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om_mainDoug manages to tell River how he feels about her - with the help of backup singers
Things in River's mind were as quiet as they ever got as she walked on the grounds, holding Doug's hand and just enjoying the moment. Her thumb was drawing soft figures and characters on the back of his hand - just then, a Chinese ideogram - and they were walking with no aim in mind.
Suddenly, she stopped, a frown on her brow, her grip on Doug's hand gone tight. "He didn't mean to," she whispered, to one in particular.
River, as usual, had been having her normal calming influence on Doug (which was good, because there'd been something he'd been wanting to say but hadn't figured out how, and walking with her had pretty much put it out of his mind and replaced it with an attempt to translate whatever it was she'd been writing on his hand), but he tensed as her fingers tightened around his. "Who didn't mean to do what?" he asked, concerned.
"It's alright," she went on, meeting his gaze after coming back to herself and loosening her grip on his hand. "The curtains are going to open. Sound check. All good."
Doug's forehead furrowed. Curtains. Sound check. A performance of some kind - but what kind, and who? Nothing bad, at least. He smiled crookedly and squeezed her hand. "Will the audience approve?"
"Will the performers?" River replied, watching him with concern.
"Wouldn't they cancel the performance if they didn't?" Doug eyed her curiously, wondering why she was concerned, then took a breath. "Anyway, performances aside, there's something I've been wanting to say." He smiled a little. "I mean, you probably know anyway, but sometimes I feel like I kind of cheat and take advantage of that and not tell you, and, well, some things probably should be said. Out loud. I mean..." Doug's forehead furrowed, and he let go of River's hand and turned towards her.
"When I saw you for the first time, my knees began to quiver," he sang, for no reason he could really determine.
Having just come back from a trot around the local country-side, Diaval was freshly shifted back to human form and feeling unusually sprightly. He'd caught sight of his roommate and accompanying girlfriend from several meters away, and quick-stepped up to overtake them for a sunny hello. Only he heard Doug break into a cheerful tune, and he thought, in a perfectly logical sequence of thoughts, that he really ought to help his friend sing this song.
So he fell in behind Doug, echoing the last two beats of his line, and keeping time with a steady snap of the fingers. It all seemed very natural.
To Doug, it seemed perfectly natural that Diaval would fall in as well (or at least, as natural as any of this felt, and again, why was he singing?) and he cast a quick glance and a bemused smile over his shoulder before turning back to River. "And I got a funny feeling," he sang, with Diaval echoing the last word and with a considerably more presentable side step than he'd ever managed in dance class, followed by a spin and some kind of odd rolling of his hips. "In my kidney and my liver."
From the part of his brain somewhere behind his left eye, Topher felt a tug, like he was forgetting to do something. He sent one last hateful comment to some know-nothing troll on his message board, and booked it around the corner of the building, where it all became clear. How could he be thinking about doing anything else? He locked step with Diaval and did some sort of "milking the giant cow" arm motion to accompany the lyric.
"Liver," Diaval sang in echo, perfectly happy with his new role as backup dancer, syncing right up with Topher's steps. Luckily for the empath in the impromptu audience, he was quite delighted to grapevine with Topher off to the side, the better to complement Doug's every line.
River, for her part, was simply standing there, arms wrapped around herself, and watching them all with a soft smile. But her focus was mostly on Doug, and that look in his eyes as he sang.
And...now Topher, too? Right. Well, at least he had company with..whatever this was? Doug gave River a crooked smile, recognizing that she also didn't seem at all upset, and managed a quick shrug. "My hands they started shakin'," he confided, no longer even surprised when his friends echoed the final word, "My heart began a-thumpin." He pounded on his chest as Diaval and Topher provided a "boom, boom, boom" behind him."
