Daemon Lover ☽ Jimmy Page

Being a Lady

"𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨, 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭."

Afternoon sun leaps into the hall from the single window, warming Reina's back and draping her shadow across the carpet. The floor is nearly silent with thudding doors and moving guests. She wipes her eyes and finding them dry, stands.

She recalls what Richard said in the car yesterday. About wanting. With five awkward steps past the elevators, she decides to turn the corner and walk to Jimmy's room. They've only been apart for several minutes, but her stomach churns. She presses her hand to the wood of the door, to feel the painted grain, and knocks. 

Reina listens for him. She smiles when a roadie passes her with suspicious eyes and drags her shoe across the carpet. Her body feels heavy and stinging.

With a click, the door opens and Jimmy stands in the space. She feels she's met him many times like this: shirtless and brooding. His eyes sit at half mast.

"Jim." Her wet lips meet in a syllable. She shifts her weight and crosses her arms over her exposed midriff.

"What do you want?" His words drip from his mouth; she knows he's taken more Valium.

Many things. But she steps to him and pulls herself inside when he doesn't close the door. Muted sun manages to seep under the balcony doors' drawn curtains. The cold sends goosebumps spreading to her shoulders, making Reina clear her throat. 

She speaks with her back to him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have acted the way I did with him. I . . . apologize."

He's silent. Her heart spins in the time he doesn't speak. Until finally, his breath as she knows it and his words:

"I don't want it becoming a habit with you."

She shakes her head and looks to him. "It won't."

"Good," he mutters and drifts past to the bedroom. Her legs feel glued to the carpet as she identifies the rustle of sheets and comforter. She imagines his body turning fetal on itself and the leaking lines stretching from the impact of his form on the bed. Too much.

She begins undressing in the sitting room, discarding her clothes over the sofa's back and shucking her shoes. Her hair is messy from the wind and she brings it up and back, tying it in a makeshift knot around itself. Something within her muscles begs for rest.

Jimmy is exactly how she imagined when she steps past the threshold. His hair is a juxtaposition against the white eiderdown and the swell of his knees is curved and sideways. Before climbing into the bed, she opens his pillbox and takes a baby blue Valium from the mess, like she's taking a mint. She swallows it without water. Its bitter grain pinches the back of her throat.

Her lips are heavy with whispers. Careful, she brings her legs up and joins Jimmy. It is all so, so familiar: his back and vertebrae and the childish space where his waistband parts from his skin. Reina is desperate; she curls against him, knees pressed and folded, hands in prayer beneath her cheek, close enough she wishes he would absorb her, thoughts and wishes and body and heart.

His lungs expand and deflate and Reina catches and grazes the motion. The very beginnings of the drug take affect: her heart rate slows and she congeals into the mattress. There is always a time for sense and a time for thought, Jimmy had told her once when they were stoned. She has his skin beneath her fingers, cold and soft, and the distant song of his breath, good enough to make her fall asleep.