Fic: Nathan & Rain
Title: Happiness in a Minor Key
Fandom: Mag7
Characters/Pairing: Nathan/Rain
Rating: Gen
Summary: For the prompt: Nathan/Rain, a subsequent visit to town, after Rain tells him more about her father, Nathan brings Rain to the saloon after hours so she can see/play the piano.
Notes: Not quite all the specifics of the prompt, but the major elements are there.
Of all the things Nathan loves about Rain, the way she hums ever-so-slightly off-key while she’s distracted is pretty high up that list. It’s an unconscious thing, Nathan knows, and he supposes that if he didn’t love her he’d find it incredibly annoying, because sometimes she just hums the same three bars over, and over, and over again, and sometimes she’ll start humming one song and switch abruptly to another. She hums as she flits about his clinic, and she hums as she strokes a gentle finger down his scars, and she hums as he escorts her through town.
“I will not be long,” she tells him as they pause before the Potters’ store, her eye caught by a hat with white feathers.
“I’ll be here,” Nathan replies, and laughs as she hums a pleased little trill and presses a chaste kiss to the side of his mouth before darting inside. She’s fingering a pale green dress and humming the first three bars to “Lindy Lowe” over and over again, her low contralto voice carrying clearly into the street, when JD walks up. He cocks an ear to Rain’s humming, then turns to Nathan, a grimace on his face.
“Don’t that drive you crazy, Nathan? The humming?”
“Nah,” he tells JD, and it doesn’t because when Rain is humming, it means she’s in town. And when Rain is in town her presence just fills Nathan up to the brim with incredulous, possessive joy.
“Guess she learned it from her Daddy,” JD says and he sighs. “Kinda wish he’d taught her more’n three bars, though.”
Nathan doesn’t say anything, but he thinks about JD’s words. They don’t talk much about fathers in these parts - mostly ‘cause they don’t really got any. He thinks Chris’s daddy is still alive somewhere back in Indiana or Illinois or someplace like that, and he knows Josiah’s daddy is a real touchy subject, but the rest of them…shoot, he spent the better part of his life hating his daddy, and then watching him die, and he thinks he’s really the luckiest one of them all when it comes to fathers. At least he had a daddy for a little while; at least he got to say goodbye.
That thought pulls him up short, and it occupies all of his mind as he walks Rain and her new hat to her horse, keeps him from really doing more than giving her an absent-minded kiss as he lifts her into the saddle. Rain looks down on him with her old, laughing eyes, and doesn’t question what’s in his mind, and the part of him that’s not reliving the last weeks with his father loves her all the more for her silence. And yet, there’s a part of him that wants to talk to her about this, wants to ask her what it was like growing up free and with a father - was Eban fierce or gentle, did he teach her to bow before the white man or did she learn her fierceness from him? It’s not hard to imagine Eban, puffed up like a cockerel, ready to fight any man who dared lay a hand on his daughter; it’s not hard to imagine, too, that when faced with an arrogant white man, he would bow his head and mumble “yas suh” and “nuh suh” just like Obadiah had all his life.
What did Rain remember - pride or subservience? And did she feel the odd shame, the learned fear, the burning anger that he felt when she thought about her father?
Or maybe all she remembers is his music, and now Nathan wonders if her humming is perhaps the only way she has to keep him alive - if, perhaps, these songs are the only legacy she has, much like the white rope bridle is the only thing Nathan has of Obadiah. And he wonders if perhaps the reason she repeats the same three bars is because she can’t remember any more of the song and fears that this means she’s losing the memory of the man that taught it to her.
Nathan thinks on this for a week and a bit - the length of time it takes for Rain to decide to make the ride back into town again - and in that time he thinks he has a solution of a sorts. The idea of it fills him with nervous pleasure, and he alternates between smiling and snapping, between wanting to sit still and wanting to scream out his secret from rooftops. Rain watches him with her patient, knowing eyes, and laughs at him when he drops his books and sighs at him when he’s a little too impatient with Buck, who’s got it into his mind that he’s losing all of his hair ‘cause of a spell Vin put on him. He can barely eat a bite during dinner, just pushes the food around on his plate, and Rain frowns at him, because they both grew up knowing better than to waste food.
“I’ll put it by the oven, yes?” Inez says to him as she’s clearing out the last of the patrons, and she winks at him in a way that makes Nathan blush from his roots to his toes. “You can eat it later.”
“So,” Rain says, after Inez whisks their plates away. “What is this surprise you have been dying to tell me all day?”
