behind the curtain that leads backstage
Title: behind the curtain that leads backstage
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, classical music AU
Length: 6264 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kyuhyun hated being the accompanist.
Inspiration(s): As a piano student at my university, I have a lot of things to do-solo recitals, classes that teach you how to teach others, dry nitty gritty lectures like music theory and music history, and chamber music, for example. And just recently, I got a text from a singer I used to accompany and she told me that I was probably the main reason why she stayed musically sane throughout her fourth year.
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Kyuhyun hated being the accompanist. It implied that he was inferior to the soloist he played for, which was completely untrue considering how difficult his music was in comparison-for every note the soloist played, he played four. Aside from the complicated, usually anti-pianistic passages, it was his job to tailor to the soloist, figure out where to enter, how to enter, whether he was too loud, whether he needed to lighten the pedal, and so on. There was a lot to do while accompanying, and he was always bitter that the audiences never seemed to realize that his job was just as if not more important than the soloist’s.
Life was difficult enough as a classical musician. Young people hardly ever went to classical music concerts unless their well-meaning parents forced them to, and usually the only people who attended on their own terms were the performers’ friends and family, the elderly, and the occasional hobo who only needed a place to sleep for a few hours. A pathetic outcome after spending hours upon hours locked up in a practice room in pursuit of artistic perfection.
Kyuhyun practiced eight hours a day, which was average for every conservatory student. Around the school he was known as the Boy With Fast Fingers, and Kyuhyun worked hard to keep up that reputation. Every student in that school had won at least one huge international competition, and most were already signed into a company as official recording artists. The lucky few became concert artists, while the less successful ones became teachers. Only the least successful students resorted to accompanying.
Kyuhyun was not unsuccessful in the least. By the time he was sixteen, he had already won his fair share of competitions and was relatively well-known in the classical music world-and at his current age of eighteen, he was doing quite well, thank you very much. He only started accompanying because he needed the money to pay for his schooling. He already crossed teaching out-the last time he taught someone, the eight-year-old had run out of the room crying-and there was no time to wait for some recording company to sign him on. Moreover, it was always a gamble when the next concert performances were, and it was even more of a gamble as to whether these performances were going to bring back any income.
So accompanying was his only choice, and Kyuhyun resented his life. The moment he put up his availabilities on the Student Bulletin Board, he had already resigned himself to the status of the Loser Pianist, the Burnt-Out Prodigy, the Nameless Musician.
He clenched his teeth together and slammed the practice room door shut.
His first major gig was with a flutist named Sungmin. Very talented guy, and goal-oriented to boot. Could hit high notes with enough ease to put a starling to shame. He hired Kyuhyun to be his competition accompanist. “My usual accompanist is out of town for another competition and won’t be back in time for next week,” he explained tautly. “And I heard that you learn fast.”
Sungmin gave him the music as soon as they agreed on the arrangements, cleanly photocopied and organized into a black binder. He told Kyuhyun exactly how he wanted his pieces to go, circling the repeat signs he followed and the crossing out the ones he ignored, let him know exactly which passages to play and which ones he needed to cut out. He was always in control, cued clearly, and always made sure that their articulations matched. He was pretty much a professional already. The two got along immediately.
The two-hour rehearsals were carried out in an efficient time is money and money is time fashion, just the way Kyuhyun liked them. Sungmin never needed breaks but had the courtesy to ask if Kyuhyun needed to take a short intermission (to which the pianist answered with a derisive snort and yah right).
“Please play a little bit louder here,” Sungmin asked in his even tone of voice, pointing to bar 72 with his skinny finger. “I want this passage to be richer in sound and I can’t do it alone.”
Kyuhyun suppressed a scoff. Flutists couldn’t do anything alone.
The competition went smoothly, and Sungmin played impeccably. In the end, he placed second, beaten by an oboe player who was one of the judges’ students. “At least it reimbursed my travel expenses,” the flutist muttered, grinding his teeth together as he cleaned his mouthpiece.
Kyuhyun snickered. “You had no connections to the jury. At least you placed.”
“Of course I would place,” Sungmin shot back, not unkindly. “I know I play well.”
