RHODES // dontcallmerupert
The very moment he hears those steel strings pluck away, eyes close. It was a classic, but not one he’d have started out with. It’s soothing. Fingertips follow the strum against the metal table top, slow with each chord plucked away. He’d tried to learn it once, a long time ago; a dusty, forgotten guitar case in his dad’s garage, found and given new life for a summer.
He remembers the callouses on his fingertips.
Eyes still closed, he’s listening to words he’s heard sung a thousand times before– it doesn’t even register that he’s coffee’s being stolen, the warmth from it, long gone.
Gaze lifts, the hand that once strummed for the first few bars, now moves to smooth over his lips before coming to prop a cheek against it. He watches Tony with his coffee and offers a small, tired smile.
“I love this song.” Among his favorites, really. The bridge starts after the guitar solo, and he lip syncs, head bobbing to the beat, expression serious in his rock session; a silent concert for one until the very last verse.
(A lifted finger, the concert is over, all that remains is the voice in his earpiece singing those last few words softly.)
Yeah, that was a good choice.
He sees the way fingers twitch, as if it itches to pluck at metal strings to feel the way the tone echoes in the air in a way that just seems to....soothe. He knows it, understands it well --- there’s a touch of something personal there in his choice of song. It’s repeated, extended, listened to hours on end. Stress unravels, a mind clears, and he can work. He can focus.
Reciprocation in the curve of lips, and Tony’s glad Rhodey can appreciate. He answers with the way his smile beams, a burst beyond the mug that had once been raised to lips. Don’t want to ruin the song with the intervention of words --- one of those things, sit, relax, and let the tunes drown everything else out.
That same mug hides the way he watches with peculiar attention. Pilot’s lost in his own little world. Huh. Not that he finds it easy to ignore how easy the music engulfs him --- foreign ceramic against lips and the heat of a body next to him are the only anchor from a mind that tempts to delve into the mystery and wonder of his curiosity.
“ You pass the first test at least; taste isn’t terrible. ” Fingers back on the trackpad, mug on a coaster. “ How are you with a little Hendrix? ”
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