Playing With the Both of Them (Closed)

[StFornicate]

Jimmy and Steve had been best friends for as long as they could remember. They were next-door neighbors, classmates, compatriots, rebels. Closer than brothers, perhaps. When they were 11, Steve got a drum kit for Christmas, and Jimmy got an electric guitar.

The music never stopped. They've been pushing the blues, electric southern hard fucking rock, as far as they can for as long as they've known the power of a 1-4-5 chord progression matched with an aggressive beat.

Now, Jimmy and Steve are 21 years old, about to start their senior years in college. They have a crappy, dilapidated house near campus, and one room for rent. They've gotten calls from a couple of weird guys about the room, but, they were weird, so it didn't seem to want to work out. Then, this girl calls. She's a sophomore and can't stand her sorority-bitch roommates on campus in the dorms. She still has time to get out before the school charges her for it. She comes over to checks it out. She's not too thrilled at the prospect of living with two sloppy dudes, until she sees what's in the basement: the drum kit, the amplifiers, and guitars, all manner of gadgets and gizmos for recording...

She plays the bass. They jam, they gel, and she moves in...

They boys always said they would never let some girl come between them. They have no idea how much that is about to be tested...

Jimmy Mitchell
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Jimmy Mitchell plays guitar. He's about 5'11", with a mess of long curly brown hair and deep brown eyes, a kind of brooding handsomeness about him. He's introspective and quiet, preferring to observe from the shadows in social situations. He smokes too much dope, too many cigarettes, and puts too many other mind-altering substances into his system. He's supposed to be a history major, but at this point could care less, he's much more interested in making music.


Steve Conners
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Steve Conners plays drums. He's just over six feet, short spiked blond hair, well-built athletic body, a charming grin and very charismatic. He loves to drink and is often the life of any party he walks into, which means that he and Jimmy are a perfect pair. Steve benefits from Jimmy's observations, and Jimmy benefits from Steve's outgoing nature, and nothing could be more true than when it comes to women.

 

[SexyVita]

Kathryn "Kat" Cooper
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Kat pulled her car up in front of the house. She looked the place over from the street and almost put the car back in drive and took off. It looked like a dump, like maybe the place had been nice once, but no one had really taken care of it in a long time. The paint was cracked and peeling and a really ugly shade of avocado green that had gone out of style before Kat was born, but all she had to do was turn around and stare at all the stuff piled up in the backseat to steel her resolve to at least look at the place. The deadline to get out of the dorms without getting charged for the whole semester had been yesterday, and Kat had been determined not to get stuck with the vapid, wanna-be sorority girls that inhabited her dorm. Not a single one of them had seemed serious about anything except makeup, clothes, parties and boys. Not that Kat had anything particular against any of those things, but her focus was on, in her opinion anyway, more serious things. So as of last night, Kat was officially homeless, that made any place, even this dump, look a lot better than another night in her car, especially with the autumn evenings turning progressively cooler in their inexorable march towards winter.

So Kat got out of the car somewhat reluctantly and walked up to the door and knocked. The door was answered by a guy, a bit older than Kat, who said his name was Steve something or other. Kat wasn't really listening as she observed that the inside didn't look a hell of a lot better than the outside. Oh, the paint was in better condition, but the carpet was worn in places and stained in others. The house smelled of stale cigarettes and something Kat was pretty sure was marijuana, and the place looked like it had been picked up in a hurry and Kat saw signs that the place was not usually as tidy as it looked at the moment. Still, she endured the tour of the ground floor, and Steve introduced her to Jimmy, her other potential housemate, who seemed quiet and brooding.

Then Steve took her upstairs to show her the bedroom that would be hers. It was small, but it had the advantage of being private and of having it's own bathroom, something that the dorms had definitely not had. Also it was in a corner of the house and had two windows so there was plenty of light. Still, she wasn't sure the pros out weighed the cons here. Living with two guys was going to be nearly as hard to deal with as the girls she'd left behind in the dorms. She had pretty much decided she was going to turn the place down and so was just going through the motions when she asked, "Laundry's in the basement?" Steve nodded and asked if she wanted to see it. Kat shrugged noncommittally and so a few moments later they were trooping down the rickety basement stairs.

But they never reached the laundry, because Kat stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gave a low whistle. "Wow, nice setup you have down here." she said, referring to the drum set, amplifiers, speakers and several guitars sitting on their stands around the room. Up until then, Kat's lack of enthusiasm for the place was thick enough to cut with a knife and would have been obvious to nearly anyone with eyes, but it all changed in that moment, her eyes lit up and there was a hint of a smile on her face. "Hang on a sec, I'll be right back." With that, she dashed back up the stairs and out of the house. When she came back about a minute later she was carrying what was obviously a guitar case and when she opened it up, she pulled out a black, 5-string, fretless Saber VL bass guitar. It was a beautiful instrument, and expensive too, running over $2,000. It was that sort of thing that made a statement, though whether the statement was, "I have very high standards." or "I have more money than talent." was not clear yet.

