fandomtownies | The Boards, Saturday, All Day

Entry tags:

The Boards, Saturday, All Day

Ah, the Saturday before the new students were set to arrive on the island, and so much to be done. Today at The Boards saw Jonothon opening a package that had arrived in the mail yesterday. He could have just printed copies from the internet, The Consequence of Being Frank was public domain by now, certainly, but there was something about a properly bound script that held some appeal.

At least, that was what Jonothon figured, though a stack of identical scripts was only enough to keep him occupied for a short while, even if there were notes to be written in the margins of his own copy. It wasn't long beofre he directed his attention to working on a class syllabus, instead.

Keeping busy. Jono didn't dare let himself sit idle, these days.

[Open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Natalie had no real reason to drop by, but she did. Fairly early in the day, too. Just chceking in, though she thought she might play a song or two.

"Hey," she said, as she found Jono. "Getting ready for the fall?"

"You could say that," Jono agreed, glancing up from his lesson plan and smiling a little. "Scripts came in for the autumn season, now all I'm waiting on is my co-director to come back from New York, and then we can start auditioning, I think."

It would be good to get back into the swing of things. Jono hadn't really stagnated through the summer, but he hadn't been quite busy enough, either.

"And you? Ready for another semester of classes?"

Natalie shrugged. "They don't exactly demand much of me." The hard parts of the coming semester were not school-related. "It's just more of the same, so I guess yes, I'm ready."

"The school never really was much for actual academics, I suppose," Jono noted with a shrug. "I think half the staff goes in asking themselves, 'what do I wish they had taught me, back when I was that age?'"

Which was true enough for Jono, at least.

"And outside of school? Have you been up to anything interesting, Natalie?"

Another slightly non-committal shrug. "Clint from the gym promised to teach me archery," she said, though whether she was going to go into the particulars of how that had come about was anyone's guess. "Also, Tara gave me her cat."

Also, her boyfriend was leaving to become a long-distance partner. No big deal.

Jono didn't know archery, but he did, at least, have some grasp on that other bit.

Both of those other bits, really, if that last one had been said aloud.

"Tara had mentioned to me the other day that she wasn't allowed cats on campus in Sunnydale," he mused. "And you've got some experience with him already? That'll help him warm up to you, perhaps."

Jono was definitely cat-biased. The black and white cat hair that clung to his clothing here and there probably attested to that, well enough.

"And archery? Seems like it could be a useful skill, particularly around here. I should look into learning something like that sometime, myself."

"I do well enough without actual weapons." That was actually an understatement. She kind of literally kicked ass. "But it seems like it wouldn't hurt, with the way the island is. And it's something productive to pass my time with."

She figured she was going to be needing something like that a lot.

"As for Mox, he likes me fine enough. I did look after him in the Special Collections."

Ah, Special Collections. Jonothon remembered that. The makeshift campground had been full of people with ownerless pets, feeding them what they could from their scavenged supplies.

"He owes you one, then, really," Jonothon decided, and then he smiled, if only a little. "Not that he'll see it that way. Cats will be cats, after all."

"That's what I like about them," Natalie said. Cats were independent and intelligent, and seemed moreso to her than dogs, for example. "Mostly I hope he'll learn where he lives, now."

She paused, and glanced around. "Is the fall play still going to be Oscar Wilde?"

"He'll know where the food is coming from. That'll be practically the same thing," Jono decided, and then smiled faintly and made a reach for one of the scripts in the stack that was piled up off to the side, holding it out to her. "And yes, we're still planning on doing Wilde. We've got scripts in now, that makes it about as official as it can get before we've actually put out an audition call, you know."

That was totally how it worked.

Of course it was.

Natalie took the script, idly leafing through it. She'd read the play at her previous school, and still felt pretty familiar with it. "And Troy still needs to get back," she added. "But it's a start."

"He ought to be back soon," Jono replied, shrugging. "If he isn't back come the start of the next semester, I'll go ahead without him, I suppose. A business can't run if it's sitting stagnant, and a theatre isn't any good to anybody if there isn't somebody on the stage."

Jono was sure that Troy would come back, but he hardly had any idea when.

"I don't know if that's entirely true," Natalie replied, with a flicker of a lopsided smile. Gone again almost immediately. "I appreciate the quiet."

"All the better to usurp the stage to play on?" Jono returned that smile with a brief smirk of his own. "I have to confess that I spend the quieter days playing my guitar, at least. As much as I like company, a little bit of silence to think by is always appreciated."

"I'm used to a generally quieter environment," Natalie shared. She'd grown up the only child of parents who appreciated their quiet activities. "The dorms can still feel a little too loud."

