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"Okay," Mel starts, setting her CD case down on the bartop. "Today's music lesson is gonna be more rock. Well, emo. But it's basically just rock—"
Toni watches Mel from where they sit on a barstool. The team finally decided to tell Valentina about Toni's existence (or, return to existence, as Alexei phrases it) a few months ago. And since then, Mel's been coming over once a month to teach Toni about music.
Why she felt the need to, Toni has no idea. Bob's shown her all of the important stuff. Though, Mel apparently disagrees with his description of important.
"Toni, are you listening?"
Toni snaps out of their thoughts to see Mel staring at them. "No. Sorry," they reply sheepishly.
"I asked if Bob's shown you Fall Out Boy." Fortunately, Mel doesn't seem upset with their absentmindedness. That's one of the things Toni likes about the tower, aside from Valentina, no one gets upset with them when they do something wrong. (Well, they sometimes do, especially Walker, but they always apologise afterward.)
"I do not think so," Toni responds, frownig. There are so many bands. It's hard for them to keep track of it all. Even if Bob has shown it to them, they doubt they'd be able to remember it.
Mel takes one of the cases out. On the cover is a.. sheep? Toni thinks that's a sheep, at least. They haven't actually seen on in person, not since their death. They're pretty sure sheep don't have wings, though, so maybe it isn't one. "This album's called Infinity on High. 2007."
Toni watches with anticipation as Mel takes the disc out, placing it into her player. Bob likes Rock music, and Toni thinks they do too.
Mel skips the first few songs, playing the fourth. "Alright, this one's my favorite from the album."
The song is.. good. Not as good as the one she showed them last week, Pink, Toni thinks the band was. Or, no, it was a singer.
There's a lot of snare. Toni actually doesn't really know what snare is, either. But it sounds similar to the one Walker complains about in a lot of Ava's choice songs. They should really look more into this if Mel's going to continue showing them music. It would be best if they actually knew what they were talking about.
Once the song ends, Mel pauses it before the next plays. "So?" She asks, and Toni can see the hopefulness on her face, in the way she's tapping her foot.
"It's good," Toni replies, earning a smile from Mel. "I like the voice."
"Good, I'd have had to breakup with you if you didn't." Toni frowns at her words. They didn't think it was that bad to dislike the song. Before they could ruminate over that any longer, Mel quickly adds, "That was a joke, by the way. I'm not that petty."
Oh, right. People do joke like that, don't they? Yelena says similar things sometimes too. "Okay," Toni nods, "Next song?"
"Right, yeah," Mel unpauses the player again. She skips a few more, landing on the seventh one. "This is one of their most popular songs."