#{fun fact!! I did a bit of research on how much ten dollars would've been worth back then}

[lackadaisy-headcanon-supply-unit]

hi, the way this blog is formatted and the menu is written is so creative and fitting! i had a great time looking through it

may i request some fem reader w rocky? maybe him playing the violin or reciting poems in a public space to himself and reader is the only one to react (positively) so he immediately is struck in awe. please and thank you :)

Good evening, Anon!! First off, thank you very much for the compliment. Two things you should know, however...

This ended up over three thousand words long somehow. (For the record, it was gonna be a scenario.)

It's the cheesiest meet-cute I've ever written, so I advise you all to brace yourselves, folks-

That being said, enjoy!! <3

When you heard it, everything else quieted.

The thunder of cars bolting down a busy road, metal armor bobbing upon four wheels as they broke past and left smaugful clamor clashing against the monstrum business blocks, softened to but a distant skitter of shiny black bugs ambling self-importantly about. The cacophony of pedestrians, indiscernible faces in square suits and tasteful pastels spewing bits of language into one converging mess, each voice independent yet competing for dominance until they clawed at your eardrums and suffocated your thoughts now felt no graver than the meek rustle of forest foliage when coddled by the summer breeze; a humming chorus to a beautiful solist’s serenade, and when a bycicle trilled inches past normally skittish, city-dweller you it didn’t even occur to step aside as you were far too absorbed in the one delightful sound that made the greys of asphalt’s reign seem greyer and dulled even the most striking women’s daywear to sun-worn cleaning rags in comparison.

It was a melody the color of blue, matching his eyes.

You hadn’t a chance to admire them for long when you spotted him in the crowd. They drifted closed for long stretches of time as their owner’s features suggested a deep, gentle focus on the music, his whole being smoothing into the instrument. There was something bewitching about the violin, you found; seemed even its players could seldom resist its particular pull, fingers dancing across the strings as if possessed by magic. The rosined bow dipped to and fro in a hypnotic sequence that pulsed like the rise and ebb of the tides; sometimes the pace changed, slowed to but a meandering, peaceful ponderance before it flew from the threads of catgut like nimble sparks of lightning, with the ease and comfort of at least a thousand hours of practice.

Must’ve been a classical piece, if not improv; but for that far too complex. Vivaldi? Mozart? You hadn’t heard it before, so you couldn’t confirm, however it proved the enchanting stranger to be both talented and educated. He looked up from his divine craft to initiate eye contact with passersby and, yes, he had the bluest eyes indeed, seated under emphatic brows, and he gave a hopeful smile of such integrity to those undeserving strangers who walked past in indifference as if he’d been an smaug-borne ghost, a trick of the light invisible to all but yourself and when he turned in resignation and his gaze caught upon you, playing still, your breath hitched in your throat.

How long had you been��gawking there, frozen on the sidewalk like a dimwit? Oh, no. He must have thought you such a creeper; a notion which you had to rectify, and rectify it quick. Puff your chest out, march up, tell him you liked his playing and leave a dime; you took off at once with this very plan in mind.

In doing so, you forgot you had stood on opposing sides of the road.

Heels clicked across hot concrete in a headlong hurry. You realized that the cars were still coming midway through when his eyes widened in horror and a spontaneous screech of tires replaced that joyous melody. You stumbled back, blinded by car polish and a pair of glaring headlights you profusely apologized to before skittering away from a second car in the right lane when it came to an angry halt likewise. Loud honks scolded you along your path whilst you yelled back sheepish sorries.

Well, talk about making an entrance.

As you reached the paved edge, a hand manifested to help you up on it.

“Are you alright, miss?”

And blue eyes. You felt yourself sink further into the road with the transient wish those cars had hit you after all, nonetheless took the offer and tottered along with the stranger’s help. He held bow and violin in his other hand, by the neck, and you narrowly avoided stepping on their rickety case with a meager amount of coins and a crumpled up bill inside.

Ah, right. He’d been busking, after all.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” he reiterated, scanning you, and you realized you’d missed the previous question. “It’s hardly safe to cross this thoroughfare without looking both ways first, you know. You ought to try that next time.”

