some say love it is a river
A/N: sparked off by this. i haven't watched White Collar, or done research etc etc, so this isn't really rpf (yet). this is, this is...i don't know what it is.
Some say, love it is a river.
He’s not so sure. Where the comma’s supposed to go, he means. Otherwise, he’s perfectly fine with the comparison.
It sure feels this way, with his fists deep in his pockets whiling the time away between sets, the sky a dark, melted mass above him. First week into filming and everyone’s content with figuring out thresholds and boundaries, with what goes where with whom and how or when, and he’s not gotten much of a chance to actually have a conversation with anybody that goes beyond the missing decaf labels or the failure of the public transport system. He doesn’t mind; he doesn’t want to risk too much too early, in case the probing takes too great a toll and curves down a bend he miscalculates, and he will find out (no surprise) that there’s naught behind the ridiculous straw hat and thick-rimmed glasses.
“I said, you don’t look like the kind of guy who keeps his mouth shut in a crowd,”
He does an about-turn, wishes he had caught the first utterance. People usually altered the meaning of their sentences when they weren’t heard the first time. He’s one himself.
He must have said ‘sorry’ the first time without knowing it. Or ‘pardon’. But most likely ‘sorry’, he thinks.
Laughing, he says, “Do I?”
“A handsome young man like you? Come on,”
Come where, he thinks, but pries his fingers away from the something they’ve been playing with in his pocket (A coin? A chip?) for answer, and laughs again, almost meaning it this time.
He shrugs, “Not much to say,” before he realises and nearly blushes, “I don’t mean you.”
It’s the older man’s turn to smile. “I know.”
The silence lifts, yawns, stretches itself.
“Wanna see my kids?”
He tilts his head, an almost-nod.
It is an old phone, all pixelated smiles and battery bars. Cherise is in it, though, and she likes cherry-cola because it sounds like her name and tastes nothing like root beer. She also loves to dance; her shoes are scuffed from playing tag. Dark curls frame her face and she is holding her little brother by one thumb (the other’s in his mouth, he tries not to wonder if it’s been someplace else before this).
He returns the apparatus and sticks his hands back into his pockets.
“That’s very nice.” There’s no way he can make it more sincere, though he truly feels it, truly, he repeats mentally; he knows there’s nothing nobler than a parent. A real one, that is.
He beams. He breathes, places a hand just ever so lightly on his shoulder. “It gets better,” he says, forming the words slowly, as if they were punctuated by periods in between.
He sniffs. He turns away. He almost shrugs off the hand on his shoulder, but it removes itself before he can do so. The right is his to say, “What do you know?” and slink away. But he doesn’t.
(He’s been with girls and he knows they like him. He has hands that know where to run, halt, hinder; a lean, wiry frame; clear eyes incapable of lies. It’s like a curse, the perfect lover. The women can’t resist it; and it so happens that there’s a part of him which enjoys the attention. There’s Alex, who materialises at his threshold with her finger on the buzzer every few weeks, pressing up against him, all insatiable neediness and raspberry longing, and when he kisses her back it’s not all that bad.
[Then again, Alex’s been with girls too. He’s seen it before, that leather-jacketed waif who takes her so stiffly by the arm he’s not even jealous.])
It surprises him. But here’s a man, a father, who’s beginning to hum some tune that’s always played on that show, he can’t quite place a name on it, (ah, such travesty! Though he hopes this rippling moment excuses him), you know, the one where these brothers fry demons with tasers and yet remain extremely good-looking while doing so. The wordless tune lifts, falls, lifts again. There’s almost no discernable melody, just phrases sifted out from a song mumbled for its own benefit.
So he just stays there, his hair getting mussed by the wind (something the make-up crew will fuss about later) with this humming beside him, about him. His shoulders are chafed by this night refrain. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, swaying a little on the balls of his feet. Perhaps his body leans backwards at an impossible angle, like that achieved in a trust fall.
It surprises him. Love. He wants to expound upon it, or maybe reason it away. It’s not about romance, a drowning in emotion, or being washed ashore by heartbreak, these assessorial electrifying sensations, this falling in love or tumbling out from it, like one does from a rabbit hole in mirrored wonderlands.
It merely meanders its way about us, he thinks.
Somewhere in the distance, the director yells, “Cut!” and he opens his eyes to find himself alone again.
He retrieves his hands from the railing and walks back to the set. The others have all taken their places.
