Talk Nerdy to Me

Chapter 21: Paris Music Bank

Summary:

Ra attends the first concert with fans, and starts discussing with Chris exactly... how she is going to accomplish the "nude" part of "nude paintings."

Chapter Text

Ra silently thanked Chris for the ear piece for probably the hundredth time in the first ten minutes of the show. She had been seated before the show opened for fans to come in, along with other guests, photographers, staff, and VIPs who had paid extra to sit close to the stage.

Ra was certain at least one of those was going to scream themselves hoarse before a single performer appeared on stage. NMIXX hadn't yet come out, there was a French announcer of some kind speaking, with Korean subtitles on the big screen.

Bada and Mari were next to her, and Ra was pretty sure that they'd been asked by Chris or Jin or possibly both to keep an eye on her.

The ear pieces weren't quite noise canceling, but they kept the worst of the screaming to a dull ache between her eyes.

The auditory tactile was a funny thing. If she let it go completely, she could feel just about everything. Screams, squeals, ordinary voices, the beeps of tickets being scanned outside, even the hum of the lights overhead. She had gotten quite good at blocking out a lot of ambient sound, but the autism diagnosis a few years ago had made all of it rush back in with a vengeance. She had only just mastered it again when she had been excommunicated nine weeks ago.

The addition of music back into her life, hard and fast like a blow to the head, was both a blessing and a curse. Because it let in all the other sounds she'd thought she'd mastered. Screaming in joy, as the people in this auditorium were, was a different sound and feeling than she felt when people shouted in anger or frustration, though, and that plus the ear piece made it just this side of bearable.

But that was before NMIXX came out, and the entire place erupted like a volcano. Ra thanked Chris in her mind for the hundred and first time, and then they started singing.

The songs drowned out the screams, and Ra found that the dress rehearsal had not at all prepared her for the main event by a long shot. She felt every note electrifying her skin, for the first time feeling women's voices deep into her bones. She clung to the seat rests with a prayer, eyes closed for a beat, a moment, a second, a third, and then she opened her eyes and watched her new friends dance to the same song she'd loved in the red room, and now pulled at her heartstrings like liquid fire in her veins.

The show went on around her, and she watched it with eyes that couldn't get enough of it, with eyes that dried out in a bid not to miss a single second. With a start, she realized that Mari had gone to get them drinks while the set changed, and a Coke Zero was pressed into her hands.

"How do you do this?" Ra asked. "How do you watch these things over and over again and not be consumed by it?"

"Once you get used to it, it's routine," Mari said, turning her eyes to the stage as the first peels of Back Down signaled P1Harmony was coming. "But you never get over it. It never gets old. It's why I've been here for five years."

Ra silently agreed. She could live like this.

When Stray Kids themselves started their set at the end, Ra only thought the room had been loud. Now it was like a thunder rumbling through the place, an energy that gave as much as it took.

Ra was swept away, breathless. She filmed the dances, trying to capture a moment like she had last night that she could translate into a painting. She got it, not during a set but during a moment between songs. Hyunjin was panting for air, hair sticking to his head, his head thrown back to draw in oxygen. The lights were just so - just enough to caress his face, shape his neck where the skin was taut, and his body was angled just a tiny bit away from her, to where if he were nude his glutes would align with his shoulders, just enough.