“I know, I know– I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

You weren’t. Not when this handsome vagabond with the most radiant blue oculars you’d ever seen and enough of a musical gift to put you in a trance kept observing you from such proximity whilst implicitly chiding you for being a tunnel-visioned idiot.

“Well, great news, then!” he grinned. Oh. That’s a lot of teeth, you noted with slightly raising eyebrows. “I doubt I’d have been able to sleep tonight had you met an undue fate under the stampede of these motorized beasts all for just trying to reach me.”

An odd penchant for metaphors, too. When you didn’t respond right away, he withdrew his gesturing hand in contemplation.

“You… were careening specifically my way, yes?”

“Yes!”

You snapped out of your appreciation for his endearingly boyish timbre and thereby commenced a frantic battle with your purse as you attempted to pry something from it.

“Right, I was heading this way– just give me a moment–”

He watched in intrigue as you counted something he couldn’t see under your breath, then produced the intended amount of what he identified to be cash and reached to hand it over to him, near breathless.

“I really loved your playing.”

You couldn’t bear to look him in the eye yet hardly missed his astonishment when he conceived the sum.

“Miss, that’s ten dollars.”

“Yes,” you affirmed curtly. “What of it?”

“I can’t accept that.”

Hearing which, you did finally face him with a frown.

“You’re a very kind soul,” he asserted in a hurry, smile never faltering, “and I’m thoroughly humbled by your contribution, but I cannot rob a lady of her hard earned pay in good conscience for that frivolous noise–”

“It was beautiful noise,” you interjected with knitted brows, “I really did enjoy it, and you deserve much better audience than the pedestrians of some drab street corner who’ll never bother to pay your music the attention it deserves.”

You pointed curtly toward the flow of people. Some in turn spared you a glance, but then you blended into their scenery again like another pair of shop mannequins.

“So take it from a lady,” you enunciated, all but shoving the money in his chest, “and I sincerely hope you end up in a concert hall someday.”

You exhaled and waited. He stared at your extended hand, then you, then at your hand and back again and gorgeous as you found those gleaming sapphires you couldn’t for the life of you tell what he was thinking. Your arm muscles trembled, and you contemplated whether sparing yourself from the awkwardness of further playing statue might be worth giving up anyway.

Finally, he seized your wrist with both hands. He didn’t seem to notice your startlement as he was busy beaming at you bright enough to put celestial bodies to shame.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh…”

God forsake it, that smile alone was turning your heart into a fluffy, overripe dandelion inside your chest. If he kept up, you feared he might just blow it apart.

But you managed to tell.

“Well, miss…” he began, implementing your surname, and you would’ve bolted on pure instinct had you not taken root at your spot, “your generous praise is, by far and large, the most invaluable gift I could’ve received on this brilliant morning.”

You took a deep inhale, acutely aware of his touch tingling across your skin even though he meant nothing by it… you supposed.

“You have certainly made a lowly troubadour’s day with your gracious approbation,” he patted your knuckles, at the same time gently shoving your offer away. “You see, I could tell from the moment our gazes locked across the street that I would enjoy the pleasure of meeting someone positively extraordinary… right after she ambled through the active traffic. Call it a concise connection of kindred souls, if you will. You, miss, have proved yourself a true appreciator of the arts.”

When those blue eyes were holding yours hostage so intently, you almost did believe he could see into your very soul. You tried to brave it, however.

“Thank y–”

“Which is why this won’t be needed.”

You held the rejected money against your chest, where he had guided it.

“You’ll be better off forfeiting it to charity,” he suggested, “if aiding the honest predicaments of your fellow citizens in need is a cause dear to your heart. Like orphans! Those poor, unmothered things, always caught in the throes of some quintessential lack or other; surely they could put your benevolent funds to good use… that is, in case you are looking to make a charity. If you’re not interested in, erm, providing for the orphans, that’s still quite fine. You just seem to me the sort to care for children. But that doesn’t make it your obligation, of course, to feed the orphans… no one is about to force that duty upon you… in equally sound conscience I suppose you could just as well keep the money…”

He proceeded along his mildly morally concerned tangent, but any of it beyond the lip movements you ceased to process. Some convoluted cliché about personal indulgence over supporting the waifs of the world, you reckoned. In terms of lifting your spirits it achieved a ludicrous heap of nothing, and amidst your silent marinating in this strange and unexpected failure of your strange and unexpected encounter, you continued to clutch the bills to yourself.