Title taken from Bette Midler's The Rose
The song (if you must know) is Kansas' Carry on My Wayward Son
Some say, love it is a river.
He’s not so sure. Where the comma’s supposed to go, he means. Otherwise, he’s perfectly fine with the comparison.
It sure feels this way, with his fists deep in his pockets whiling the time away between sets, the sky a dark, melted mass above him. First week into filming and everyone’s content with figuring out thresholds and boundaries, with what goes where with whom and how or when, and he’s not gotten much of a chance to actually have a conversation with anybody that goes beyond the missing decaf labels or the failure of the public transport system. He doesn’t mind; he doesn’t want to risk too much too early, in case the probing takes too great a toll and curves down a bend he miscalculates, and he will find out (no surprise) that there’s naught behind the ridiculous straw hat and thick-rimmed glasses.
“I said, you don’t look like the kind of guy who keeps his mouth shut in a crowd,”
He does an about-turn, wishes he had caught the first utterance. People usually altered the meaning of their sentences when they weren’t heard the first time. He’s one himself.
He must have said ‘sorry’ the first time without knowing it. Or ‘pardon’. But most likely ‘sorry’, he thinks.
Laughing, he says, “Do I?”
“A handsome young man like you? Come on,”
Come where, he thinks, but pries his fingers away from the something they’ve been playing with in his pocket (A coin? A chip?) for answer, and laughs again, almost meaning it this time.
He shrugs, “Not much to say,” before he realises and nearly blushes, “I don’t mean you.”
It’s the older man’s turn to smile. “I know.”
The silence lifts, yawns, stretches itself.
“Wanna see my kids?”
He tilts his head, an almost-nod.
It is an old phone, all pixelated smiles and battery bars. Cherise is in it, though, and she likes cherry-cola because it sounds like her name and tastes nothing like root beer. She also loves to dance; her shoes are scuffed from playing tag. Dark curls frame her face and she is holding her little brother by one thumb (the other’s in his mouth, he tries not to wonder if it’s been someplace else before this).
He returns the apparatus and sticks his hands back into his pockets.
“That’s very nice.” There’s no way he can make it more sincere, though he truly feels it, truly, he repeats mentally; he knows there’s nothing nobler than a parent. A real one, that is.
He beams. He breathes, places a hand just ever so lightly on his shoulder. “It gets better,” he says, forming the words slowly, as if they were punctuated by periods in between.
He sniffs. He turns away. He almost shrugs off the hand on his shoulder, but it removes itself before he can do so. The right is his to say, “What do you know?” and slink away. But he doesn’t.
(He’s been with girls and he knows they like him. He has hands that know where to run, halt, hinder; a lean, wiry frame; clear eyes incapable of lies. It’s like a curse, the perfect lover. The women can’t resist it; and it so happens that there’s a part of him which enjoys the attention. There’s Alex, who materialises at his threshold with her finger on the buzzer every few weeks, pressing up against him, all insatiable neediness and raspberry longing, and when he kisses her back it’s not all that bad.
[Then again, Alex’s been with girls too. He’s seen it before, that leather-jacketed waif who takes her so stiffly by the arm he’s not even jealous.])
It surprises him. But here’s a man, a father, who’s beginning to hum some tune that’s always played on that show, he can’t quite place a name on it, (ah, such travesty! Though he hopes this rippling moment excuses him), you know, the one where these brothers fry demons with tasers and yet remain extremely good-looking while doing so. The wordless tune lifts, falls, lifts again. There’s almost no discernable melody, just phrases sifted out from a song mumbled for its own benefit.
So he just stays there, his hair getting mussed by the wind (something the make-up crew will fuss about later) with this humming beside him, about him. His shoulders are chafed by this night refrain. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, swaying a little on the balls of his feet. Perhaps his body leans backwards at an impossible angle, like that achieved in a trust fall.
It surprises him. Love. He wants to expound upon it, or maybe reason it away. It’s not about romance, a drowning in emotion, or being washed ashore by heartbreak, these assessorial electrifying sensations, this falling in love or tumbling out from it, like one does from a rabbit hole in mirrored wonderlands.
It merely meanders its way about us, he thinks.
Somewhere in the distance, the director yells, “Cut!” and he opens his eyes to find himself alone again.
He retrieves his hands from the railing and walks back to the set. The others have all taken their places.
Title taken from Bette Midler's The Rose
The song (if you must know) is Kansas' Carry on My Wayward Son