There was a moment of lucid thought where Topher was completely certain that River was the perfect girl, if this sort of lunatic serenade worked on her. But the thought faded as quickly as it came on, and Topher was enveloped in his choreography again. With more grace than was totally appropriate, Dough mimed a fountain of vomit, accompanied with the vaguely euphemistic line "My breakfast left my body," To which the appropriate reply was apparently to invoke one of Scrooge MacDuck's nephews? It was like speaking in tongues, and Topher was surprised at his own conviction as he crooned "HUEY HUEY HUEY!"
"All this tells me something," Doug sang, shrugging his shoulders. He grinned crookedly at River, and threw his arms out to the side. Okay, so maybe he was acting like an idiot, but...well, at least he meant all of it? And he had company in idiocity, which was more than a little consolation, especially since Diaval and Topher were now falling in behind him.
Maybe later he'd figure out what the hell was going on. In the meantime? Well, he'd embarrassed himself way worse than this in the past. At least River seemed to be getting a kick out of it.
"Girl, you make me tongue-tied, tongue tied," he explained to River with full conviction, his unexpected backup singers echoing key words seemingly at the end of each line. "Whenever you are near me. Tied tongue, tied tongue, whenever you're around." Aaaand...his arms were in the air, and he was spinning. Right. He should probably just be glad no one was filming this.
River was grinning brightly by that stage, at the three of them but mostly at Doug. She wanted to go to him, but she didn't want him to stop. Not with those emotions echoing hers, back and forth, to the rhythm of the song.
"I saw you cross the dance floor," Doug continued, returning River's grin with a bemused one of his own. "I thought of birds and bees. But when I tried to speak to you, my tongue unraveled to my knees." His impromptu background singers had continued, both with an unfortunately apt clarification of "Reproductive system, baby" that he suspected he was going to hear about later and that caused his face to redden, and something that was apparently meant to convey his tongue unravelling, but he pushed that aside and met River's eyes.
"I tried to say, "I love you"," he admitted, his grin tilting as he met her eyes. Which...okay, that was what he'd been trying to say, actually. "But it came out kind of wrong girl. It sounded like mi-noo-muh-dee-do, Mil-uh-nuh-muh-nee-nung nirl"
Another turn through the chorus followed, ending with Diaval and Topher waving as they half danced, half bounced backwards a few steps before wandering off with very, very confused expressions, and Doug was finally able to turn his attention back to River.
And promptly, for no reason he could determine, dropped to his knees.
"Oh, I'm begging on my knees. Sweet, sweet darling listen please. Understand me when I say..." Whatever impulse had started him singing disappeared entirely, and he peered up at River, offering a crooked grin.
"That the performers are likely as bemused as the audience?"
River knelt down across from him, still smiling. She'd waved goodbye at the other two boys, sad to see them go (they had been funny) but glad that Doug and she were alone again. "I'm not feeling very bemused," she told him, reaching out to lay a hand over his heart. He was, of course, but she could tell that it wasn't her.
"Amused? Or possibly suffering from hearing impairment?" After all, his singing wasn't awful, but he wasn't exactly going on American Idol anytime soon, either. Or on tour with Dazzler. Or...right, back to the point. There'd been a point. One that he'd been trying to say for weeks, except he hadn't been able to figure out how. He reached up to rest his hand on hers, lacing his fingers through. "This wasn't exactly how I meant to tell you," he admitted. Random song bursts had definitely not been on the list.
"I'd never been serenaded before," River answered, lips twitching, eyes bright. "And you had a back-up chorus." She was saying she'd loved every second of it, actually.
"I'm still not sure how I had a backup chorus." Doug's forehead furrowed for a moment, but he shrugged that off. Something accidental, she'd said. At least this time, no one had turned into wildlife. "So, ummm...serenading is a good thing? I usually save singing for the shower."
"This was good," River confirmed, then frowned, then smiled. "Better than good. What you feel, I feel." Which made sense, given her power, but then she added, "What I feel, you feel." Which was saying something else entirely.
"Yeah?" Doug said hopefully. "Not feedback?"
"It's on a loop," River told him. She couldn't completely separate her emotions from his.
