The blue tape wraps around his pale body, the metal plates at the stark ends send an abrupt shock of cold through his vertebrae that he refuses to submit to the shiver of. It lays delicately onto his hips, tugging at the low bones. The little white lettering and dash lining is creased and worn.
She sighs lightly, the warm breath just faintly hitting his utterly fluorescent white legs causing a sea of gooseflesh to rise and fall against the thin hair on his forearms. Her eyes are squinted and brows furrowed, hair being held out of her face by a pencil that sits behind her ear, teetering back and forth carefully.
On the table behind her is a stationed cigarette, lit in the ashtray, smoke rising to the ceiling in thin loops to get dissipated in the breeze by the window. There's a mess of books and paper, and posters dot the walls of previous runway looks and cut-out pages of fashion magazines, her name in fine print on the bottom of each photograph.
"You must have the thinnest waist I've ever seen." She mutters, writing down the supple twenty-six on a scrap of pattern paper, various measurements littered throughout the dark sheet he wonders how she even reads them.
Jimmy brings up one of his narrow arms, flexing, "Only meat and veg for this one." A flimsy line outlines his flat biceps. She laughs below him, though he thinks the ability to lift a double-necked guitar by its bottom shouldn't be questioned.
April rises from her knees (quite a frequent position experienced by the standing, shirtless man), and a soft crack of her bones makes Jimmy wince. He feels cold and exposed, a bit shy as well with his thumbs twiddling and his long fingers picking at his lips. It's a complete contrast to when he's on stage where, presumably, the stakes are much higher. Or when he's in bed with a girl (or two), when he's been loaded up with enough booze to kill an old man.
Now he's standing in only his pants and socks, chilly in the soft summer breeze, pulling faces at himself in a mirror. He purses his lips, Is that really what I look like on stage? His back caves outwards in modesty, his hands cradling both paled forearms as the gap between the two of his long, stringy legs seems embarrassingly large and noticeable. He scratches around his thick beard and the stubble on his neck, examining the fullness on each side while she works briskly.
"Don't mind me," She says, measuring tape coiled around her fingers as she runs her thumbs alongside his ribcage like a xylophone. She measures his chest. He looks away towards the windows, embarrassed, focusing on the view of the humbler side of London, still bustling as ever but lacking in the American tourism that's too loud to not acknowledge. He counts how many yellow cars he sees (surprisingly, three) and how many businessmen in the same suit and briefcase walk out of the same building, per minute.
"The music," He notions, "You haven't got a radio system?"
She lets out a husky giggle, "Oh?" By the way she chuckles slyly, he can't help but feel like he's been left out on an inside joke, though it's only with herself, "Is my current system not enough for you, Mr. Jimmy "Lord of the Riffs" Page?" She crosses one arm over the other, long-sleeved thermal shirt tugging down to cover her knuckles. Her back is turned to the said radio system, which includes a record player and a radio feature that barely ever gets used, bloodied commercials. It's spinning Meddle, currently playing 'San Tropez,' "Are you not one for The Floyd?" She remarks while making calculations on the side of the brown scrap paper, entertained.
It's all rather amusing to her, of course, that Jimmy Page is in her studio. April's fame is quite unassuming, she'd describe, as she is seldom a household name and has only ever been in the presence of notable models rather than international rockstars. Though she is rather confident, assumed from the tacked photos of her work, and maybe that's why she can find herself not as stilted as one might be, either as a designer or with the lover of the Les Paul himself. Why, a delicate, gangly man with a full beard who is nearly never seen without his long fisher hat and thick, full-bodied coat... he almost resembles a children's teddy bear. Sure, his unspoken authority is intimidating, one could argue Page could snap his fingers and the big, bad Peter Grant could pummel you to a pulp, but to assume this man with the cherub smile and shy laugh was casting Occult spells in his free time would make her laugh in disbelief.
YOU ARE READING
unwind - J.P.
Fanfiction"What is this?" "My costume," he slurs, one hand running through his mess of hair, "You need to fix it, something's come loose." He regains a stable footing by leaning on the thin walkway halls of her modest hotel room, "You're very good at it." -- ...
