Re: Quiet Home: Misha & Oliver
"I like loud sometimes, but sometimes quiet's real nice." Misha did like it still some, especially outside, where it was nature and the sky and animal sounds far off. For a boy that loved New York as if he'd been born there, instead of in some asylum in Kentucky, it was maybe a real odd appreciation, that outdoor silence. Misha, he only knew indoor silence as incarceration. Not like here, but like the real horrid madhouse his momma had born him in. In those places, quiet was real bad behind doors. Still, it was better than loud in foster homes, where men breathed hot on necks and belts landed real heavy against soft thighs. But Misha liked outdoor quiet, and he thought he'd like watching Oliver's face as he painted still. He reckoned Oliver didn't listen to a thing when he got lost in flying fingers. He reckoned it would be real beautiful, like listening to Handel.
"Can't change me liking you," Misha said, persistently stubborn and real incongruous in his quiet and syrupy drawl. His blue eyes were bright as marbles, and he shrugged his shoulders all boy and careless. Misha, he was nearly mid-twenties, but he was still all lanky, a boy with limbs grown too long and too fast. Even that bruised eye of his, it didn't make him look menacing. Misha, he didn't have a drop of menacing in him, but he could be patient and stubborn as any schoolyard bully fixing on a target. "I'm real unchangeable once my mind's fixed on something. You can ask the doctors some, and they'll tell you all. And I fix on folks quick. I got myself a good nose for people I take a ken to. I like you."
Misha watched Oliver flinch away, and Misha didn't so much as drop his gaze any. There wasn't any shame in causing the reaction, and he didn't think it was a bad one. He'd known Oliver wasn't going to just thank him kindly for his words. The boy was angry, and it was writ all over his emotive features. "Feel like telling me why that made you angry as gnats in summer?" He picked up the fiddle, and played wordless quiet, a churching song. "Don't need to. Ain't got to do anything you don't want, but might feel better to scream it out."