Kat pulled out a patch cord but looked askance at Steve before plugging it into one of the amps. Only once she had his permission did she plug in. The bass sounded good and it was obvious she knew what she was doing as she quickly tuned it. Then she turned and looked at Steve. "Well, are you just gonna stand there staring at me, or are you gonna play with me?"

 

[StFornicate]

Steve hadn't expected a girl to even bother knocking on the door concerning the available room for rent, much less suffer through the whole tour. Especially not a girl as attractive as Kat! But, he had noticed that her car was jam-fucking-packed with what he assumed was her entire life.

She was disinterested, but he could sense a bit of desperation. Steve knew the deadline to move out of the dorms had been yesterday. This girl was what, nineteen? She must have just left the dorms and was in need of a place to stay. Couch-surfing can only last so long after all.

There was a remarkable change in her attitude when she saw their basement music studio, however. She rushed out, and returned, carrying with her a guitar case, and pulled out a gorgeous fretless five-string bass.

"Well, are you just gonna stand there staring at me, or are you gonna play with me?"

Steve smirked. "The view really ain't that bad..." he said, winking at her before quickly moving around to the drum kit, pulling out the sticks and starting in with a crash of cymbals before the kick drum provided a heavy beat for her to play against.

Upstairs, Mikey was halfway through a joint, sitting next to a window, scribbling half-worked lyrics in a notepad, when he heard the familiar crash; the deep tone of the bass guitar was unexpected, however.

He made his way downstairs.

The hottie could play.

He grabbed his Les Paul, threw the strap over his shoulder, plugged it in and turned it up, and fell right in tune with Kat...

 

[SexyVita]

Kat smiled at Steve. He had maintained a friendly banter all during the tour, even though she had been pretty unethusiastic until the end, and she had felt that had she met him at a party, she would probably have been attracted to his easy charm. Now though, there was the added complication that they were going to be roommates, given her increasingly little doubt that she would take this place, and it seemed like a bad idea to mess that up with a potential romance that might easily sour before the school year was over. Still, he was good looking and seemed like the kind of outgoing, fun guy Kat usually liked. He was definitely going to be a temptation.

It was rare for bass guitar to lead a song, but Kat started up a little piece that she’d adapted from the bass line from Sugarloaf’s “Green-Eyed Lady” which, like the original, was a ton of fun to play. Steve seemed to drop in and give the piece a driving beat that was heavier than Kat had in mind when she wrote the piece, but seemed almost perfect for it. She was just about finished with that when her other future roommate, Jimmy, hit the bottom of the stairs and grabbed a beautiful looking Gibson LP guitar. The Les Paul made Kat think of Eric Clapton, so she started into the base line for “Sunshine of Your Love” hoping Jimmy and Steve would follow along. Thankfully they did and they played through the whole song mostly flawlessly, sans vocals.

She looked at Jimmy, impressed with the way he handled the guitar, and said. “OK, the last pick was mine, now you pick a song.”

 

[StFornicate]

Sunshine of Your Love was one of those songs that was easy to get the hang of, but deceptively complex once you dug deeper into it. It was also a tune that Jimmy and Steve had played together many times, and they were very impressed with the way Kat handled the bass lines.

She told Jimmy to pick the next song, as they were winding down Sunshine, and without ever stopped the music, Jimmy and Steve knew what to do. They entered an amorphous jam-space; not a song so much as a transitional period. Jimmy wanted to see how well she could follow and create.

He was even more impressed with the way she kept up, anticipating the subtle changes as he guided the two of them through a bluesy dozen bars that culminated with them launching into All Along the Watchtower...

"There must be some kinda way outta here, said the Joker to the Thief..." Jimmy sang as he let the Les Paul get crunchy on the chords.

It was entirely too much fun. And while Jimmy's eventual solo was radically different from the Hendrix version, it still packed a lot of punch, in a more southern, twangy way as he busted out the glass bottleneck slide.

The boys were in no mood to stop, either. Especially with how well Kat was keeping up. Steve took control at the end of Watchtower, the drums driving beat telling Jimmy exactly where they would go next. Jimmy laughed as he slid right into it, and his eyes caught with Kat's as she followed seamlessly, and a moment later they were fully inside of Wolfmother's "The Joker and the Thief"...