A selection of songs inspired by the writing of my dear pal Mousemind. Ghosts, secrets, self-doubt, road trips, Winnie Hendricks, and a lot of very #niche #corny tenderness.
Heya @mouse-mind - about a year ago I had this idea that I wanted to make a soundtrack to your very lovely Richard/Jared writings, but we weren’t friends yet, so I thought it’d be too creepy. But now, we are friends! And here it is! Pushing the socially acceptable limits of corniness, and made especially for you.
Since a few people were talking about it this evening, I thought I’d go ahead and share this failed piece of writing! It was always meant to be part of a much larger thing, which might explain why it feels so disjointed. It’s very, very corny, too.
It almost never happens, but on this particular evening, no one else is home. Richard is so grateful. For the peace, for the quiet, for the chance, without interruption, to really get some work done –
At least he thinks no one is home. Til he hears the piano.
Richard is certain it’s never been played. Not once. The only reason, he knows, that Erlich even keeps it around is because he believes it “lends the establishment a certain aura of class, which would otherwise be amiss, despite my best efforts.” Until this moment, Richard had never heard anyone play it. Had been sure no one knew how. From the sound of it – tinny and off-key – it hasn’t been tuned either, and yet the mysterious pianist dutifully plays on. Slowly, faltering, at first, then gaining confidence. As if the songs are being recalled from memory for the first time in many years.
Richard goes downstairs, into the den, and stands there. Silent for a while, watching Jared as he plays. The hunch of his shoulders, the slope of his neck. His hands moving – gently, deliberately, delicately – across the keys.
What is that song, Richard wonders. So beautiful. So terribly sad.
Jared, Richard realizes, is crying.
He doesn’t know how to react. Feels deeply embarrassed at witnessing this: a private moment, not meant to be his. For all his easy accessibility, there’s something about Jared, Richard thinks, that is fundamentally unknowable. The darkness in his past that Richard shies away from, fearful he can’t handle it, or simply will not understand. Like one of those untranslatable words in a foreign language: he possesses no equivalent.
Richard clears his throat. Jared startles.
“I’m so - so - sorry,” Jared stammers, twisting around on the bench to face Richard, apologetically shaking his head. He reaches up discreetly to swipe away the wetness from his eyes, and neither one of them acknowledges it.
“Did I disturb you,” Jared asks. “I didn’t realize anyone was home.”
“No, no, not at all. But can I, um. Do you mind if I sit here and listen?”
"Of course not, Richard. Feel free."
Jared turns to the piano for a moment, then back to face Richard again.
"Would you like to try?” Jared says.
Richard bats away the question with a wave of his hand. "Oh no. Nah. I couldn’t.“
"It’s alright, come on,” Jared insists. He slides over on the bench and pats the now-empty space next to him. “Music is really very mathematical. You’ll be good at it.”
–
Jared touches Richard’s fingers carefully, methodically, as if each one – each little bone and knobby knuckle – is deserving of its own devoted care and attention.
Richard, for his part, finds he cannot look away from Jared’s hands. They’re enormous, he thinks. Bizarrely so. It’s a thought that will stalk him long after the lesson is over, and for the rest of the evening, bleeding over into the following day. Jared’s hands. So large, and soft, and meticulously manicured. Does he go somewhere to get them done, Richard wonders, although it’s near impossible to imagine Jared actually taking time out of his schedule to do a thing like that.
In some distant corner of his overcrowded brain, Richard registers the thought that he likes Jared’s hands. He likes how neat his hair is, too, and how he smells, and those crisp, pressed shirts he’s always wearing. But mostly, Richard thinks, he likes Jared’s hands.
Jared tucks them away in his pockets, and Richard hopes he hasn’t been caught staring, that Jared isn’t going to acknowledge the almost hungry, dangerous way Richard’s been considering him.
But “that’s it,” is all Jared says, bobbing his head enthusiastically, admiring what he’s accomplished, the way Richard’s fingers splay across the proper keys.
Just then, the front door opens, with a particular force that can only announce the presence of Erlich. Richard and Jared slide apart, too fast, on the piano bench, as if they’ve been startled in the midst of something intimate.
–
For weeks after that, when no one else is home, one of them will go to the other.
Jared will find Richard in the work room or at the desk below his bed, and will nudge him gently on the shoulder until he takes his headphones off, or Richard will go out to the garage, where he’ll often find Jared sitting in the dark, or looking at his laptop, or reading. They’ll go to the piano together.
–
“Teach me that song,” says Richard.
“Which song,” Jared asks.
“The one - I don’t know what it’s called. The one you were playing that first night.”
