Jacob/Emma - Peculiar Love

“Jacob?”
I raced upstairs to where I knew Emma would be – sifting through some of my stuff again and wanting to know what it was, how it worked, what it did, all of that jazz. Even after two years of first starting this, it still felt so surreal to me. The fact that this amazing young woman, technically older than her outward appearance and able to control fire, needed to be taught such things that I had taken for granted was so odd to me. Yet it only seemed fair, after teaching me how to be peculiar like she was, but in my own way.
I found her sitting on the edge of my bed, a small and seemingly transparent object in her hands. Upon closer inspection, I found it to be my old iPod that, if memory served, was still full of all the songs that my dad had recommended to me.
“What does this do?” Emma held it out for me, and I explained as I took it and re-activated it. Still a full battery too – imagine that.
“It’s called an iPod. You remember how I taught you about computers and what they could do and store inside them?”
At this, she gave a nod and a small gaze of reflection from her eyes. “Ah, yes, and without one of those blessed contraptions, we never would have found and saved you those two short years ago.” She let out a chuckle at that, and I couldn’t help but crack a smile of my own. It’s not every day when your parents are introduced to peculiars by way of one of them stopping and holding up your parents’ car with their bare hands. Bless you, Bronwyn.
But back on point.
“Well, this kinda does the same thing, except it’s mainly used for keeping music on. Sometimes movies, pictures, games and such, but music’s all I used it for”, I finished. She gave a small nod before asking me, “Oh, please tell me it’s not that dreadful noise I keep hearing from those…cars that pass by. How that passes for music…”
At least, even with us being born at opposite extremes of the 20th century, there were still some things that never changed.
“Not quite, and at least in my case, it’s actual music. Still, hopefully it’s not too modern for ya”, I joked. That lousy remark earned me a playful smack to the shoulder, but not without another one of Emma’s lovely laughs. In the two years that we’d gotten closer to each other, ever since she and the rest had saved me from the loony bin, I found myself watching every single detail of her being – her pale blond hair moving with the slightest breeze, her gentle Welsh accent framing her soft voice, the way her eyes seemed to burn into mine like the flames under her mastery. Yet every time I burned under that gaze, it only set my heart beating so hard, I thought it would burst from my chest like a wild hollowgast.
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to find out, won’t we, young man?” Emma raised her eyebrows at me with a smug smile of her own, which earned a light laugh from me as well. Yet another “I may be your age, but I’m still older” joke which somehow no longer seemed strange to me.
I plopped myself down on the bed and scooted over to her, our hips and thighs touching as I scrolled through the different music that my dad and I had found for me. “Here’s all the different music my dad and I put on here – mainly jazz and swing stuff. Never got into those, weirdly enough.”
“Oh? And what did you find for yourself then?” She lightly placed her head down on my shoulder with my having barely noticed that she had moved to sit behind me, one of her legs on either side of me. “Don’t tell me it was that stone nonsense with those electric guitars or whatever it’s called.”
“Rock. And hey, I thought you liked the Beatles”, I replied, turning lightly to face her, noticing how close her face, her smile, was to my own. Wow…
“Oh, them I could stand. Mind you, though, that time frame it apparently takes to travel to Mars…”
“Ah, I’ll say no more there”, I promised, leaning my head back gently against her shoulder. “Anyw- ooh…that’s new.”
“What is it, love?” Emma inquired. She looked closely at the palm-sized screen of my old iPod to see what I had stumbled upon. It was something even I forgot I had – A Kind of Magic by Queen. Somehow I’d never managed to quite stomach that album; the songs seemed to jump all over the place. Still…something told me there was at least one song I knew Emma would love. One that I thought described us perfectly, even if it had been more than a year.
Two years of moments with each other that seemed stolen from the fabric of time – talking about what it was like for us growing up, who we were, how she’d learned to master her peculiarity and what it was like for me growing up in this modern age. The new advancements from her time, how people acted. But most importantly, everything between and about us that we shared…just us.
And now I’d found a song that described it perfectly. Or, at least, I hoped.
“Well…Emma, you know I love you, right?” Stupid way to begin. Yet I didn’t know how else to do so.