“You didn’t play well. You played amazingly.” Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. He was a good judge of talent-it took one to know one. “Lot of politics in this competition, though. It has a reputation of favoritism. I wondered why you entered in the first place.”
Sungmin shut his flute case with an extra newton of force. “Guess I was too egotistic to believe that I could win through my talent.”
“Probably.”
“You played well today, by the way,” Sungmin quipped. “I’d like to work with you more often.”
“You also played well today,” Kyuhyun deadpanned. “I’d like to cheat you out of the money you’re paying me.”
This garnered a laugh from the guy, and Kyuhyun knew a good relationship to keep when he saw one.
Kyuhyun’s reputation as a “collaborative pianist” became an increasing exponential curve after that. Sungmin was a social butterfly when he was not locking himself up in a practice room, and soon most of his friends from orchestra were hiring him for performances and competition rounds. Sometimes two people competing in the same festival hired him, and Kyuhyun had to deal with one’s promise of more money if he sabotaged the other’s performance. Morality was never an issue for Kyuhyun, so of course he played better for the one who paid more-anything goes whenever there is money involved.
Money accumulated quickly enough. He was still not even close to the point where he could safely pay off his tuition, even less so if he included his living expenses and transportation, but it was progress.
Sungmin became his first regular customer, and Kyuhyun did not question what happened with his usual accompanist. The arrangement was simple. Sungmin presented him with new music every week, met up for regular two-hour rehearsals once every month, promptly paid him for each session. They had a very good business relationship but hardly met outside of their work. Kyuhyun liked it. He liked the fact that they only met when they needed to and only did what they needed to do. No after-competition parties, no post-performance drinks, nada.
But because they went to the same conservatory, they always bumped into each other in the practice room hallways. In fact, their usual practice rooms were in front of each other. Sungmin always had Room 44B that hosted a beat-up upright Yamaha that was so out of tune even the tone-deaf would notice, satisfied with knowing that no piano student would be desperate enough to kick him out. Kyuhyun, on the other hand, liked the heaviness of the Steinway in Room 44A, and usually woke up as early as six to make sure he made it there before some aggravating first-year snatched it away from him. They eventually assimilated into a routine where they took short breaks every two hours to talk about pieces or complain about life. And before they knew it, they were friends.
(“You up for some Faure?” Sungmin asked one Monday morning. “I’m thinking about playing the Fantasy.”
Kyuhyun wrinkled his nose. “Faure’s not my thing. Impressionistic music is not my thing in general. You play so many notes and nobody expects to hear all of them. What about Franck? I heard that his Sonata In A Major has a flute transcription. Plus, it’s standard repertoire so I may be able to use it again.”
Sungmin laughed. “Your funeral. The piano part is a bitch to learn.”
“It’ll be good for me.” Kyuhyun groaned through his nose. “It’s annoying being a collaborative pianist, though. I can’t practice my solo pieces as much as I would like. Can’t complain, I’m getting money out of this.”
Sungmin snorted. “Don’t say that to Zhou Mi. He’d go all Boy Scout Musician on you.”
“Who’s Zhou Mi?”
“Oh, my accompanist before you came along. Nice Chinese guy, good-looking too.”
“Any good at the keyboard?”
“He’s Chinese,” Sungmin shot him a look. “And if he wasn’t any good, I wouldn’t have asked him to accompany me, now, wouldn’t I?)
Kyuhyun had other people he accompanied, but none of them were quite as ideal. Jungsu, one of the older violin students, coddled Kyuhyun and treated him like a younger brother, insisting on buying him lunch or dinner after every rehearsal and patting his head affectionately after every performance together. Kyuhyun only forced a tight smile and pretended to tolerate the babying. Another example was Jongwoon, a violist who was an odd one to say the least. He had weird interpretations and always strove to sound completely different from what was expected from him, which made rehearsals almost experimental. Jongwoon was the kind of guy who added his own little pieces of style into his performances, and Kyuhyun always got fed up with him halfway through movements since dammit, do you know how difficult it is to follow somebody who never plays the same note the same way twice?.
It was a pain. That was all Kyuhyun could say about it.
In the school, there were plenty of collaborative pianists. The trouble was that they were usually terrible pianists, which would not hold well under any circumstances. Classical music was an art, but “art” did not mean that there was any room for “bad taste”.
