Title: Fuck the Sun Status: Complete Characters: Anon, Fang Rating: SFW Classification: One-Shot Author: Anonymous Summary: Anon hangs out with Fang in her house to play some guitar. "Step it up, dweeb, or we'll miss the bus." I fish for the phone in my pocket, wiping sweat off of my forehead with the other hand. The weather is still unbearably hot, and it's getting worse every day. Getting back from school feels like walking through a fucking desert. Quick check of the time reveals there's still plenty. With no reason to go any faster, I hide the device and continue dragging my feet to the bus stop. "We're fine, give me a break. If I run now, I'll be hard-boiled by the time we arrive." "You definitely will if we have to wait for another one," Fang replies, smirking. She doesn't seem to mind the temperature at all. Damn scalies. We arrive on time, despite her constant complaining about my pace. Next time, I will definitely make it a bet. Maybe that will get her off my back. The lack of AC inside the vehicle still seems outrageous to me, but I'm somewhat getting used to it, in the way a prisoner gets used to anal. "Told you we're fine," I say, slumping into the nearest seat. "Yup, this time," she chuckles while sitting down next to me. "You say that every time, but somehow we've never missed the bus." "We nearly did once." It's unbelievable how much smugness this girl can convey with a single sentence. The bus starts, and our banter goes on. Eventually it turns into small talk about classes we had today. During the whole ride I try my best not to pass out from the heat, and I barely succeed. Getting off the bus, I mumble my thanks to the driver, before heading towards Fang's neighborhood. I'm so tired I barely register walking there, but finally her house appears in front of us. After we enter, I take a moment to revel in much cooler air inside, still sweating profusely. It feels nice to be here, even if the alarms in my head never shut up until I leave. Most of the time the sound is just an ambient buzz, but it's always there, reminding me to drop some spaghetti every now and then. A couple of months ago merely visiting a girl's place seemed completely out of reach, yet here I am now, hanging out with Fang almost daily. Sure, I risk getting turned into one of her dad's hunting trophies every time I come here, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. "Here," Fang says, holding out a glass of water. I haven't even noticed when she disappeared in the kitchen and came back. "You look like you need it." I take the glass and drink slowly. Despite the liquid being refreshingly cold, I can feel my face getting warmer in reaction to the kind gesture. "Thanks." "I'm just being pragmatic," she says with a grin, though there's a faint blush on her face as well. "If you melted into a puddle, I'd have to clean it up." Still sipping the water, I look around the house on the way to her room. It's crazy to think it's starting to feel familiar to me. Some of it, anyways, as I haven't spent much time outside of living room and Fang's room. They're both nice and cozy, even though the latter seemed trashy to me at first. Especially compared to Naser's room, which is almost unnervingly clean for a teenager's. I was there only once, when I tagged along as Fang went to hide cigarettes. She said her dad routinely searches her room for them, so it's safer that way. The pack ended up inside one of her brother's sports trophies, which he supposedly never takes off the shelf. A thick layer of dust covering them seemed to confirm that. Soon we reach Fang's room. It looks pretty much the same as on my first visit, but I started looking at it differently over time. The scribbles on the walls are no longer weird and random, I can now name most of the songs they ended up in. Some of the verses are even mine - easy to guess which ones, they read like lyrical shitposts. Though Fang sometimes borrows this style, her lyrics can be much more diverse in tone, ranging anywhere from venting her frustration about the world, to reliving some happy memory. The posters are also something I can easily recognize now. Sometimes, when she looks for an inspiration or just doesn't feel like playing, we listen to her favorite bands. It was easy to find something I liked as well in her impressively large collection of CDs. Before I knew it, she got me hooked on... whatever she said the genre was. It seems unnecessary to give it a name longer than an entire song's worth of lyrics, but the pieces themselves are great. It only seemed fair to show her some of my favorite songs in return. She may have laughed at my taste at first, but she eventually admitted a few of them were really good. Snapping