Post by Arihant on Nov 8, 2008 16:23:01 GMT
ooc: Title from my new Ari's half of Kirihant song - 'Save You' by Emilie Autumn.
He'd sent Jamie away pretty quickly.
It wasn't that he minded having her around, or anything. Jamie was a good enough friend of his - they weren't remarkably close, sure, but he had a good time talking to her, and even more importantly, he was capable of having a good time with her without speaking at all. Jamie was one of those people who was perfectly happy sitting in a room with another person for hours on end without speaking, and sometimes, for Arihant, that was what was best.
But he'd still sent her away. For one, there was the fact that this was still the boys' dorm, despite the cavalier attitude that Lynn and Jamie took to sneaking in here whenever it suited them, and he wasn't entirely comfortable with just being in here, alone, with Jamie. He didn't care what his power was or that she was up there all the time; if anyone came in on them in here, alone, while the Hallowe'en party was going on downstairs, he knew what they would think.
It was just as well for him that she had been talking about not wanting to go to the party for weeks. If she hadn't, he would have felt bad about it, but as it was, he was happy that she was having a passable time in her dorm. Which was good. God only knew that he didn't need to feeling guilty about anything else right now.
The Delaneys had been unnecessarily overzealous in trying to convince him to come down to this party tonight, and after a while, it had begun to irritate him. Badly. It was understandable, he supposed, seeing as how he hadn't actually told either of them what had happened in the corridor that night, but still. If he didn’t want to go to a party, he didn’t want to go, end of. He knew that they were just looking out from him and that they had his best interests in mind and everything, but he wasn’t going.
After what had happened, Kira wouldn’t want him there. And he didn’t want to ruin this night for her. From the amount of whining that Kennedy had been doing lately about the effort he’d had to put into decorating it, it was pretty spectacular. She must have been unbelievably stressed by this…
…and so, more stress caused by Arihant’s social retardation (bad at the best of times, but significantly worse when with Kira, and if what happened at the last party he’d been to with her was any indication, tonight would be even worse than it had ever been before) was not what he wanted to put Kira through right now. And hell, he didn’t even know if she’d have spoken to him. Would she have wanted to?
He knew what would have happened. If she hadn’t spoken to him, he would have assumed that it was because she didn’t want to. And then he’d obsess over that.
If she had spoken to him, he would have assumed that it was because she’d felt obliged to speak to him, and he would have got awkward, and he would have said something wrong. And then he’d obsess over that.
Really, all things considered, it was easier just to stay up here.
He should have been doing work, but he hadn’t been able to find the willpower to actually do anything productive. This was a strange situation for Arihant, who usually made it his business to be as conscientious as possible in order to contribute to the school that had given so much to him, but right now, with the music thumping from downstairs and his certain knowledge that no one else in the school was even thinking about doing work right now made it a lot harder to focus. So eventually he had given up, and instead, he had taken out his violin and was playing through a few of the jigs and hornpipes in the book that Kennedy and Lynn had bought him from Inverness. The music was fun, for him – the main difficulty with Irish and Scottish traditional music, according to the websites that Kennedy had brought up on his laptop from him, was that people couldn’t keep up with the speed of the music, that their fingers eventually started tripping over one another and their bowstrokes fell completely out of sync.
And Arihant wasn’t much of a violinist, true, but in the area of speed, he had no issues whatsoever.
He was playing through Danny Boy, now, taking a break from the faster-paced pieces like Drowsy Maggie and The Spey In Spate (he did love this music, but the question begged to be asked: who on earth named it?), wishing he knew the lyrics so he could work out just exactly what tone this piece called for. He didn’t know what it was about – he’d heard that it was played at funerals, but from what he did know of the words, that wasn’t really appropriate, was it? It was supposed to be a love song. Funerals and love weren’t supposed to have anything to do with each other.
And a couple of moments after he thought that, just as he was reaching the climax of the piece, his fingers fumbled as he remembered –
“It’ll be great,” she had said, smiling as started to climb up the steps, swinging Arihant’s violin loosely in her hand. “I can do all of those Irish songs – hey! Do you do any of those?”
And Arihant had smiled too, the first proper smile that had graced his cheeks in nearly four long years. “Kinda. I’ve never been able to find any sheet music for it, but I got a CD a couple of years back and sort of… figured out a few from there.”
And he laughed, as something else occurred to him. “I can play Danny Boy. That at least counts for something, right?”
A hideous note scraped its way out of his violin and pounded against his ears, and he stopped playing, his fingers pressing down so hard on the strings that he was afraid he would break the fingerboard.
Time to put the violin away, then.
He placed the instrument back in its case, trying very hard not to think about that memory. Thankfully, a second later, a fist hammered at the door of his room, the clattering noise echoing against the wall. Jamie had probably left something behind.