So according to Sungmin’s usually accurate statistics, the only good pianists that offered collaborative services were Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. So of course, they were bound to cross paths eventually.
Zhou Mi turned out to be way too happy to be in the more-or-less dreary world of classical music. The guy smiled too much and laughed too loudly and practiced like it was the most enjoyable activity in the world. Honestly, it should have been illegal to be so in love with what most of the other musicians considered work. Zhou Mi was the go-to man for everything, basically. He was always up for performing, whether it was solo or chamber, and he had pretty much played every piece of standard chamber repertoire written in history. He was the kind of guy who never harped on somebody who forgot to pay for a rehearsal, and Kyuhyun heard from Sungmin that he actually volunteered at a children’s hospital as a piano teacher.
Translation: Zhou Mi was talented, smart, good-looking, and nice, which therefore gave Kyuhyun every possible reason to hate his guts.
They first met during the evening at exactly 5:00 pm, when Kyuhyun finally felt his arms give way to near-hazardous limits. It was tiring, practicing from 7:00 am until 5:00 pm, but Kyuhyun was proud of the fact that he never felt tired until the very end, when the pain he suppressed for the eight hours finally caught up to him. Sungmin, for one, could never practice for more than four hours a day. Something about vocal cords and lung capacity and injury and the like.
So there he was, packing up all of his music into his scrappy backpack and carelessly hoisting it over his shoulder. He opened the door abruptly and promptly bumped his nose into a very sharp shoulder blade, the force driving him backwards and almost making him topple over.
"Oh goodness, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there, are you alright--?"
The bombard of apologies and fussing washed right over Kyuhyun's head, and once he regained stable footing, he stared up at the guy who almost broke his nose. "I'm fine. Just what are you doing outside my practice room?"
"Oh, I was looking for Sungmin. He forgot his music at my place, you see." Mr. Sharp Shoulder Blade waved around a hardcover of Gabriel Faure: Fantasy as proof.
"Sungmin? As in flute Sungmin?" Kyuhyun raised an eyebrow. "Are you Zhou Mi?"
"Oh, why, yes I am, nice to meet you." Without warning, Zhou Mi pulled him into a very enthusiastic very firm handshake. Kyuhyun noticed that Zhou Mi's hands were Liszt-sized--long bony fingers, wide palms, sallow skin, large knuckles--and narrowed his eyes at how small his own hands looked in comparison. "And I'm sorry, I don't think I got your name!"
Kyuhyun fought off the bemused expression on his face. "Kyuhyun."
"Oh, so you're the Kyuhyun that Sungmin is always talking about," Zhou Mi grinned, his teeth blindingly white. "He says that you are awfully talented, and that I should practice harder if I don't want to get left in the dust."
Sungmin would never say anything like that, but flattery was characteristic in the field of music so Kyuhyun made no indication of disagreement and just shrugged. "I have rehearsal with Sungmin tomorrow morning, so if you want I can return it to him for you."
Zhou Mi's grin broadened. "Really? Thanks so much! You're a lifesaver! Can I buy you lunch sometime?"
Alarm bells rang in Kyuhyun's head, and he rolled his eyes. "Dude, I'm just returning music, I'm not performing for charity."
"Yes, well, you're doing me a huge favor. I have four performances to play for tomorrow. And besides, you're friends with Sungmin, and I want to get to know you."
Kyuhyun debated with himself in his mind for a time before relenting. "Alright, fine." Can't hurt to check out the rest of the competition, right?
"Great! Here's my number." Zhou Mi flicked out a pen from his trouser pockets, grabbed Kyuhyun's increasingly dwarfed hand, and scribbled a series of numbers onto his palm before he could do anything about it. "Send me a text sometime! Thanks again!" And with that, he shoved Gabriel Faure: Fantasy into Kyuhyun's hands and bounded off in the other direction, gangly limbs and all.
Strange guy, Kyuhyun thought to himself, left standing alone outside Room 44A.
Just as he said he would, Kyuhyun returned Sungmin's music the next morning. "Zhou Mi says you left it at his house."
"Oh, thanks, I was wondering where it went," Sungmin accepted it without question. "So you met Zhou Mi? Nice guy, isn't he?"