"No, I know that. I just..." Doug offered a faint, awkward smile. "When I'm not there?" That, he had to admit, was the one thing he always worried about a little, ever since River had first made it clear that what he felt influenced what she did. He knew how he felt. It would be good to know if River felt the same way on her own. The problem was, he wasn't sure if even she knew.
"You're always there," River told him, tilting her head to the side. "I can't dissociate myself from me."
Which meant...Doug's face screwed up a little as he tried to sort that out. He'd always kind of assumed that once he was out of range, River's own feelings sort of clarified because she wasn't picking up his. Except would that make sense, anyway? She was already feeling his along with hers, and... he shook his head and tilted his forehead in against hers, offering a faint smile. "I'm confusing myself," he admitted. "Overcomplicating?"
"You're trying to put boundaries on things that flow about," River answered, smiling back, then brushed the back of her fingers down his cheek.
"Can't help it. Electrons are meant to flow in an organized fashion," he joked. He turned his face to brush his lips over her fingertips. "Thoughts and feelings disregard the laws of electronics."
"They don't care to be boxed in," River confirmed, and brushed her thumb over his lower lip.
Doug grinned a little. "They don't care to come out in a coherent manner, either." Or at least, they never seemed to for him. It was ironic, all things considered. He shifted to sit down, and urge her over to sit on his lap.
But instead of sitting properly on his lap (if there was such a thing), River straddled him, skirt riding up. Her fingers wound up in his hair as her mouth found his, and she kissed him with the way her heart beat for him.
Doug's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he smiled and kissed her back with enthusiasm, one hand tangling in her hair as the other moved to rest on her leg. Mmm. Definitely not complaining about her reaction. He should have said something a whole lot sooner.
River smiled into the kiss, briefly, then focused back on the slide of his tongue against hers (hers against his), fingers toying with the hair at the back of his head. It was a good thing Simon was nowhere near, but if he had come close now, she might have missed it, wrapped up as she was in Doug, and in both of them.
Things in River's mind were as quiet as they ever got as she walked on the grounds, holding Doug's hand and just enjoying the moment. Her thumb was drawing soft figures and characters on the back of his hand - just then, a Chinese ideogram - and they were walking with no aim in mind.
Suddenly, she stopped, a frown on her brow, her grip on Doug's hand gone tight. "He didn't mean to," she whispered, to one in particular.
River, as usual, had been having her normal calming influence on Doug (which was good, because there'd been something he'd been wanting to say but hadn't figured out how, and walking with her had pretty much put it out of his mind and replaced it with an attempt to translate whatever it was she'd been writing on his hand), but he tensed as her fingers tightened around his. "Who didn't mean to do what?" he asked, concerned.
"It's alright," she went on, meeting his gaze after coming back to herself and loosening her grip on his hand. "The curtains are going to open. Sound check. All good."
Doug's forehead furrowed. Curtains. Sound check. A performance of some kind - but what kind, and who? Nothing bad, at least. He smiled crookedly and squeezed her hand. "Will the audience approve?"
"Will the performers?" River replied, watching him with concern.
"Wouldn't they cancel the performance if they didn't?" Doug eyed her curiously, wondering why she was concerned, then took a breath. "Anyway, performances aside, there's something I've been wanting to say." He smiled a little. "I mean, you probably know anyway, but sometimes I feel like I kind of cheat and take advantage of that and not tell you, and, well, some things probably should be said. Out loud. I mean..." Doug's forehead furrowed, and he let go of River's hand and turned towards her.
"When I saw you for the first time, my knees began to quiver," he sang, for no reason he could really determine.
Having just come back from a trot around the local country-side, Diaval was freshly shifted back to human form and feeling unusually sprightly. He'd caught sight of his roommate and accompanying girlfriend from several meters away, and quick-stepped up to overtake them for a sunny hello. Only he heard Doug break into a cheerful tune, and he thought, in a perfectly logical sequence of thoughts, that he really ought to help his friend sing this song.
