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Babe.
The word would not stop orbiting Johanna’s mind, tumbling around and around, small and warm and buffed to a shine with neuronic friction. Even as she launched into the first few beats of Ogre Battle, she found her mind wandering to give the soft syllable another twirl—imagining the way it took formation between the gentle slopes of gentle lips. The way it looked on her. Did it suit?
If her fingers were sliding around absently, she supposed it didn’t matter. It was Melina everyone was looking at, not her. Johanna let her body fall into the rhythm, tapping one platform boot to the beat, and remembering teetering in the rain in those same boots. Sliding, shivering, into her seat inside and wringing her numbs hands together.
“Aw, babe.”
It was a line of throwaway pity, a pet name without significance. Regina had put the cigarette back between her lips. Run a hand through her blonde waves and shot Melina a grin when she placed their drinks on the table. Her eyelashes fanned out against her skin and smoke drafting from her mouth, well. Johanna didn’t have to have been warned about girls like Regina Taylor to know she was already in way too deep.
On stage, mind now back in the Rainbow Theatre, Johanna skipped up onto the front of the drum riser, blinking in the spotlight. Brianna’s fingers were flying all over the neck of the Red Special, and though Johanna could appreciate the old lady’s squeal, it was the thundering rolls across Regina’s kit that really made Flick of the Wrist for her. God, she wished she could see Reg’s powerful arms soaring. Recognising her preoccupation caused fleeting embarrassment, but she soon reasoned that she was supposed to be paying attention to Regina. Bassists and drummers, and all that.
Who couldn’t pay attention when she started that Lap of the Gods shrieking, anyway? Johanna bit away a grin.
“I know you’re just jealous, babe,” came Regina’s drawl in her mind. She wasn’t wrong—Johanna did sometimes envy her vocal ability. But that wasn’t why it had stuck in her head. It was that word, that warm, sticky, terrible word.
Johanna swallowed, lowering her head to look distractedly at her own fingers on the strings.
She’d been pretty lost in her own head for most of the performance, but something electric happened on the first beat of Son and Daughter. With every word of the first line she felt it mount and mount inside of her.
“I. Want. You.”
Melina’s voice cut the extended note hard and Brianna’s guitar growled and Johanna let her head jerk forward with the gravelly beat. When her heart began to pound, she stepped backwards and backwards. She pretended that she was turning her head to locate the drum riser but when her eyes met Regina’s she could not deny she had ulterior motives. Regina was divine. Regina was shiny with sweat and glowing fire gold, her hair falling in waves about her face, every drumstick strike gritty and effortless. She was staring right at Johanna.
Johanna looked away quickly but she couldn’t ignore the hot electrical pulses building in her body. She could feel Regina behind her in every drumbeat. Unable to bring herself to move away from the drum riser, she submitted herself to Regina’s percussive power, to their twin ebb and flow, to her goddesses’ eyes. To the gaze Johanna could feel searing into her back.
During Brianna’s solo she did move off to the side. Calming her breathing, trying to consolidate the thunder in her heart and the lightening in her fingertips. It was no good, really, because when Melina leapt back into action to take over the stage once more anything Johanna had managed to suppress came flooding and flooding back.
She almost shook with it when she found herself standing on the drum riser again—this time facing Regina. Vaguely she registered Melina’s presence beside her but all she could see was Reg, Reg, Reg, glittering with parted lips and beating, beating, beating right to the beat of Johanna’s heart. That sparkling thing draped over her shoulders and pinned low at the front. She grinned at Johanna.
Johanna thought of babe in bars, babe on the couch in Regina and Melina’s apartment, babe from behind studio glass, babe, laughingly down the phone. The tempo of the song waned and the cymbals began to judder behind her and the whole thing ended with one final glance back at Regina on the jerk of the closing beat.
The concert passed then largely in a haze of euphoria. This was aside from the general panic of her bit at Melina’s microphone during Liar, involving the wrangling of her useless vocal chords in a spotlight she was not generally used to. This did however go relatively smoothly—the whole performance went relatively smoothly, from Keep Yourself Alive to Stone Cold Crazy to Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll.
It was at the end of Jailhouse Rock that things went awry. Johanna, swept up in the shudder and glisten of the cymbals, made her way over to the drum riser. When hers and Regina’s eyes locked she was surprised to find the other glaring. Move, Regina mouthed at Johanna, eyebrows shooting up with pointed urgency, and it only took a moment for Johanna to catch on, nodding quickly, turning on her heel and jogging away.