back to present, I toss my bag aside and sit down, while Fang discards hers in similar manner. "What's your plan for today?" I ask, finishing the glass and putting it away. "Remember yesterday's jam session?" Fang asks in reply, waiting for me to nod before continuing. "I took the good bits we came up with, and put them together into one song, but it still needs some work." She takes one of her guitars, sits in front of me, and starts playing. Though I can't see it from here, I imagine her tail moving along to the rhythm, like it always does. The thought makes me briefly wonder if she's even aware of this habit, but soon my focus shifts back to the song. I vaguely recognize some of my riffs from yesterday, but now they're much cleaner than what I managed to shit out then. The song goes on, until an abrupt melody change happens. Fang pauses and sighs, noticing the surprise on my face. "See? That's what I meant. I love these two parts, but they sound like shit back to back. We need something to connect them better." "Play it again," I say with the intent to pay extra attention to the problematic fragment. She obliges, skipping most of the beginning. A frown appears on her face when she hits the rough transition again, but she keeps going for a bit longer this time. I'm not sure if it could even be called a transition, since the problem is clearly a lack of one. "Any ideas?" She lifts her eyes from the guitar and looks directly at me, making my heart skip a beat. "So far none," I reply, relieved my voice didn't crack. "Mind if I try that?" Fang gets up, heading for the guitar stand. Her tail is wagging to the song, matching my predictions. I take the instrument from her as she sits next to me, ready to correct mistakes I am surely about to make. Just like this house, the feel of her guitar in my hands is something familiar to me at this point. A quick warm-up strumming later, Fang starts playing the song again, and I try my best to copy the sounds. I'm still a shit player, but I'm much better than I was back when she started teaching me. "Geez, Anon, you fucked that one up good." Well, somewhat better at least. "Try it again, slower," she says, once again demonstrating the riff I failed. After a few more tries, I pull it off well enough. We start the song from the beginning again, this time making it past that point without any mistakes. All the noise we're producing quite efficiently muffles the sound of alarms, which get a little louder every time Fang brushes my shoulder with her wing. The spaghetti breaks free, resulting in me completely fucking up another fragment when I realize... what exactly? That she's been subtly touching me for a while, deliberately or not? That my autistic reactions didn't fire off at the first touch? That I've actually forgotten about the alarms, too distracted with the sheer comfiness of the situation? I have no idea which answer is the closest to the truth but I don't care. It's irrelevant which of these has just thrown me off. All that matters is precious moments like this one. I just want them to last forever. "Come on, that was an easy one." A smirk is creeping up her snoot. "Yeah, I just got lost in thoughts a bit, sorry." "Must've been some thick fucking thoughts, then," she says, resting a hand on her leg. "What's on your mind?" So much for just letting it last forever. "I..." I hesitate for a moment. Can I really tell her what was on my mind? At best it will come off as mushy, at worst - just plain creepy. Then again, she did pour her heart out both here and on the school's rooftop. Hiding my emotions after she laid hers bare doesn't seem right. "I was just thinking how much I like this. Us hanging out, I mean." I feel my cheeks progressively getting redder as I go on, but I just keep babbling. "Playing music and shit. Learning, creating something new, just spending the time together. Enjoying the little moments, being ourselves." "Dweeb," Fang summarizes, though her smiling face bears no sign of mockery. If anything, it seems she's slowly starting to blush as well. I smile back, and we sit there in silence for a while. It's not nearly as uncomfortable as I expected, but I stifle a sigh of relief. "Alright, break's over," she says, getting ready to play again. We continue from where we left off, soon reaching the problematic part of the song. Though it already sounds questionable coming from Fang, my attempt can only be described as unholy. "Oh, wow," she says, raising her eyebrows. "That was impressively fucking bad. Maybe let's practice these two parts separately for now." With a nod, I copy the movements of Fang's hands again. The first fragment is not that difficult, but the other one takes me a bit more time to