Chapter Text
The whispers had been around for ages, so long they’d gone stale.
“Yeah, that pale quirky one. Yes, the one with the huge guitar. Isn’t he odd?”
Comments like that drifted across the playfield of Ewell County Secondary School every year, for four years going on five.
James doesn’t exactly have no friends; he’s got his mate Jeff. Sometimes Patricia, James’s mother,gives Jeff’s mum a ring, and the boys end up jamming for a bit. Not that it does James much good, he was always coming down with something, he was rarely well enough to tour so he had to quit going on trips with them. The little skiffle group they used to mess about in gave James some of the best moments he’s had, but he knows he’s only fooling himself if he thinks it makes everything easier. It’s bad enough that all the other kids can see him tucked away on his own bit of the playfield, worse when a teacher stomps over and snatches his guitar like he’s some daft troublemaker about to smash it.
Post-war England was dull. The play area was a huge two-acre stretch until the line of trees or the first street began, and the flat grey sky and fog washed all the colour out of it. None of the others were running around the way children should. Most of them huddled near the large steel doors of the school. As he sat by the familiar wooden staircase, James picked at the rotting splinters.
“One more year.”
The thought of finally getting out into the world on his own honestly scared him. He’d never admit it, not even to Jeff, but he didn’t know what he would do without his mum. She always had answers. She always knew what to say.
The guitar’s everything to him. A bit of comfort when he feels homesick, a proper friend when the evenings get gloomy. And it’s not as if James can’t stand his own company. If anything, he handles being alone better than most of the sixteen-year-olds here. Maybe that’s what comes of being an only child.
Alice Liddell always shined her shoes in the morning, just like she always tied her hair ribbon. Her polished Mary Jane tapped unconsciously against the hardwood floor. Her freshly painted fingernails drummed lightly on the dusty windowsill.
Before she could pull her attention back to the lesson, a dark-haired figure rushed past on the other side of the window, startling her. Locks of her long honey-blonde hair whipped around as she turned, grey eyes narrowing at the frosted glass. She could make out a figure just barely but enough to make her pulse skip.
She cursed the late bell under her breath.
This school wasn’t exactly her style, it was suffocating to her. All the desks were the same, just like the uniforms and constant humming lights.
She twirled her blue hair ribbon and the teacher continued to drone on about Winston Churchill, she was listening just not fully present. Her bright colored tights under her skirt seemed to be the only interesting thing around, but then she heard it.
The wooden steps were just outside that wall, right beside the window her head rested against. And there it was again—that sound. It wasn’t the buzz of electricity from the old lights. It was fainter, more like a hum. She’d heard it every day for the past week, and she was dying to figure out what it was.
“May I use the restroom?” she asked.
The moment she got permission, Alice slipped past the heavy iron doors and out into the grey play yard.
Damn, she had forgotten how freezing it was. Hugging her arms tight around herself, she stepped onto the frozen ground.
Pouty lips pursed, James willed his fingers to keep moving. It was so damn cold he could barely keep humming to himself. He always hummed while he played, even if it was a bit embarrassing. Nose stinging with the cold, Jimmy put the guitar down, it just hurt way too much to continue. He settled for humming, which was cut off by the click of the iron doors.
The iron doors shut behind Alice, the sound echoing across the empty play yard. Frost crackled under her shoes as she stepped out into the cold, breath rising in thin white curls. She tugged her ribbon once, tightening it out of habit.
Then she heard it, not the hum she’d imagined, it wasn’t from the strange echo from the old lights but a soft, uneven humming drifting from the side of the building.
Someone was sitting by the wooden staircase.
Someone she hadn’t expected.
James Page was half-folded over his guitar, knees drawn up, fingers pressed to the frets as if the instrument were the only warm thing in the whole yard. His hair, dark and unruly, fell over his face as he worked out a tune too quietly for anyone else to bother hearing. His breath puffed in front of him, and he kept rubbing his nose against his sleeve, shivering.
He didn’t notice her at first.
But she noticed him.
Alice slowed up, watching the way his shoulders curled, the tapping foot, the way he hummed under his breath like he was afraid someone might stop him.
Her honey-blonde hair swung forward as she leaned a little, curious.
The shift of movement, that flicker of gold in the corner of his eye made James look up.
And for a moment he forgot everything.
The cold,
The guitar,
His own name,
She stood framed by the steel doors and the grey sky, but she didn’t look grey at all. Her hair was bright even in the winter light, soft strands catching the wind like they had their own glow. It almost hurt to look at, not because it was harsh, but because it was the first bit of sun he’d seen all day.
James straightened too fast, nearly dropping the guitar. His humming died in his throat. Heat flooded his cheeks even though the air was freezing.
Alice tilted her head, studying him the way one studies something unexpected but not unwelcome.
“Was that you?” she asked quietly. “The humming?”
James blinked. Hard.
His tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth. He nodded before realizing that was dumb and forced out a croaky, “I— yeah.”
Her lips curved not in a mocking way, but she was genuinely intrigued.
She took a step closer.
James wished she wouldn’t.
James wished she would.
James wished he knew how to breathe properly.
Her scent reached him before she did warm, soft, like clean soap and something faintly sweet, and it hit him in the stomach so sharply he actually shifted his grip on the guitar, as if the instrument could anchor him.
“That sounded nice,” she said.
James’s ears turned an alarming shade of red.
“Didn’t think anyone could hear,” he muttered, eyes dropping to the frozen ground.
Alice smiled, slow and gentle.
“That’s why I came out,” she said. “I kept hearing it.”
The words sank into him like warm water, and for the first time in a long time, James didn’t feel quite so invisible.
He didn’t say anything else, couldn’t, but he didn’t look away from her hair, either. Not really.
And she didn’t seem to mind.
Her gray eyes drifted to his red and frozen hands. Without thinking she gripped them.
“God your freezing I think we should go inside.”
He didn’t dare to breathe, he just nodded. He think he would let her do just about anything to him. Her hands were so warm and soft, he wished he could kiss them.
He had been completely ruined in that moment.