Kyuhyun snorted. "More like an overenthusiastic Labrador Retriever."
Sungmin stifled a laugh, popping his flute case open. "I'll tell him you said that."
"Huge hands, too."
“He can reach a fourteenth, you know."
"Fuck him," the pianist swore under his breath. Kyuhyun could barely reach a tenth, which meant a lot of awkwardly rolled chords when playing Rachmaninov.
"Don't be jealous. Zhou Mi may have big hands, but his running passages are shit. Can't move half as fast as you can. Always used to drive him crazy every time we performed."
"How long have you guys known each other?"
Sungmin did quick math in his head. "Oh, around four years now. I was his roommate when he first moved here. Almost moved out halfway through the lease, though."
Kyuhyun laughed dryly. "Why?"
“Zhou Mi’s the type that loves taking care of people, but one can only take so much coddling in one day, you know. I mean, it’s nice to have a roommate who bakes you cookies all the time and makes sure you sleep enough, but when Mother Hen turns to Nagging Hen it causes friction.” Sungmin started to tune. “Besides, I think of myself as a little bit more independent than that. I need my space to make my own mistakes and choices.”
Sungmin was not kidding when he said that Zhou Mi was the coddling type. Within the first two minutes of their scheduled lunch, Kyuhyun was on the brink of calling Zhou Mi mommy.
Zhou Mi insisted on meeting Kyuhyun outside his door and driving him to their destined diner despite Kyuhyun’s continuous objections that public transportation is there for a reason. Kyuhyun came to regret giving in when Zhou Mi started harping on him for forgetting to put on his seat belt, and refused to buckle up for the sake of his pride (it was only a mild victory when Zhou Mi finally threw up his hands in exasperation and buckled Kyuhyun up himself). “I don’t want to get you killed!” he cried, driving well below the speed limit. “Seatbelts are the first steps to adequate safety, you know!”
Kyuhyun smothered the laugh that narrowly escaped his voice box.
Lunch was unexpectedly lively. Kyuhyun had always found having lunch with other people to be filled with awkward pauses and nervous glances and forced smiles. But with Zhou Mi, it seemed almost comfortable. The guy was a natural conversationalist, and Kyuhyun had a feeling that he could talk to a wall and the wall would be able to talk back.
(“Sungmin tells me that you are quite the technique freak,” Zhou Mi raised his eyebrows playfully. “Lots of notes, and yet you manage to hit all of them.”
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “If you say one word about how music is not only about notes and that I need to put feeling into it, I will not hesitate to start planning your long and painful death.”
Zhou Mi giggled. “Do you always respond to compliments like that?”
“Without fail.” Kyuhyun shrugged. “Normal people don’t give out compliments unless they want something from you.”
“I better start thinking about what I want from you, then.”
Kyuhyun’s lips twitched upwards.)
Zhou Mi loved music. It was almost surreal. Most students in the conservatory were only there because they were good at their instruments. A select few actually enjoyed the art of performing, even less the grueling hours of practicing. Zhou Mi, however, seemed to love anything and everything pertaining to classical music.
“What can I say?” he grinned. “My beloved Steinway baby grand is the love of my life. I can’t see myself doing anything else other than sit in front of the keyboard and listen to the sounds she can make. She’s my baby. I would die before I give her away to somebody else.”
If it had been anybody else, Kyuhyun would have rolled his eyes and said bullshit. “It must have been expensive, then.”
Zhou Mi laughed. “No, actually, I got her from my aunt as a birthday present when I was seven.”
“You’ve kept that piano for almost two decades?”
“Yup. Still sounds as beautiful as before. I had to replace some hammers over the years but other than that, she’s still in good shape.”
An eyebrow quirk. “’She’? Your piano is a ‘she’?”
“I know, I know, it just sounds weird referring to my baby grand as an ‘it’,” Zhou Mi explained, cheeks reddening just a twinge. “I named her, too.”
Kyuhyun’s face twitched. “You named her? What?”
“Don’t laugh, okay? I was just a teenager when I named her.”
“I won’t laugh. Just tell me.”
Zhou Mi was very red by this time and when he finally answered it was barely a whisper. “Frederica Mercury McFlufferson.”