"They were a bit overwhelming when I was still a student at the school, myself," Jono offered, nodding a little in understanding. "I got a job as an assistant at the library, hoping to find some quiet, there."

And his shifts had turned out to be among the busiest days to be in the library that entire year. Served him right.

"Even if the Boards do pick up again in the fall with rehearsals, there will be quiet days here, at least. There always are."

He could hope, anyhow.

"You say that now, and then one of the new bunch turns out to be a neurotic actress who spends all her time here."

You never knew with Fandom, so that was almost areal possibility.

"Probably hogging the piano as well."

"Piano-hoggers will be escorted off the stage," Jono decided with a sniff. "I have no room in here for prima donnas, luv."

... He really didn't. Not after the perfect princesses that had been through here last weekend, especially.

Natalie snorted, quietly. "Well, I'll do my best not to turn into one."

Ahahaha. Oh, you.

Jono considered this for a moment, and then shrugged.

"Prima donnas that I actually like can be the exception," he decided. "You've got talent enough to have earned one, anyhow."

Not that he was expecting her to become one, really. But it was good to cover all the bases that way.

"It's still not high on my list of plans for the future," Natalie said, not that that technically meant it wouldn't happen. She just didn't think it would. "Music's just a hobby."

A dear hobby she clung to whenever times were rough, but still. Just a hobby.

"Isn't that what everyone says?" Jono grinned a little, and then waved one hand dismissively before pushing his lesson plan to the side. "Have you got any energy in you to embrace that hobby for a little while today, by any chance? I haven't had someone to play with since... Well, Tuesday. But all the same..."

Natalie took... a few seconds to consider that, then gave it a shrug that didn't seem overly enthusiastic because nothing ever did, with her.

"Sure," she said. "I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere."

And music was the flimsy reason she'd had for showing up in the first place.

Someday, Jono would wonder when he had become the enthusiastic one in amongst his circle of people-who-could-be-loosely-considered-friends. Someday.

Today, however, he was just going to smile, push himself up out of his seat, and start off toward the stage.

"I'll let you pick the first number, since you're such a good sport about it, luv."

Well, Natalie was enthusiastic enough about some things. She just hid it extremely well. Extremely.

"Should probably make it one you're likely to know, then," she said, as she followed him. "Luckily I'm pretty aware of what's exclusive to my world and what's not."

"Useful, that," Jono mused, "though I'd like to think that I know my way around a guitar, and music in general, enough to say that I'd be able to at least fake my way through a song I don't know, so long as I've heard some of it."

He tilted his head a little as he headed for his guitar.

"Though now you have me curious what it is I'm missing out on."

"Not much." Yet. She herself was going to make a major difference, but that was years away, still. "As far as I can tell, most of the differences are in pretty obscure artists, anyway. But where I come from has a pretty distinct soundscape, just in general."

Which explained a little about why she liked the arcade so much. It felt a little like home.

She took a seat at the piano. "How are you with Doors songs?"

Well, in a few years, Jono was going to have to hunt down music from her world relentlessly.

"Classics," Jonothon replied with ease as he picked up his guitar and flicked on his amplifier. "I'd have to be very ashamed of myself indeed, if I were to say I was anything less than well-practised at them."

Honestly, he was probably going on the list of people who were going to be getting the records as they came out, anyway.

"Love Street?" she asked, flexing her fingers, like a warm-up.

"Let's see, now," Jono paused for a moment to think, and then he was putting his pick to the strings, playing the opening notes to the song. It was a fairly distinctive one. He had to commend her for that, anyhow, picking a song he couldn't just fake his way through, simple though it was.

Natalie's fingers found the right keys soon enough as well, almost playful. Her father was kind of a Doors fan, and she'd grown up with a special fondness for the entirety of Waiting for the Sun. And though there were only a few songs on there she'd actually bothered to learn to play, this was definitely one of them.

And what was a song without singing? Her usual, slightly detached style, naturally. Aloof but in the moment.

"She lives on Love Street, lingers long on Love Street --"

Damn, did that tone work well for this song, though. Jono caught himself grinning outright as she started to sing, a moment later throwing in some low harmonies of his own. Sure, the Doors hadn't bothered with harmonizing. The song had worked well enough as it was.

But neither of them happened to be Jim Morrison, and so Jono was going to harmonize if he bloody well wanted to.

"She has a house and garden, I would like to see what happens--"

Natalie's little smile was fleeting, but undeniably there, for the second or two it was actually on her face. Her hands danced on the keys, even adding one little flourish that hadn't been there in the original.

She had a knack for making things hers.

"She has robes and she has monkeys, lazy diamond studded flunkies," she continued once it was time again, and then her fingers picked up the slight change in the song. "She has wisdom, and knows what to do --"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Boards, Saturday, All Day

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject