fandomtownies | The Boards, Saturday

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The Boards, Saturday

Jono was almost thankful to be getting back to work at the Boards today, going through his mile-high stack of paperwork and trying to work out spring audition and rehearsal schedules, since the budgets had already been worked through during all of that spare time he'd been trying to kill back through the autumn. Wednesdays still seemed good for rehearsals, but he was torn between using Saturdays during his usual office shift for the weekend rehearsal day, or Sunday.

Or perhaps he ought to just ask whoever auditioned what days worked for them.

Or perhaps he'd just say to hell with scheduling, put his leg up, and pretend to be hard at work inspecting the ceiling while he listened to Pearl Jam on a small portable CD player that he'd brought in, so that he could at least have music to listen to while he contemplated just how necessary it was to replace the computer that Lizzie had fried on that weekend where everyone seemed to be swapping powers.

Or maybe he'd just nap right there in his office chair. December had been a busy month. He'd earned it.

[Open Boards!]

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Natalie was still keeping busy. Clearly buying Christmas presents had worked out splendidly for her, since taking them to their recipients was keeping her about as distracted as shopping for them. Because that was why she was here now, too.

She knocked on the office door frame, peering in. "Hey."

Jono glanced at the door, offering Natalie a little smile and a nod of greeting as he rearranged himself to actually face her. It wasn't too much of a hassle, at least. He was crap at staying put when he was wounded, so moving around with his leg in a brace and his arm in a sling was hardly the stupidest thing he'd done even this week.

"Natalie, luv. C'mon in. How was your Christmas?"

She appeared to be in one piece. He was going to consider that a win.

In one piece? Maybe physically.

She stepped in, raising an eyebrow at the brace and the sling. "Clearly less exciting than yours."

Jonothon answered that with a one-sided shrug of his shoulders.

"Statistically, more injuries happen around the holidays," he replied. It was true enough. Just not entirely relevant. "And New York is one hell of a city. Take a seat?"

"Mmhmm." That was responding to everything but the last bit, though she did take a seat. "I'll keep that in mind if I ever visit."

She was always judging all you superhero types a little bit.

That was just fine with Jono. He did a fair bit of judging them too, and he was one.

"Good, good. Gives me less reason to worry."

It would also help if she was going to pretty much any New York that wasn't his own. Because his reality was messed up, and Jono was perfectly willing to cop to that.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, luv?"

Natalie shrugged, reaching into her bag for a neatly wrapped present (everyone she knew seemed hard to shop for, so she'd gone for something practical), which she then held out for him.

"Merry belated Christmas? I've been saying that a lot."

"Merry belated Christmas," Jono echoed with a wry sort of smile as he took the package in one hand and set it on the desk in front of himself. "It seems to be the thing to say, I think. I didn't get back to the island myself until yesterday, so I've got my fair share of belated holiday wishes to pass around as well."

And he'd probably get around to that sometime in the new year.

It took some fumbling, but he managed to get the gift unwrapped, and then held it up to look at, smiling a little.

"It's lovely," he reported, giving Natalie a thankful nod. "I can see me getting a fair bit of use out of this, actually. Thank you, luv." A beat. "I didn't get anything near as thoughtful for you, I'm afraid."

Gift cards. When the best he could manage was a decent hobble and a credit card swipe, gifts he could fit in his pocket were about the most thoughtful thing he was going to manage this year. And that was why he was offering her an envelope with her name on it, and a twenty dollar Groovy Tunes gift certificate tucked away inside.

"No, this seems thoughtful enough," Natalie told him, having opened the envelope to see what was inside. "It goes with my new record player and headphones. Thank you."

See, she could even offer him a smile, even if it was a small one. Just a subtle upturn of the corners of her mouth.

Hey, small or not, Jono would take it. It wasn't as though smiles from Natalie happened terribly often, after all. And he could be pleased that the gift certificate seemed to follow a sort of theme along with the rest of her gifts.

And really, it was difficult to go wrong with music.

"Well, then that is good to hear," he decided. "Any idea what you're going to get with it?"

There was another one of those oh so familiar shrugs. "Not really," she said. "Probably won't decide before I'm in the store. Dad gave me a Mama Cass album, we'll see if I make it into some kind of a theme."

"Seems as though all of your gifts have had a pretty excellent theme going for them so far," Jono mused, nodding. "Why mess with a good thing? And, so far as themes go, it's difficult to go wrong with Mama Cass."

And now Jono found himself wanting to listen to The Mamas & the Papas and was lamenting that he'd left most of his music collection upstairs in his bedroom. Dammit.

"Well, I did also get a self-help book combining psychology and movies," Natalie offered. "Theme's already messed with. But she's pretty great. My dad... has a pretty vintage taste, just in general."

"Nothing th'matter with vintage," Jonothon decided. "We all had to come from somewhere, after all."

And, okay, Jono wasn't really a huge fan of his roots, but he was sticking with that point, blast it.

"I've got a turntable and no small number of records to play on it, myself. Used to be a terrible vinyl snob, actually. It just sounds more... more real, that way."

"Yeah, I know someone else who thinks that, too." And it was good that she was so mild at the best of times, or the slight change in her expression would have been obvious. She looked fleetingly a little sad, then wiped that off her face again. "It does have a different feel to it, yeah."

Jono was fairly observant, all things considered. As someone who had to deal with some fairly subtle expressions on his own face, it was sometimes difficult to miss the little nuances that people let show in their eyes.

He frowned thoughtfully for a second afterward, and then nodded and wiped that expression away, as well.

"How has your break been, Natalie? We've established that you didn't end up brutally maimed in a freak holiday accident or anything like that, but I'm sure most people can boast th'same."

And he remembered what she had written for him to see during his last Outskirts class, easily enough.

Yeah, Natalie figured. It was like him to remember. And wasn't that why she'd written it down in the first place?

She wasn't even sure anymore.

"You're not supposed to ask about that," she pointed out, flatly.

"No, I suppose I'm not," Jono replied, lifting his shoulder in another one of those one-sided shrugs. "But I'm really rather terrible at doing what I am supposed to. Call it a character flaw."

He was completely shameless, and proud of it.

Natalie rolled her eyes, and looked away, her expression falling back into a perfect neutral.

"Eight days before Christmas."

Those words were seared into her brain now. Thanks, Sam. She was a horrible person with horrible timing.

"Just another day of th'year." Jono was quiet for a moment, eyeing that perfect neutrality with a look on his own face that was struggling not to seem too concerned. "I'm not going to press for details, luv. You asked me not to ask, I'll respect that. But I want to make certain you know, if there's anything you need- free access to the piano all hours of the night, anything, it's here."

And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "You'll be fine."

She was tough. Of course she would be.

Whether Natalie Adams was ever fine was really going to be an argument for the ages, but she appreciated the sentiment, all the same.

"That's generally how it goes," she said. "Nothing lasts forever, time heals all wounds, et cetera."

Jono was confident that, even if she wasn't fine, she would keep standing, she would keep going. At least in that regard, she was probably more fine than he was, nine days out of ten.

"And so on, ad nauseum," he agreed. "That's life, so far as I've seen it. It hurts, it leaves scars, it keeps going on."

Natalie kept herself from rolling her eyes again. Somehow. It was a defensive reaction that took a little more enrgy to suppress than most.

"Mm. Well, I have my playing, and archery, and whatever translation work Peter throws at me."

So. At least she was keeping busy instead of wallowing.

"Th'same way I have the theatre, and my music, and teaching. Something t'do, something to keep busy with. Idle hands can be dangerous, too."

And here he was, unable to use one of his arms for the foreseeable future. It was like the polar opposite of when he'd lost his lower jaw and lungs, when his guitar had needed to take the place of the singing voice that he'd spent years lamenting the loss of.

You made do.

"We'll be doing auditions for our Spring production... soonish. I need to touch base with Lizzie yet, to be certain about when. If you're interested in being involved."

Natalie gave him a blank look.

"Who's Lizzie?"

Clearly the main question here, that one.

Hey, totally important and not at all a distraction from heavy talk about life. Jono could cop to that.

"My new assistant manager around here," he replied with a shrug. "Does paperwork, mostly, since I was drowning in it after Troy left. I hadn't actually gotten as far as putting my want-ad into th'paper when she replied to it, which leads me to think that she's another one of those people who's here because Fandom wanted her to be."

Because Fandom was funny like that.

"Mmhmm." Well, the island did work in strange ways, she knew that. After a year, it was kind of hard not to have noticed. "And is the piece still Oscar Wilde?"

"Of course. I haven't been staring at th'script for bloody near a year now just to toss it aside for something else."

Really, with that much prep for a single show, it might almost be safe to assume that he'd know what he was doing while directing this one, or something.

Maybe.

Natalie shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know if there's really a part in that for me ––" Although she'd thought the same about Petey Sci-Fi, and look what happened there. "–– but if you need anything to do with music..."

"I certainly wouldn't turn down help with music," Jono agreed, nodding down at his injured arm. "The script calls for some piano music, and if the actor cast in that role doesn't know how to play, I'd far sooner have someone offstage playing than cheat it by playing something over th'sound system."

Live music. Jono was also a live music snob.

"I can live with that kind of snobbery." Just like he would have to live with her commenting on his narrative. "I could do that, sure. Seems better than a tape, anyway."

Hey, after a few years of being relentlessly teased by Deadpool, commentary on the narrative was something that Jono was getting used to. And he didn't even know he had narrative.

"It's definitely more convincing than a tape," Jono agreed. "The sound might come from the wrong direction, but it beats having it piped in from all around with speakers. Plus... I've heard you play."

Honestly.

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The Boards, Saturday

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