learn. Still, there's no fucking way I could play these back to back. I try, though, with Fang's encouragement. The change of pace is really sudden, and I keep missing chords or adding new ones accidentally. There's just no way to do this well. After a few more of my tries, she suddenly perks up. "Hold on. Try that again Anon, exactly the same way." "You sure? Still sounds like a cat being trampled by a herd of triggas to me." "No no no, you're onto something here. I just need to hear it again." I shrug and try my best to repeat the musical crime. It takes me several tries, but I manage to do it again. Fang immediately mirrors my abortion of a riff, and starts playing it over and over. Each time she changes it up a bit, correcting one note at a time. Her tail beats against the floor like crazy, but her face shows unmatched focus. Eventually she's satisfied with the result, and I'm at a loss of words. I can still tell it's based on the sound I produced, but it's much more refined. Fang looks at me happily, and starts playing an earlier fragment of the song. The formerly shitty transition is now so smooth I wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't know it was there before. "Perfect." Her face is beaming with satisfaction. "Wanna try it?" "I'm sure I'd spend more time on this than we have before your dad's home. I'd rather just listen to you play the whole song again." "Okay," she says, and takes a deep breath. Though we've been playing this exact piece since we came here, it's still nice to hear Fang perform it. Without having to slow down so I can keep up, she can play exactly how she meant the song to go. I set the guitar aside and lie down with my eyes closed, fully committed to enjoying her performance. The sound of my own humming catches me off guard, but I decide against stopping. Eventually Fang gets to the last part of the song, which I haven't heard yet. I recognize more fragments from yesterday, but they're all mixed in ways I would've never thought of. After what feels like too brief of a moment, the song comes to an end. Fang strums the last chords slowly while I sit back up. "I love it," I say with a smile. "Yeah, me too," Fang says quietly. There's a hint of moisture in her amber eyes. "I want to keep working on it. How about we write some lyrics tomorrow?" "Sure, I'd love to. Got a name already?" "Not yet." She thinks for a moment. "Actually... you could name this one." "Me?" I ask in confusion. Naming a song she made sounds almost lewd. "Well, I used a lot of your shit from the jam session, and you came up with the last missing piece. It's only fair to let you do it for once." "I don't know, Fang, it's still mostly your song." She rolls her eyes. "Come on, it's just a fucking name. Doesn't even have to be specific, just some kind of theme we can use for the lyrics." "Alright, alright. Lemme think..." Her songs don't really follow Reed's style of obnoxiously long or short names that sound like drug powered trains of thoughts. Instead, most of them are named after her personal experiences. Can't say I've had many of those that are worth naming songs after. Those I've been having since meeting her were more pleasant, and I hope we can keep making such good memories. Just having that thought floods my mind with visions of all the debaucheries I want to commit with her eventually - handholding, booping the snoot, looking into each other's eyes... I look around the room, searching for something to inspire me. I deliberately avoid looking at her, to keep the distracting thoughts out and be able to actually come up with a proper name. Thankfully there's something that's exactly what I'm looking for, though not inside the room. "'The Sun Can Go Fuck Itself'," I say proudly, repeating my own words from days ago. Fang looks at me for a moment with a raised eyebrow, before bursting out laughing. My laugh soon joins hers, and continues until we both calm down. "We've got a theme then, but you can surely do better, dweeb," she says, still grinning. "How about 'All My Homies Hate the Sun'?" "'Oi, You Got a Loicense to Shine So Fookin Hard?'" "Enough, save those ideas for tomorrow," she says, chuckling briefly one more time. "Now scram before my dad fucks you up worse than sun ever could." I get up to follow her advice. As much as I don't want to leave so soon, avoiding certain death is a reasonable thing to do. I grab my bag and say goodbye to Fang, before going downstairs and leaving the house. A wave of heat hits me in the face as soon as I open the door. That's another reason not to leave, but I step out and head to the bus stop anyway. I'd choose sunburns over getting my head bashed in with 9 Iron any day. But fuck the sun nonetheless.