You didn’t figure that may have looked like dismay on his end until he trailed off, fidgeting vaguely as he probed your expression. The warmth of his hands on yours still lingered.

“My attempt at a point is,” he resumed at a slower pace, “you’re awful generous, but to tell you the truth, I’m quite comfortably off without the help. I am employed, after all.”

“You are?”

Rude as it sounded to gape the question so, you hadn’t considered that possibility. He was… well, not badly dressed, but his clothes appeared worn and a tad oversized on his comically skinny limbs, granting him a ragamuffin sort of appearance.

Though you still found it quite charming.

“Sure am!” he grinned in earnest, and you’d soon come to accept that his face simply looked that way when he did. “This is only some nifty supplemental income for a craft I spend day and night honing anyway. Really, I play out here to preserve my associates’ peace of mind more than anything. The other day they got so peeved with all the melodic caterwauling my boss had to fetch a broomstick and chase me out into the great wide open after failing to quiet me down.”

A chuckle escaped you at the joke, and it’s like his eyes gleamed brighter.

“What can I say,” he admitted with a theatrical shrug, “a musician’s ichor pulses to the ever-flowing rhythm of higher realms beckoning. That can hardly be helped. When my eager heart doesn’t sing Apollo’s odes from the strings, it reaches for the lyre, however… but they don’t deal in stanzas and limericks on the job market in contemporary times.” He glanced off into the distance wistfully, as if envisioning an ideal future where they did. “Miss M, our aforementioned lady-in-charge, says it’s only since our customers can’t exactly do the Lindy Hop to recitativo verse form.”

“So that means you’re a poet?”

“Indeed!”

You hummed in acknowledgement. He gave his vest a proud little adjustment as part of the performance, not that it served to make him look any more presentable.

“Vivacious vicinal versificator,” he expatiated with a playful half-bow, “humble herald of numinous inspiration, eulogizing the beauties of this peculiar earthly life to the cobblestone and the stars for a passtime. Old Muddy Miss herself has proven to be my most faithful audience… and for lack of substantial competition, in her listening skills she remains unexcelled.”

“Not for long, I should hope.”

That made him pause. Your nerves struck you alert as you rushed to explain.

“That is, well, I would be curious to join said, um, audience… mayhaps… sometime. I mean– you have a fascinating vocabulary, sir, so I can only imagine…”

He listened on with perplexed blue eyes; you mentally smacked yourself for the honorific. No one so refreshingly unrefined as this overeager stray puppy of a man could even remotely qualify for a ‘sir’, and you were happy about that, because had you made so many social blunders with any other stranger in succession you would’ve craved death.

He took his sweet time providing a readable reaction, but when he did he laughed. Not with a mocking edge, as you had feared; the sound tinkled as melodically as his trusty violin.

“Oh, miss, you’re just a bundle of pleasant surprises.”

You came to chuckle along, too, a nervous smile stretching your lips. He took your hand again.

“I’d be delighted to deliver a private recital,” he dipped forward then paused, perhaps contemplating whether a kiss on the back of it would be appropriate, peering up at you in a bluest display of rapt attention that made your heart leap, “if that’s truly the case.”

You averted your eyes. The vague unease as if you’d given your name to a fae in a stroke of recklessness minutes prior melted into the bustle of sluggish, smoke-ridden traffic.

“So where is it that you work?” you switched the topic.

Attuned, he let go of your hand as if it had burned him, adjusting his hat like an excuse.

“Little Daisy Café,” he responded quickly, perpetual cheer intact. “It’s just an ambitious spit from here, actually, a few blocks down that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction from where you’d been headed. “Awful cute little gem of an establishment. Perhaps you’ve been to?”

“No, not that I recall.”

“Well, I can only recommend that you drop by. The pancakes are to die for.”

“And there’s live music?”

You both glanced at the violin, then back at each other. He gave you another grin that you couldn’t help but detect as somewhat complicit.

“Makes your early beverage taste all the sweeter.”

You let your eyes linger on one of the boutique windows in the background; a closed one under construction. The ample light struck it at an angle which obscured the debris-filled darkness and activity inside, flawless glass surface glimmering at front in gorgeous deceit. Its reflective sheen conjured an alluring vision; deep azure sky dotted with fringed, fluffy lamb-clouds.