“Ain’t got no surprise,” Nathan tries to lie, but he can’t lie at all in front of Rain’s patient, loving smile. “Fine. Come with me.” He takes her hand and walks her over to the corner where the piano sits. It’s a fine, fancy piano - Ezra’d brought it in special from Chicago, back when he owned the saloon - all dark rosewood and real ivory and ebony key. An instrument for a real musician (there’d been rumors of contracts for a real piano player, all the way from New York, right around the time Ezra lost the place to Maude) and ever since it arrived, it’d mostly been covered with a sheet and gathering dust.
“Nathan?” Rain’s eyes are laughing at him again, and he smiles, giddy and lost in his love for her, then pulls the sheet off the piano with a flourish.
“Ta da!”
For a moment Rain just keeps smiling, although her smile is confused now, and then the smile slips, slowly, like the side of a hill after a heavy rain.
“Ta da?” Nathan says again, although he’s hesitant and worried now. Her silence is unnerving, her stillness like that of a man who's just received a mortal blow, and he finds himself searching for something to say to fill the quiet stretching between them. “It’s a piano.”
Rain nods and strokes her hand across the satin-smooth wood, caresses the elegant curve of the music stand, the ornate carvings that decorate the front and through which the silver strings dully gleam.
“You ain’t…you ain’t mad, is you?” Nathan asks. “Only, well, you hum so much, and I figured, your daddy maybe taught you to play, and I asked Inez and she said if you wanted to, you could play here sometimes, so you could be close to him again. If you want.”
Rain is still silent, still grave, and now Nathan’s worried. He shakes his head and twists the sheet in his hands. “Aw hell. It was a dumb idea. I’m sorry.”
“I hated his piano,” Rain says, softly. And then louder, “I hated it.”
“But-“
“He said it was the only thing that was his, that it was his most precious possession. But I was his too! I was his daughter! Wasn’t I more precious than any thing of wood and metal?”
Nathan gapes at Rain, unsure of what to say, of how to react. “I-“
“He died for that damn piano!”
“I-“ he says again, and he wraps her up in his arms, holds her tight as she sobs into his shoulder, strokes her back and whispers soothing nonsense until the flood of tears subsides into no more than a shuddering trickle. “But the songs,” he says at last. “The humming.”
“I hated that piano,” Rain says. “But I loved him.”
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are
comments
Fandom: Mag7
Characters/Pairing: Nathan/Rain
Rating: Gen
Summary: For the prompt: Nathan/Rain, a subsequent visit to town, after Rain tells him more about her father, Nathan brings Rain to the saloon after hours so she can see/play the piano.
Notes: Not quite all the specifics of the prompt, but the major elements are there.
Of all the things Nathan loves about Rain, the way she hums ever-so-slightly off-key while she’s distracted is pretty high up that list. It’s an unconscious thing, Nathan knows, and he supposes that if he didn’t love her he’d find it incredibly annoying, because sometimes she just hums the same three bars over, and over, and over again, and sometimes she’ll start humming one song and switch abruptly to another. She hums as she flits about his clinic, and she hums as she strokes a gentle finger down his scars, and she hums as he escorts her through town.
“I will not be long,” she tells him as they pause before the Potters’ store, her eye caught by a hat with white feathers.
“I’ll be here,” Nathan replies, and laughs as she hums a pleased little trill and presses a chaste kiss to the side of his mouth before darting inside. She’s fingering a pale green dress and humming the first three bars to “Lindy Lowe” over and over again, her low contralto voice carrying clearly into the street, when JD walks up. He cocks an ear to Rain’s humming, then turns to Nathan, a grimace on his face.
“Don’t that drive you crazy, Nathan? The humming?”
“Nah,” he tells JD, and it doesn’t because when Rain is humming, it means she’s in town. And when Rain is in town her presence just fills Nathan up to the brim with incredulous, possessive joy.
“Guess she learned it from her Daddy,” JD says and he sighs. “Kinda wish he’d taught her more’n three bars, though.”
Nathan doesn’t say anything, but he thinks about JD’s words. They don’t talk much about fathers in these parts - mostly ‘cause they don’t really got any. He thinks Chris’s daddy is still alive somewhere back in Indiana or Illinois or someplace like that, and he knows Josiah’s daddy is a real touchy subject, but the rest of them…shoot, he spent the better part of his life hating his daddy, and then watching him die, and he thinks he’s really the luckiest one of them all when it comes to fathers. At least he had a daddy for a little while; at least he got to say goodbye.