In her wake there was an enormous crashing, the shriek of metal and microphones, the thunder of the bits of kit toppling off the drum riser. Johanna continued to jog away, off stage and away from the sound of Regina angrily dismantling her drum kit.
As she began to slow she also began to hear footsteps behind her, and suddenly there was Regina, storming past in a flurry of sequins and rage. Johanna watched her departing form for only a moment before she resolved to follow, through the winding backstage and eventually out a heavy orange door.
The night air was chilly, biting. Regina was standing only about two metres away from the door, lighting a cigarette in sharp practised movements. Leaning against the concrete wall. Obviously still fuming.
“Reg,” said Johanna, slightly breathless. She blamed this on the jogging and pushed her hair off of her face. Regina examined her for a moment and then turned to blow smoke in the opposite direction. That glittery cardigan-looking piece was now unpinned at the front, her black lace bra on full display. Johanna wondered if she was cold. If she was, she wasn’t showing it.
When Regina didn’t say anything, Johanna inhaled and then prompted once more. “That was a bit rock ‘n’ roll, even for you.”
At this Regina’s fingers tightened where they were gripping her upper arm. Finally she spoke, her raspy voice low. “How do you feel about Mel, Jo?”
“Mel? Our Melina?”
“How many Melinas do you know?” Regina said sharply, and then took another drag of her cigarette.
Johanna fell silent. The question was so bizarre and out of the blue that she simply didn’t know how to respond. Suddenly, she itched for a cigarette of her own. What did Melina have to do with anything? “I… I don’t think I know what you’re asking.”
“Do you want to fuck her?”
Johanna’s eyes widened slightly. As they stood there and the silence broadened and broadened, she felt her heart begin to flutter. Theories began to rear their self-indulgent heads, and her stomach twisted. It twisted wonderfully.
Finally, swallowing, she replied. “No.” And then, when Regina continued to stare at the ground in silence, “What… makes you ask?”
Regina still would not look up, but she brought the cigarette to her lips, her expression shadowed and unreadable. “I. No, I mean. Sometimes… it just seems like you do.”
Johanna was beginning to catch on. With only a little hesitation, she moved towards Regina’s slouched form, step by cautious step. The click of her heels on the concrete filled the empty air. “During Liar?”
Looking away pointedly, Regina rolled the cigarette between her fingers. When she spoke it was almost defensive. “It’s not—it’s just, it just seemed like you were going to…”
Johanna settled herself against the wall next to Regina, their arms brushing just slightly. “Kiss?” she suggested, quiet, staring out across the concrete.
“Fuck,” breathed Regina.
Unable to see Regina’s facial expression, Johanna’s heart began to thrum, quivering and low in her chest. Without turning her head, she spoke again, softly. “If you don’t… want this. Say so.”
Johanna counted the beats of silence. Three, four. Five. On the sixth she felt her body flood with warm, molten courage.
But before she could make her move she felt the sudden weight of Regina’s body flush against her own, heard the cigarette extinguished against the wall just above her head. Overwarm, her breath shuddered just as Regina cut it off with the press of her lips. The kiss tasted largely of Marlboros but Regina’s mouth was so soft Johanna couldn’t help but whimper and when she felt a hand gently slide to rest at her waist her cheeks began to heat.
With one shaky hand, Johanna reached up to cup Regina’s jaw, using it to tilt Regina’s head to the side and deepen the kiss. A second hand joined the first on the other curve of Johanna’s waist and Johanna similarly let a hand come to rest on Regina’s side. The slide down had Johanna’s thumb tracing the soft skin just underneath her bra. Regina groaned, quiet, separating their lips and leaning forward slightly. Johanna’s heart stuttered at the feeling of her cheek pressed against the hot, exposed skin of her neck.
“Fuck,” said Regina, again, but this time almost laughingly. “Fuck, babe.”
Johanna swallowed, letting a hand thread through Regina’s hair. Then, in a low voice, “Call me that again.”
There was a pause, and Regina lifted her head, lazily tilting it back just enough for the breeze to catch her hair and blow it off her face, almost ethereally. Johanna studied her carefully as she leaned forward, eyelashes dipping, lips shiny and pink. “Babe,” she murmured, hand tangling in Johanna’s hair, thumb caressing her neck.
And, all at once deciding the first kiss wasn’t going to be quite enough, Johanna found herself leaning in again. She thought not only of babe in hotel lobbies, babe at bus stops, babe from the driver’s seat of the van, but babe with blonde hair tickling her chin outside the Rainbow Theatre.
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