“Oh,” says Jared. He looks a little stunned. Afraid, almost, though why, Richard can hardly imagine. “It’s just that, well.” Jared speaks carefully, delicately. He feels terrible for lying to Richard, but the thought of sharing the truth, of exposing parts of himself he normally keeps hidden, of burdening Richard with them, is so much worse. “It’s only that I don’t really remember it,” he says.
“Wait - what?” Richard stammers, incredulously. “It sounded - I mean, it really didn’t sound like you didn’t remember it.”
Jared sighs. With a resigned slump to his shoulders, he turns back to the piano, sets his hands carefully on the keyboard, and begins to play. It feels a bit like opening up and a bit like surrender. The song is more beautiful than Richard remembered. More melancholy, too.
“Okay,” Jared says, softly, as his fingers rest over the final keys. “Richard?” he prompts. “Your turn?”
But Richard hasn’t been paying attention. He’s been looking at Jared’s face, instead. First, at his eyes – impossibly blue, and wide, as unfathomable and open as the sky – which Richard watches slowly fill with tears. And then at his mouth, moving silently along with the music, mouthing words Richard can not understand, until his lip begins to quiver and Jared clamps down on it with the sharp edges of his teeth.
Richard places one hand, gently, on the back of Jared’s neck and turns his head toward him, and Jared gasps for the briefest of seconds before Richard closes the distance between them and kisses him on the mouth.
A kiss so good he can’t believe it came out of him. A kiss that says all the things both of them have failed to say.
When they break apart, Jared looks shell-shocked. And why wouldn’t he be? The impossible has just turned possible, right here in the living room. He reaches up and touches his lips with the tips of his fingers, checking to make sure they’re still there, that the world is still solid.
His hands are so nice, thinks Richard. Everything else, too.
“I’m, um. Jared,” he mumbles, looking down at his own fingers, cracking his knuckles, picking at his bitten nails. “You realize I’m in love with you, right?”
Happiest birthday, @ten-bobcats! Here are a Richard who has been up far too long coding and a Jared who is content to let him rest, drawn with a lot of love and very little talent – by me for you!
UR CORNY CONTENT BRINGS ME JOY I LIVE FOR THE CORN also if ur still taking requests then might you gift us with a continuation of ur texts-back-and-forth ficlet from earlier??????
This message brings ME joy, friend. Here is a very tiny - sorry! - snippet. Extra corny, just for you.
–
The red-eye touched down in San Francisco through a headache-colored fog. Sometime just past six o'clock in the morning. Jared shifted in his seat, almost impatiently, awaiting permission to turn on his phone.
At last. He pressed a button. It lit up and buzzed in notice of an unread text.
> Fuck. Sorry.
> I made shit weird I guess.
Jared nearly toppled his seatmate over, struggling with his small, efficiently packed, carry-on suitcase. His heart hammered in his chest as he pushed to the front of the airplane.
“Excuse me, please. Excuse me.”
Through the airport. Into a Lyft. Jared hadn’t stopped – not to eat, not to sleep, not for hours, not for anything – but he let himself stop then. He leaned back against the headrest. His eyes drifted gently shut. He took a moment to appreciate how his relationship with Richard had grown over the past few days, so far from each other, and to imagine how it might continue, now, so close.
He reached into his pocket.
> Richard, I’m coming home now. When I get there, I would very much like to kiss you.
V - an empty place. You know who. I know who. We all know who.
I used this prompt almost entirely as a vehicle for expressing some (tame) Sexy Opinions. So, um, oops?
–
There is a sad, off-putting feeling to a room with nothing in it. Like a naked dead body. A barren, hollow thing on the floor.
Jared tries not to think too much about that, but finds he can not help it as he glances back into his and Richard’s old bedroom. Empty but for the carpet. All of their things already at the new place, or packed up neatly in the back of the car. No bed, no desk, nothing hanging in the closet. None of the posters Jared always thought looked sloppy, but now finds he misses almost desperately.
This is the place where Richard first called him, so charmingly nervous, needing help with his business plan. Where they sat and worked for hours. Where they talked all through the night.
Where they shared their first kiss. First took their clothes off. Where they climbed into Richard’s bed, or lay on the floor beneath it, and learned things about each other that no one else knew.
The freckle-constellation on Richard’s left shoulder.
The indentation in Jared’s chest.
That Richard wouldn’t leave if he said, no, thank you.
If he said, no, not like that.
That Richard was loud, and how much Jared liked it.
That he could go for multiple times a night.
That Richard wanted Jared to take charge sometimes. Often. Pull his hair. Use his teeth. And how much Jared liked that, too.
