there’s this feeling like something big is coming his way. some might call it doom, how his palms have gotten uncontrollably sweaty or how the bass rings deafeningly loud in his ear. the more level headed crowd might chalk it up to the overstimulation of a late night out with colleagues he’s barely gotten acquainted with, and perhaps the only real doom in this equation is pairing that with an arduous day at work and approximately five hours of sleep.
it’s an unpopular opinion, but jaden thinks it’s the music. that is to say, he disagrees entirely with terra’s taste, thinks it loud and incongruous in every way— a jarringly unmatching beat for the genre and even then, distracting for a bar that claims to host good conversation. in fact, jaden’s so entirely firm in this belief that he thinks it’d take a miracle to change his mind.
suppose it’s a spot of cliché that he finds that in lee rumi.
it’s perhaps a little presumptuous to say, considering he doesn’t know her all that well other than a name he’s plucked off of coach and a face he’s only seen in pictures. but jaden had been somewhat impressed by their 50% match—the absolute minimum, from what he’s told, that even 0.1% less would strike her from his options entirely. and he’d thought it even more bizarre that he’d spotted her across the room then, just as he looked up from her profile.
and what he means to say here is that jaden is suddenly thankful for the music. he’s thankful that it’d been disconcerting enough to drown out his colleagues’ voices when they’d attempted to give him the years of context to a piece of immaterial office gossip that had long preceded him, so much so that they’d all but given up on including him in the conversation. and he’s thankful that he’d been so overwhelmed by it that he’d given up all pretence of caring, too, opting instead to swipe mindlessly on the app.
all to find her.
suppose his mother’s right when she called him a romantic, after all.
jaden loosens his collar and excuses himself from the group, then walks up to her by the bar, his eyes never once straying from hers. in the back of his mind, he notes that the music’s not so loud where she’s at, and it coaxes out the ironic chuckle. “hi,” he greets, and there’s a pause, like he’s only just realised what he’s done— that he’d randomly made eye contact with and swiftly approached a girl at a bar, and context aside, there’s a real chance that he could come off like a complete tool for it. he clears his throat and points to her teasingly, “i really hope your name is rumi and you’re not some doppelganger who’s never heard of her, because that would make me look like a real piece of work.” jaden offers his hand for the shake, a pleasant smile on his lips, “but if you’re my match, then hi. i’m jaden. it’s really nice to meet you.”
HANG THE DJ ft. jaden fanning & @serialeclipse's lee rumi
