Came To Make A Connection - [Ursula/Julien]

ALL I SEE IS RED.

The music blares through the speakers that cough out static and thundering bass lines; the beat, although defeaning, is still a gentle hum that synchronizes to my own pulse. Every lyric is red, spilling out like blood from the boy's mouth. I can see the red trailing down from the corners of his lips, stinging his fingertips as they race across the neck of his guitar like surgeon's hands, dripping onto the black stage floor beneath him. Of course, as far as I can tell, there's no actual blood on this sweaty, singing boy's body. But, the blood he's bleeding is just as palpable as the song he's singing. His voice is that good.

There must be a reason why I'm here tonight, in a club on the opposite side of town of Bastille Styx's club. It's brighter here than it was there, the lights much more blinding and suffocating than how it was in Bastille's (where most of the lights were seemingly spotlighting the burlesque dancers, anyway). Instead of dancers, this place has a live band set up on a makeshift stage, where the lead singer is just as much as eyecandy as any of those dancers. He's singing pretty words with a pretty voice from his pretty face and all the pretty girls in the audience are falling for it and I'd probably be lying if I said I wasn't one of them.

His pretty face isn't the reason why I'm here, though. (I didn't even know this band/club/place existed a few minutes ago, when I followed the drunken crowds on the sidewalk right through the heavy doors.) I tell myself the reason isn't because I'm still shaking from my encounter with Nino Ripley earlier today, it isn't because I can still hear the tremor of betrayal in his voice ("You'll cover for me, won't you?" "You know I will."), it isn't because I'm drinking away the taste of his name on my tongue with drinks that taste as bitter as our exchanged words. I tell myself a lot of things, so much so that lies become irresolute, facts become disputable, right becomes left, up becomes down, white becomes black...

It doesn't matter what I tell myself, because, as of right now, my head is fuzzy from the alcohol and the music is loud enough to get me swaying from side to side. My existence is weightless in this crowded room, where the threats of ex-boyfriends and regrets and self-destruction are extinct. Pretty boy locks his eyes with me, and, for a generous second, I forget who Nino Ripley is and what I did to break his heart in order to save mine.

Pretty boy's lips curve up into a smile, and I reciprocate, because, for the first time in a while, it doesn't feel completely forced.

Then, he shifts his glance to meet another girl's gaze - but the music is still music, and the lies still irresolute, and the facts still disputable...

The foreign smile still ghosting my lips, I bump shoulders to the boy in the leather jacket standing next to me in the audience. "He's good, isn't he?"

We've all got red on our faces, tonight.