Suppose you offered it.

“Well, if you won’t let yourself be tipped,” you sighed, putting your money away, “may I treat you to breakfast, at least? A plate of those fabled pancakes, even?”

Childlike delight flashed across his face before the metaphorical reins were pulled back with a frantic grip.

“Why, miss, you’re spoiling me,” he lamented, “but I really shouldn’t–”

“I was heading for the bakery myself,” you continued with a pacifying gesture, “but now with your recommendation in mind, I might as well try a treat from that ‘little gem’ of a café, no? You could show me the way there, and… I suppose I could listen to those stanzas of yours, if you’d be willing to share…”

The words intended to compose the rest of your reasoning kept tumbling from your grasp before you could string them together, and someone in the crowd of pedestrians laughed. A snooty, feminine laugh. He kept watching you and you only, however, engulfing you in that mysterious blue once again.

“…granted that is okay with you, of course.”

He began to smile like the sun itself and dove with startling momentum for the violin case.

“Why, it’d be most uncouth to refuse the benevolent offer of such lovely ladyship,” he concluded while packing away his instrument then slapped the lid over the case once finished, money withstanding, “and I don’t reckon I’ll make two more pennies to rub together this morning, so I’d be more than happy to escort you along.”

He grabbed the handle and sprung up, beaming at you with the energy of a couple additional suns before he got an idea and moved to offer his free arm toward you like the smoothest of gallants. Clearing his throat, to boot.

“Mademoiselle?”

You put a hand to your chest, accentuating the action with a playful once-over.

“Chivalrous,” you chuckled before locking his arm with your own. The two of you would set off this way not unlike lovers, which he stiffened at the realization of.

“Too much?” he questioned.

“No, it’s quite alright.”

The cracks in the sidewalk became very interesting all of a sudden, however. You could feel his skinniness and lack of musculature thus far only guessed through the rolled-sleeved shirt; not that you minded.

Must have not gotten treated to meals often.

“About that poetry,” he piped up a bit quieter than before, “granted you won’t tire of my voice ahead of time…”

“Don’t be silly.”

You gave him a look, then caught yourself.

“Well, alright,” he resigned with an evaluating pout when you turned away, “but, uh… unfortunately, most of my limbs are occupied. And the fervent gesticulation makes up half the performence.”

By that point, you found yourself believing him. You all but burst into laughter at the mental image.

“Maybe you can gesticulate it to me after the fact,” you quipped.

“…Fair enough.”

You reached a street corner together and turned it. From the corner of your eye, a young couple were teasing each other by a flower shop on the opposite side of the road with a posy gift of piquant red tulips, blushing and giggling. You matched the bouncing steps of the stranger you were intertwined with in newfound giddiness.

“Let’s see,” he pondered, scanning the rows of buildings in an absent-minded manner before his eyes lit up. “Right! As fortune would have it, there does happen to be one I’ve been itching to inflict on a willing pair of ears for the past week…”

He made a big show of clearing his throat before he began; you were eager to let the mesmerized flow that had brought you to him in the first place take you along, absorbing the dramatic inflection and animated spirit oozing from his entire complexion as he made the widest gestures he was capable of in his inhibited position nonetheless.

A stranger indeed…

“Wait!”

Before he could proceed with any experimental odes to clay and calicos, you cut him off. He turned to you right away, magic put on hold.

“I never caught your name.”

He glanced around in recollection before those notorious brows sprung up.

“I never passed it,” he exclaimed, bewildered, and wriggled from your hold haphazardly as he scrambled for his hat. “Oh, foolish I! Forgive me this horrendous discourtesy, milady, if you might find it in your heart.”

You simply observed him in amusement.

A zephyr swept along the length of the street, bringing where you stood a nectarine fragrance which, though delicate, transcended the heavy smoke and for a delightful moment let you smell nothing but itself. With his hat now off and held politely to his chest, the breeze ruffled his tousled hair as it did yours. His blue eyes shone in the urban grey like diamonds.

“The name is Rocky Rickaby.”

And when he said it, you already knew you wouldn’t tire of that voice anytime soon.