How sometimes it took hours of gentle, patient coaxing, and other times Jared would get so excited he’d barely last a minute at all.
The scar on his arm. And on his back. And on his thigh. And each of the stories those scars told.
How it felt to be happy – blissfully, senselessly, miraculously happy – as he clung to Richard’s hips and gasped into his ear, Ich liebe Dich.
“We had a good life here,” Jared says, hot tears prickling shamefully at the corners of his eyes. He’s sad in a way he would never have expected. In a way he can’t remember being: not in many, many places; not for many, many years. You should know better than to be sad like this, Donald. Sad for such a foolish reason. Sad about leaving, he thinks.
“Hey. Jared.” Richard senses his distress. He rests his hand, supportively, at the back of Jared’s elbow, just over that old scar. He smiles a little mischievously. Gestures toward a familiar, well-worn spot on the floor. “Wanna – you know – one last time?”
have you gotten jared/richard for U? if you have then L! let's be corny.
Dear anonymous friend, you are a kind soul, and I’m grateful for your existence. Let us be corny, yes!
Monday
> Things are going well here, Richard. Thank you for asking!
> Sure.
> Excellent news: the team seemed quite interested in our pitch.
> Cool - thanks.
> I hope you are enjoying your evening.
> Yeah. Got pizza. That place you like.
> Wonderful! I hear the “New York” pizza here is a classic, but my dietary restrictions compel me to steer clear.
> Sucks.
> It’s okay! Frankly, I’m not sure it’d be to my taste.
Jared watched the three little dots on the screen that meant Richard was typing. Stared at them, unblinkingly, until the backs of his eyes ached.
He took off his shoes. Brushed his teeth and washed his face. Changed into his sleep-clothes. He stretched out on his back on the too-firm hotel mattress, against an extravagant pile of throw pillows, stiff, tucked-in, uncomfortable sheets. He rested his phone on the pillow beside him. Three little dots, keeping him company long into a mostly-sleepless night.
Tuesday
> Hey Jared - check out this bird I saw.
> Richard! What a sighting! What you’ve got there is a species called the “killdeer.” Tick that one off your list!
> Nice.
> They’re highly intelligent. Known to fool would-be predators by feigning injury.
Jared studied the photograph: the bird caught mid-run, wide-eyed, looking almost panicked. Scrawny legs. A sharp beak. Soft, tufted feathers. It was beautiful and startling. Beautiful and startling. Like looking at Richard himself.
> If you don’t mind me saying so, Richard, it reminds me a little of you.
> Ha.
> May I ask what you were doing in the Baylands?
> Got too anxious at the house.
> You and Monica gone. PP is a nightmare. Nobody gives a shit.
> I remembered you said it cleared your head or whatever.
> Don’t worry - ok now.
> Good. I’m glad to hear it. Please let me know if you need anything else!
> I know. I will.
Wednesday
> Spent half the day at the fucking doctor.
> Oh no, Richard, I’m sorry. Everything alright?
Three little dots. Three little dots. Jared held his phone close, like it was his only lifeline, and allowed himself to imagine Richard on the other end, in his bed in Palo Alto, his hair tousled against his pillow, a little shiny and smelling like sweat, loose, worn t-shirt hanging from his shoulders, clinging to his own phone just as desperately. Three Iittle dots. Three little dots. Before he could stop it, Jared had slipped into a rare and complete slumber, rife with the sort of romantic dreams that would embarrass him in the morning. He wouldn’t see what Richard wrote him until the next day.
> I’m ok.
> No, I’m not ok.
> Jared?
> Come home. I miss you.
Thursday
Was there another way to interpret it, Jared wondered, looking down at his phone over a free hotel breakfast of tea and fruit and oatmeal. He read the words again:
Jared? Come home. I miss you.
Something plucked directly from his most secret, shameful fantasies. Needed. Wanted, even, maybe. Missed. It was almost too wonderful to bear.
Jared was worthless all day in meetings, far gone, twitching with anticipation, his brain already on the next flight to Palo Alto. Seeing Richard again, imagining all the ways he could show him Richard, I missed you, too. He could barely form a coherent sentence. Couldn’t recall the words to the pitch they’d worked out so seamlessly, or focus on anything besides the buzzing of his phone.
> Jared, did you get my texts?
> You there?
> Jared?
> Write back when you have a second.
“Are you alright?” Monica asked, ashing her cigarette onto the ground when they were finally finished, waiting for a cab uptown.
“I’m, um – listen, Monica, do you think you could take tomorrow’s meetings without me?”
“Yeah. Of course. You sure you’re alright? You seem distracted.”
“Yes,” said Jared. “Thank you. Never better. But I need to get home. Now.”