So he fell in behind Doug, echoing the last two beats of his line, and keeping time with a steady snap of the fingers. It all seemed very natural.
To Doug, it seemed perfectly natural that Diaval would fall in as well (or at least, as natural as any of this felt, and again, why was he singing?) and he cast a quick glance and a bemused smile over his shoulder before turning back to River. "And I got a funny feeling," he sang, with Diaval echoing the last word and with a considerably more presentable side step than he'd ever managed in dance class, followed by a spin and some kind of odd rolling of his hips. "In my kidney and my liver."
From the part of his brain somewhere behind his left eye, Topher felt a tug, like he was forgetting to do something. He sent one last hateful comment to some know-nothing troll on his message board, and booked it around the corner of the building, where it all became clear. How could he be thinking about doing anything else? He locked step with Diaval and did some sort of "milking the giant cow" arm motion to accompany the lyric.
"Liver," Diaval sang in echo, perfectly happy with his new role as backup dancer, syncing right up with Topher's steps. Luckily for the empath in the impromptu audience, he was quite delighted to grapevine with Topher off to the side, the better to complement Doug's every line.
River, for her part, was simply standing there, arms wrapped around herself, and watching them all with a soft smile. But her focus was mostly on Doug, and that look in his eyes as he sang.
And...now Topher, too? Right. Well, at least he had company with..whatever this was? Doug gave River a crooked smile, recognizing that she also didn't seem at all upset, and managed a quick shrug. "My hands they started shakin'," he confided, no longer even surprised when his friends echoed the final word, "My heart began a-thumpin." He pounded on his chest as Diaval and Topher provided a "boom, boom, boom" behind him."
There was a moment of lucid thought where Topher was completely certain that River was the perfect girl, if this sort of lunatic serenade worked on her. But the thought faded as quickly as it came on, and Topher was enveloped in his choreography again. With more grace than was totally appropriate, Dough mimed a fountain of vomit, accompanied with the vaguely euphemistic line "My breakfast left my body," To which the appropriate reply was apparently to invoke one of Scrooge MacDuck's nephews? It was like speaking in tongues, and Topher was surprised at his own conviction as he crooned "HUEY HUEY HUEY!"
"All this tells me something," Doug sang, shrugging his shoulders. He grinned crookedly at River, and threw his arms out to the side. Okay, so maybe he was acting like an idiot, but...well, at least he meant all of it? And he had company in idiocity, which was more than a little consolation, especially since Diaval and Topher were now falling in behind him.
Maybe later he'd figure out what the hell was going on. In the meantime? Well, he'd embarrassed himself way worse than this in the past. At least River seemed to be getting a kick out of it.
"Girl, you make me tongue-tied, tongue tied," he explained to River with full conviction, his unexpected backup singers echoing key words seemingly at the end of each line. "Whenever you are near me. Tied tongue, tied tongue, whenever you're around." Aaaand...his arms were in the air, and he was spinning. Right. He should probably just be glad no one was filming this.
River was grinning brightly by that stage, at the three of them but mostly at Doug. She wanted to go to him, but she didn't want him to stop. Not with those emotions echoing hers, back and forth, to the rhythm of the song.
"I saw you cross the dance floor," Doug continued, returning River's grin with a bemused one of his own. "I thought of birds and bees. But when I tried to speak to you, my tongue unraveled to my knees." His impromptu background singers had continued, both with an unfortunately apt clarification of "Reproductive system, baby" that he suspected he was going to hear about later and that caused his face to redden, and something that was apparently meant to convey his tongue unravelling, but he pushed that aside and met River's eyes.
"I tried to say, "I love you"," he admitted, his grin tilting as he met her eyes. Which...okay, that was what he'd been trying to say, actually. "But it came out kind of wrong girl. It sounded like mi-noo-muh-dee-do, Mil-uh-nuh-muh-nee-nung nirl"
Another turn through the chorus followed, ending with Diaval and Topher waving as they half danced, half bounced backwards a few steps before wandering off with very, very confused expressions, and Doug was finally able to turn his attention back to River.