“Of course I do, Jacob.”
“No…I mean…” I turned away from her to sit down cross-legged on the bed across from her, my hands gently moving to cup her soft cheeks and move her closer, our foreheads touching and gazes meeting. “I really…really love you. All of you – your voice, personality, strength, your inner fire for life-“
Another of Emma’s giggles from that unintentional pun. “Was that supposed to be a joke, Jacob?”
“Oh, you know what I mean”, I laughed back, one of my hands moving to the back of her neck, caressing it. She nodded lightly.
“I do, Jacob. Believe me, I know”, Emma whispered, her own hand moving over my cheek, and right then, I couldn’t tell if she were unintentionally heating my face or if that heat were from my rising blush. But it didn’t matter to me, as she continued, “I look at you every day and I see so much in you. You truly are amazing, Jacob, no matter your words to the contrary even back then. You’re brave, you’re smart, loyal, caring – hell, Enoch even gets along with you well enough now, and he usually never does that!”
Ah, a tough nut to crack, that Enoch.
“But most importantly, you really are special, and not just because you’re a peculiar like the rest of us.”
“Then how so, Emma?” I asked of her. She searched for the right set of words for just a second, but long enough for me to click on that Queen album and find that, yes, it did have the song I was looking for – the third one down.
“Because…above all else, you’re…mine”, Emma finished, and her words sealed into my heart with a kiss to follow. So many of these had been shared between us, and every one was more amazing than the last – the world seemed to melt away around us, and I knew nothing else but her and all she was. I moved closer to her and gently pulled her on top of me while I straightened my legs out beneath me. Who knows how long we laid there, her lips pressing heatedly against mine with all the affection we could muster.
Finally, however, it broke, and her eyes shone into mine again. “So…what was it on that pod you wanted to show me?”
I chuckled lightly at that and, knowing how to do nothing else, simply confessed, “Actually…I found us a song that you’d really love. One that…I feel was meant for us.”
“A song for us, you say? Now you’ve piqued my curiosity”, she said, crossing her arms over my chest with another beautifully light smile. “What’s it about then?”
I held the iPod up in front of her as I clicked the song. It was only a second before the first chord from a synthesizer slowly grew in sound, followed by a gentle drum beat and piano notes as Queen did their thing: Just one year of love is better than a lifetime alone…
I could feel Emma gently laying her head down sideways onto her arms, watching the iPod almost curiously as the song rang out from it, singing about how it was a rainy day without her, my heart crying out for hers…well, at least that’s how it felt to me. And with every word that went on, I could tell that’s how Emma still truly felt about me as well. She loved me, pure and simple. I was hers, and she mine.
“Oh…Jacob!” She lightly smacked the corner of the blanket-covered mattress, an ivory laden smile shining from her face as light tears of joy did the same from her eyes and fell to my face. Even as I took this in, she snatched the iPod away and set it on the nearby bedside table, the song still playing on as she brought my head up to hers and whispered softly against my lips. “I love you, Jacob Portman.”
“And I love you, Emma Bloom…you who is hotter in more ways than one.”
Emma looked down at me with a mildly perplexed gaze before finally firing back, “Now, that was just terrible. Wordplay is an art, you know.”
“And… are there any other forms of art I need to know about, dear Emma?” I inquired of her, leaning into nuzzle the crook of her neck and earning a soft moan from her lips. Even after this, she still managed to keep control of herself – another one of the things I loved about her.
“Well…there is one”, she answered finally, and with the snap of her fingers – never resisting a flourish – a small, red-hot flame burst from her finger and stayed there until it reached a small vanilla-scented candle sitting next to the iPod and an old-fashioned lamp that Emma insisted I keep there just for her. At this point, it was still the only source of light that shone through the window of my bedroom and onto the dark suburban street a floor below.
She turned back to me after she’d lit the candle, her hands slowly making their way up my chest to cradle my head and her fingers nestling into my dark locks. “You ready to learn all about it?”
“As long as you’re my teacher”, I replied, more nervous and scared and excited than I had ever been in my life, my lips moving to meet hers once again with all the passion, hunger, and love that I could muster. It was all I could do to surrender to her love.