Vincent DiLaurentis ♫ Hartley Rathaway (payingthepiper) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2016-12-14 00:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | tyler white, vincent dilaurentis |
Who: Vincent DiLaurentis and Tyler White
What: Times can get a little lean, when you're playing for your supper... unless you happen to be able to manipulate people into tipping you a little more.
Where: New York City, just outside an entrance to the subway
When: Wednesday, December 15; morning
Warnings: TBD; a little moral ambiguity
Normally, Vincent did alright, busking and filling in with a cut from gigs he subbed in for. He wasn't rich, and he wasn't even really saving up enough to start looking into getting a better place, with fewer roommates, that wasn't basically paying someone for the privelege to squat, for all the help that they got in keeping the place in one piece. That was fine. He wasn't in it for the money. He wasn't really in it for anything, honestly, except for the fact that music was the one thing that he really understood, the one thing that always made him happy, no matter what kind of mood he was in when he started. Vincent didn't plan on ever getting a 'real' job, not even if the other choice was going back to stealing, no matter what Hartley thought about it. Not that Hartley was a fan of the 'real job' idea, either, but he didn't have any better suggestions for Vincent than to just keep at it.
Vincent was keeping at it. He just needed things. Like a roof over his head, and at least one meal a day that wasn't a few packages of crackers he'd grabbed from a salad bar while he paid for a soda. And rat food. Maybe regular meals were a little iffy for your average street musician, but Vincent had rats to take care of, and he wasn't going to let them starve just because he was having a little bit of a rough patch, when it came to bringing in enough tips. It was the weather. It was always worse, when it started getting colder. Nobody wanted to stand around and listen to someone play, when they could be getting somewhere warmer. They didn't want to even stop and dig through their wallet for any change that they might have been able to scrounge up, even if they didn't stay for a whole song. Vincent could play all day, fingers freezing, on the verge of some kind of actual damage, and still barely get enough to tuck away for rent.
Pads fell out in the winter, too. Nobody ever thought about that kind of thing. They thought about guitar strings breaking, sure, but the pads inside a flute's keys could fall out, just as easily. Not as much with Hartley's flute, the one that he'd grabbed from the Agency, as it would with a normal flute, but it was still a flute. There were still certain design elements, like the pads under the keys, that weren't going to change all that much between one and the other. It was even worse, replacing ones for Hartley's flute, because they were specialized. Vincent had tried making them himself, but he wasn't good enough. Yet. He wasn't good enough yet, and getting good enough meant having enough spares to practice on, until he got it right. It was expensive, but it was worth it. Not that he used Hartley's flute every day, or anything. It was more of a special occasion kind of thing.
The special occasion that morning was that Vincent was getting desperate. He needed some money. Just a little extra money, just one more good day, and then he'd get down into the subways themselves, where the competition was always a little more fierce for the best spots. Vincent always ended up getting shoved off somewhere that wasn't... great, but that was fine. Everyone playing there needed it, needed the extra cash that you could get with a good spot to busk in. The stops in the wealthier parts of town, or the ones with the most office buildings, where men and women in suits with briefcases might drop some big bills in your case because that was all that they bothered carrying. Vincent never got those spots. If he had some other kind of backup, he might have been able to get away with just the basics, from where he was.
He didn't have any other kind of backup. He didn't have any friends, except his roommates and a couple of guys he knew from his days of petty theft. That meant that Vincent had to get creative. Which meant making Hartley a little bit unhappy with him, but how else was he supposed to get some extra cash?
Vincent pulled Hartley's flute out of its case, pieced it together carefully. It had to be exactly right, if he was going to do this. It didn't matter if it was almost enough, if everything wasn't lined up completely right, the tech wouldn't work. That was the long and short of it. Luckily, Hartley hadn't made it hard to fit the pieces of his flute together, to make his masterpiece work. Vincent raised the flute to his lips and started playing, notes that sent out a siren's song. Please give. If you can afford to, if you've got the extra, please give. At least Christmas songs were good for this one, Vince thought, fingers almost fumbling as he worked to get them warmed up. It was the season of giving. Hopefully, there would be enough people that could afford to give to him that he'd be able to keep a roof over his head until spring.