He walked over, pulled the door open, and completely froze.
He'd sent Jamie away pretty quickly.
It wasn't that he minded having her around, or anything. Jamie was a good enough friend of his - they weren't remarkably close, sure, but he had a good time talking to her, and even more importantly, he was capable of having a good time with her without speaking at all. Jamie was one of those people who was perfectly happy sitting in a room with another person for hours on end without speaking, and sometimes, for Arihant, that was what was best.
But he'd still sent her away. For one, there was the fact that this was still the boys' dorm, despite the cavalier attitude that Lynn and Jamie took to sneaking in here whenever it suited them, and he wasn't entirely comfortable with just being in here, alone, with Jamie. He didn't care what his power was or that she was up there all the time; if anyone came in on them in here, alone, while the Hallowe'en party was going on downstairs, he knew what they would think.
It was just as well for him that she had been talking about not wanting to go to the party for weeks. If she hadn't, he would have felt bad about it, but as it was, he was happy that she was having a passable time in her dorm. Which was good. God only knew that he didn't need to feeling guilty about anything else right now.
The Delaneys had been unnecessarily overzealous in trying to convince him to come down to this party tonight, and after a while, it had begun to irritate him. Badly. It was understandable, he supposed, seeing as how he hadn't actually told either of them what had happened in the corridor that night, but still. If he didn’t want to go to a party, he didn’t want to go, end of. He knew that they were just looking out from him and that they had his best interests in mind and everything, but he wasn’t going.
After what had happened, Kira wouldn’t want him there. And he didn’t want to ruin this night for her. From the amount of whining that Kennedy had been doing lately about the effort he’d had to put into decorating it, it was pretty spectacular. She must have been unbelievably stressed by this…
…and so, more stress caused by Arihant’s social retardation (bad at the best of times, but significantly worse when with Kira, and if what happened at the last party he’d been to with her was any indication, tonight would be even worse than it had ever been before) was not what he wanted to put Kira through right now. And hell, he didn’t even know if she’d have spoken to him. Would she have wanted to?
He knew what would have happened. If she hadn’t spoken to him, he would have assumed that it was because she didn’t want to. And then he’d obsess over that.
If she had spoken to him, he would have assumed that it was because she’d felt obliged to speak to him, and he would have got awkward, and he would have said something wrong. And then he’d obsess over that.
Really, all things considered, it was easier just to stay up here.
He should have been doing work, but he hadn’t been able to find the willpower to actually do anything productive. This was a strange situation for Arihant, who usually made it his business to be as conscientious as possible in order to contribute to the school that had given so much to him, but right now, with the music thumping from downstairs and his certain knowledge that no one else in the school was even thinking about doing work right now made it a lot harder to focus. So eventually he had given up, and instead, he had taken out his violin and was playing through a few of the jigs and hornpipes in the book that Kennedy and Lynn had bought him from Inverness. The music was fun, for him – the main difficulty with Irish and Scottish traditional music, according to the websites that Kennedy had brought up on his laptop from him, was that people couldn’t keep up with the speed of the music, that their fingers eventually started tripping over one another and their bowstrokes fell completely out of sync.
And Arihant wasn’t much of a violinist, true, but in the area of speed, he had no issues whatsoever.
He was playing through Danny Boy, now, taking a break from the faster-paced pieces like Drowsy Maggie and The Spey In Spate (he did love this music, but the question begged to be asked: who on earth named it?), wishing he knew the lyrics so he could work out just exactly what tone this piece called for. He didn’t know what it was about – he’d heard that it was played at funerals, but from what he did know of the words, that wasn’t really appropriate, was it? It was supposed to be a love song. Funerals and love weren’t supposed to have anything to do with each other.
And a couple of moments after he thought that, just as he was reaching the climax of the piece, his fingers fumbled as he remembered –
“It’ll be great,” she had said, smiling as started to climb up the steps, swinging Arihant’s violin loosely in her hand. “I can do all of those Irish songs – hey! Do you do any of those?”
And Arihant had smiled too, the first proper smile that had graced his cheeks in nearly four long years. “Kinda. I’ve never been able to find any sheet music for it, but I got a CD a couple of years back and sort of… figured out a few from there.”
And he laughed, as something else occurred to him. “I can play Danny Boy. That at least counts for something, right?”
A hideous note scraped its way out of his violin and pounded against his ears, and he stopped playing, his fingers pressing down so hard on the strings that he was afraid he would break the fingerboard.
Time to put the violin away, then.
He placed the instrument back in its case, trying very hard not to think about that memory. Thankfully, a second later, a fist hammered at the door of his room, the clattering noise echoing against the wall. Jamie had probably left something behind.
He walked over, pulled the door open, and completely froze.