That thought pulls him up short, and it occupies all of his mind as he walks Rain and her new hat to her horse, keeps him from really doing more than giving her an absent-minded kiss as he lifts her into the saddle. Rain looks down on him with her old, laughing eyes, and doesn’t question what’s in his mind, and the part of him that’s not reliving the last weeks with his father loves her all the more for her silence. And yet, there’s a part of him that wants to talk to her about this, wants to ask her what it was like growing up free and with a father - was Eban fierce or gentle, did he teach her to bow before the white man or did she learn her fierceness from him? It’s not hard to imagine Eban, puffed up like a cockerel, ready to fight any man who dared lay a hand on his daughter; it’s not hard to imagine, too, that when faced with an arrogant white man, he would bow his head and mumble “yas suh” and “nuh suh” just like Obadiah had all his life.
What did Rain remember - pride or subservience? And did she feel the odd shame, the learned fear, the burning anger that he felt when she thought about her father?
Or maybe all she remembers is his music, and now Nathan wonders if her humming is perhaps the only way she has to keep him alive - if, perhaps, these songs are the only legacy she has, much like the white rope bridle is the only thing Nathan has of Obadiah. And he wonders if perhaps the reason she repeats the same three bars is because she can’t remember any more of the song and fears that this means she’s losing the memory of the man that taught it to her.
Nathan thinks on this for a week and a bit - the length of time it takes for Rain to decide to make the ride back into town again - and in that time he thinks he has a solution of a sorts. The idea of it fills him with nervous pleasure, and he alternates between smiling and snapping, between wanting to sit still and wanting to scream out his secret from rooftops. Rain watches him with her patient, knowing eyes, and laughs at him when he drops his books and sighs at him when he’s a little too impatient with Buck, who’s got it into his mind that he’s losing all of his hair ‘cause of a spell Vin put on him. He can barely eat a bite during dinner, just pushes the food around on his plate, and Rain frowns at him, because they both grew up knowing better than to waste food.
“I’ll put it by the oven, yes?” Inez says to him as she’s clearing out the last of the patrons, and she winks at him in a way that makes Nathan blush from his roots to his toes. “You can eat it later.”
“So,” Rain says, after Inez whisks their plates away. “What is this surprise you have been dying to tell me all day?”
“Ain’t got no surprise,” Nathan tries to lie, but he can’t lie at all in front of Rain’s patient, loving smile. “Fine. Come with me.” He takes her hand and walks her over to the corner where the piano sits. It’s a fine, fancy piano - Ezra’d brought it in special from Chicago, back when he owned the saloon - all dark rosewood and real ivory and ebony key. An instrument for a real musician (there’d been rumors of contracts for a real piano player, all the way from New York, right around the time Ezra lost the place to Maude) and ever since it arrived, it’d mostly been covered with a sheet and gathering dust.
“Nathan?” Rain’s eyes are laughing at him again, and he smiles, giddy and lost in his love for her, then pulls the sheet off the piano with a flourish.
“Ta da!”
For a moment Rain just keeps smiling, although her smile is confused now, and then the smile slips, slowly, like the side of a hill after a heavy rain.
“Ta da?” Nathan says again, although he’s hesitant and worried now. Her silence is unnerving, her stillness like that of a man who's just received a mortal blow, and he finds himself searching for something to say to fill the quiet stretching between them. “It’s a piano.”
Rain nods and strokes her hand across the satin-smooth wood, caresses the elegant curve of the music stand, the ornate carvings that decorate the front and through which the silver strings dully gleam.
“You ain’t…you ain’t mad, is you?” Nathan asks. “Only, well, you hum so much, and I figured, your daddy maybe taught you to play, and I asked Inez and she said if you wanted to, you could play here sometimes, so you could be close to him again. If you want.”
Rain is still silent, still grave, and now Nathan’s worried. He shakes his head and twists the sheet in his hands. “Aw hell. It was a dumb idea. I’m sorry.”
“I hated his piano,” Rain says, softly. And then louder, “I hated it.”
“But-“
“He said it was the only thing that was his, that it was his most precious possession. But I was his too! I was his daughter! Wasn’t I more precious than any thing of wood and metal?”
Nathan gapes at Rain, unsure of what to say, of how to react. “I-“
“He died for that damn piano!”
“I-“ he says again, and he wraps her up in his arms, holds her tight as she sobs into his shoulder, strokes her back and whispers soothing nonsense until the flood of tears subsides into no more than a shuddering trickle. “But the songs,” he says at last. “The humming.”
“I hated that piano,” Rain says. “But I loved him.”
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are
comments