

Jay kept singing, caught up too much to realize his audience was bigger than the baby giggling on the blanket. Eventually, though, Sola caught sight of the stranger and began to stare, and as Jay wound down, he followed her gaze.

"Hey there."

[all_happening]

Penny had just kept watching until he looked at her, eyes flickering from him to the baby to his hands on the strings, all of it almost familiar. Russell would do the same thing, she thought, when he and her had kids (and they would, she was sure they would, if only so she could have that one more thing to dangle over his head to keep him with her). But, despite herself, she pushed that one more little bit of a smile, setting the records in her hand down by her feet. "Good song," she said, tilting her head up in lieu of a greeting.

[emo_mutant]

"Yeah, it is," said Jay, and instantly recognized that look that came with really loving the music, loving the music in someone. For one moment, she was Julia, and then she was back to being a pretty blonde he didn't know.

"You play, sing, or just listen?"

[all_happening]

"Of those three?" Penny asked, forcing that cheerfulness that always came along with the subject, even managing to get out an all too convincing laugh. "Just listen, really. I mean, I'll sing along, supposedly not too bad, and I tried to play a few times, but..." She shrugged, not wanting to think about the times she'd been taught, not when she was still looking for him between trees and around corners. "Listening was more my thing."

[emo_mutant]

"So who'd you know?" asked Jay, pretty bluntly. The thing about his perpetual shirtlessness was that his scars were on display for the world, and he didn't really mind. They were a sign of his humanity, in more ways than one.

[all_happening]

Penny laughed lightly, at first, as if the question were silly, like there was no reason for him to assume that. Some things never changed, after all; it was instinct, and it had been, back home up until now. But when she stopped, she took a deep breath and nodded. "A lot of people."

[emo_mutant]

"Anyone famous?" Jay gave her a weary smile that suggested he was a little tired of the lack of musical support out here. "I never made it far myself. Might've, if I was at home."

Or you know, he died. Whatever.

[all_happening]

Penny was half-tempted to rattle off a list, beginning with Keith Richards and ending with Marc Bolan, nearly all of the famous singers of her day in between, but there was a time and a place for that, and it wasn't here and now yet. "You could say that," she said instead, a coy, secretive grin on her face. "But that might depend on who stayed famous and who didn't."

[emo_mutant]

"Very nice," Jay said, knowing her type when he met them. Not that he was part of the crowd that took those girls for granted. It was his music, after all, that had won Julia. "Well, there's no fame to be had out here. At least not of the kind I'd want."

[all_happening]

"Don't I know it," Penny laughed dryly, running one hand tiredly down the side of her face. "This place is a far cry from back home, really." And not the good kind of far cry; this was the kind that made you fall into comas and think you were home, and wake up years younger than you ought to be, and start having fucking hallucinations of people from home. "What about you? Know anyone worth knowing?"

[emo_mutant]

"Not in the way you'd think," said Jay. "But then again, I dunno what kinda comics you had there." He strummed for a moment, and then sighed. "I was one of the X-Men. Almost. I was in training. A mutant."