And promptly, for no reason he could determine, dropped to his knees.
"Oh, I'm begging on my knees. Sweet, sweet darling listen please. Understand me when I say..." Whatever impulse had started him singing disappeared entirely, and he peered up at River, offering a crooked grin.
"That the performers are likely as bemused as the audience?"
River knelt down across from him, still smiling. She'd waved goodbye at the other two boys, sad to see them go (they had been funny) but glad that Doug and she were alone again. "I'm not feeling very bemused," she told him, reaching out to lay a hand over his heart. He was, of course, but she could tell that it wasn't her.
"Amused? Or possibly suffering from hearing impairment?" After all, his singing wasn't awful, but he wasn't exactly going on American Idol anytime soon, either. Or on tour with Dazzler. Or...right, back to the point. There'd been a point. One that he'd been trying to say for weeks, except he hadn't been able to figure out how. He reached up to rest his hand on hers, lacing his fingers through. "This wasn't exactly how I meant to tell you," he admitted. Random song bursts had definitely not been on the list.
"I'd never been serenaded before," River answered, lips twitching, eyes bright. "And you had a back-up chorus." She was saying she'd loved every second of it, actually.
"I'm still not sure how I had a backup chorus." Doug's forehead furrowed for a moment, but he shrugged that off. Something accidental, she'd said. At least this time, no one had turned into wildlife. "So, ummm...serenading is a good thing? I usually save singing for the shower."
"This was good," River confirmed, then frowned, then smiled. "Better than good. What you feel, I feel." Which made sense, given her power, but then she added, "What I feel, you feel." Which was saying something else entirely.
"Yeah?" Doug said hopefully. "Not feedback?"
"It's on a loop," River told him. She couldn't completely separate her emotions from his.
"No, I know that. I just..." Doug offered a faint, awkward smile. "When I'm not there?" That, he had to admit, was the one thing he always worried about a little, ever since River had first made it clear that what he felt influenced what she did. He knew how he felt. It would be good to know if River felt the same way on her own. The problem was, he wasn't sure if even she knew.
"You're always there," River told him, tilting her head to the side. "I can't dissociate myself from me."
Which meant...Doug's face screwed up a little as he tried to sort that out. He'd always kind of assumed that once he was out of range, River's own feelings sort of clarified because she wasn't picking up his. Except would that make sense, anyway? She was already feeling his along with hers, and... he shook his head and tilted his forehead in against hers, offering a faint smile. "I'm confusing myself," he admitted. "Overcomplicating?"
"You're trying to put boundaries on things that flow about," River answered, smiling back, then brushed the back of her fingers down his cheek.
"Can't help it. Electrons are meant to flow in an organized fashion," he joked. He turned his face to brush his lips over her fingertips. "Thoughts and feelings disregard the laws of electronics."
"They don't care to be boxed in," River confirmed, and brushed her thumb over his lower lip.
Doug grinned a little. "They don't care to come out in a coherent manner, either." Or at least, they never seemed to for him. It was ironic, all things considered. He shifted to sit down, and urge her over to sit on his lap.
But instead of sitting properly on his lap (if there was such a thing), River straddled him, skirt riding up. Her fingers wound up in his hair as her mouth found his, and she kissed him with the way her heart beat for him.
Doug's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he smiled and kissed her back with enthusiasm, one hand tangling in her hair as the other moved to rest on her leg. Mmm. Definitely not complaining about her reaction. He should have said something a whole lot sooner.
River smiled into the kiss, briefly, then focused back on the slide of his tongue against hers (hers against his), fingers toying with the hair at the back of his head. It was a good thing Simon was nowhere near, but if he had come close now, she might have missed it, wrapped up as she was in Doug, and in both of them.
