“So you’re not kind because people don’t see you that way?” Lilith arched her brow; he certainly looked innocent enough to her. Then again, she knew better than anyone that looks were deceiving. “Yes, well. My mother is sort of like the pariah you just described, and I am her daughter, after all.” That was all people saw when they looked at her, and after a while, she might as well fit the part. If everyone was going to treat her like a villain, at least she would be good at it, not that it gained her any friends.
She laughed as he scratched his neck with the drumstick, how clever she thought that was. “So the outfit you normally wear?” She struggled to understand what it meant, or at least what his world was like. “So your outfit would have given you away if you wore it here…” she nodded, looking over his current outfit. He looked absolutely normal to her. Sweet, innocent, even. “You changed your eye color?” She stepped closer to him, getting more on his level as he was sitting, just so she could look at his eyes. “Whatever you did, they’re beautiful. The yellow must look really nice, too. I understand why you’d hide it, though,” she shrugged and stood again, giving him a smile.
“Oh, I can sing anything!” Lily grinned and stood beside him, having no idea what songs or bands he was referring to. It only took a moment before she realized something she hadn’t thought of before. “I can’t sing for you, actually,” she said more quietly, her brow furrowed in concern. “It will sound…well, I’m not a normal mermaid, I guess. If I sing, it sort of lulls people into submission. It’s not real love or anything.” Which was why she rarely used it, and she liked Graham enough to be entirely honest with him, which was rare. Her necklace, however, had come in handy many times, but she would never have used it on him either. “I don’t want you to like me because of some silly spell. Maybe if I hum, instead of singing? Play something! I won’t sing, I probably won’t know the song anyway, but I do love music.”
A forced smile had camped on his features, nodding along with Lily as she attempted to follow along. Noticing her giving him a once over he realized his mistake and piped up, “I’m not wearing it now, I’d look ridiculous walking around in the helmet and firesuit. The only thing I’ve bothered to wear around here is my default shoes since they’re fairly innocuous.”
As he unconsciously tapped his foot lightly on the pedal he flinched back when she bent down closer to him, searching her gaze for a moment before relaxing slightly. The heat rushing suddenly to the back of his neck at her compliment, stammering as he embarrassedly admitted, “T-thanks. Um, well, I did it well before arriving here. I just wanted to look like all the other characters.”
His genuine smile returned as he saw how excited she became with the possibility of making music together. The excitement mellowed out as Lily explained the predicament regarding her singing voice. Trying to keep the excitement alive Graham offered, “How about I sing for the both of us? I’m not the best but it’ll give you something to hum along to, maybe?”
Tapping the powdered pink drumsticks on the rim of the snare as he mentally scrolled through the list of songs he knew how to play, readjusting on his seat as he decided on a hybrid of one of his favorites. Glancing back up to her briefly in hopes of smoothing some of her worries, “Honestly, it’s difficult to find characters who can relate in even a small facet. You’ve been some of the best company I’ve had in a very long time.”
Taking a sharp breath in as he wasted no time in turning toward the drum set, the cymbals and bass chiming the start of the song. Graham tried to keep his voice in tune to the original song, albeit a bit shakily. His drumming, on the other hand, was even and steady, utilizing the echo of the music room to his advantage as he raised and lowered the beats between each chorus. The beats containing a flavor of heavy metal instead of his preferred classic rock and roll, but the reasoning was that a piece of him wanted to be a little showy for his new company.
As the ballad of the song reached its peak, Graham stopped the heavy beats in favor of a quiet snare beat as he spoke rather than sang. His gaze was unfixed, lost in his own mind as he methodically called out into the void:
“Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”’
That was the last lyric he uttered before slowly finishing the song on the drum kit in front of him, gradually quieting each beat until he rested the dusty pink drumsticks against the snare. His shoulders sagging as he sighed deeply, some of the internal anxiety and stress managing to escape through the song.