Kyuhyun’s schooled expression broke and he started to laugh. He continued laughing throughout the rest of the meal and didn’t stop even as Zhou Mi drove him back to his dorm, red in the face as he insisted that being a Queen fan was not a crime and that McFlufferson was a perfectly legitimate last name for any musical instrument.
Inevitably, Kyuhyun took to calling Zhou Mi ‘Mr. McFlufferson’ every time they met up. It never got old seeing Zhou Mi flustered and flailing.
Kyuhyun swore under his breath as he turned another page to find a white page saturated with black notes and ever-changing accidentals and ledger lines and crazy dynamic markings. For crying out loud, it would have saved the publishers a barrel of ink if they had printed the notes in white and the page in black. When Sungmin told him that he needed to learn a contemporary piece, he did not warn Kyuhyun that it would be the difficult kind of contemporary piece. He was so going to charge him extra for it, because there were solo piano pieces that were not this annoying to learn.
A soft knock interrupted his irate thoughts, and he shouted an annoyed taken! in the direction of the door and sighed in defeat when it opened anyway to reveal a very large smile and perfect hair. “Hey, Kyuhyun!”
“Hey Mr. McFlufferson,” he greeted back, smirking at the squawk of protest. “What did Sungmin want you to tell me?”
“Sungmin did not send me,” Zhou Mi retorted, not unkindly. “Though he did mention that he owed you rehearsal money. No, I’m here because I need to ask a favor.”
“Well, then, spit it out,” Kyuhyun half-heartedly egged him on as he went back to counting ledger lines in the left hand. Damn contemporary music.
“A friend of mine, Heechul, is the concertmaster of the school orchestra, and he asked if I could be the soloist for a charity they’re doing in a month. I was wondering if you could help me prepare for that.”
“Prepare? As in listen to your pieces and offer bullshit advice on how to play them?”
Zhou Mi giggled. “No-yes-but not like that. I’ll be performing the second Rachmaninov concerto, and I’ve never played it with a second piano, not to mention an orchestra.”
Kyuhyun blinked at him. “You have never played the second Rachmaninov concerto with a second piano? And you call yourself a pianist?”
“Don’t be mean!” the guy pouted. “Not all pianists have played it!”
“The good ones have. The better ones play both the second and the third concerto.” When Zhou Mi pouted, Kyuhyun quickly averted his eyes. “I’ll do it. You will want rehearsals, I assume?”
Zhou Mi brightened by a hundred volts. “That’d be great!” Without warning, Zhou Mi had wrapped his long gangly arms around Kyuhyun and pressed a quick kiss onto his neck. “Thanks, Kyuhyun! I owe you big time for this!”
Kyuhyun sat in front of the piano, unmoving, for a long time after Zhou Mi left. Suddenly the ledger lines and accidentals and overall it should be illegal for that much black ink to be on one page! did not seem too frustrating anymore.
It was easy to figure out how Sungmin and Zhou Mi were friends. First off, both of them were friendly. Sungmin had the kind of cold yet sincere friendliness that clashed with his pure face and innocent smile, Zhou Mi had the all-out everybody is my friend! kind of friendliness that made girls coo and guys laugh. They were also huge fans of Impressionistic music and had this unerring fascination with the works of Faure and Debussy which Kyuhyun could not begin to understand. Mostly, however, they were just socially fluent, and socially fluent people just tended to meet other socially fluent people.
And very socially awkward Kyuhyun still could not figure out how he fit into the equation.
“You like him, don’t you?” Sungmin teased one morning, waggling his eyebrows.
Kyuhyun’s black binder fell off the piano rack, hit the keyboard in a cacophonous cluster, and fell to the floor with a thud, spilling paper everywhere. “What the fuck, dude,” Kyuhyun grumbled as he bent to pick up the mess on the floor.
The flutist’s eyes widened with gleeful amusement. “Oh Kyuhyun, you do like him!”
“Shut up.” Kyuhyun grumbled some more and tried to will away the blush on his cheeks. It was true, he did like Zhou Mi. He liked Zhou Mi’s cheerful voice, a nice contrast to the snarky bored voices of the other conservatory students. He liked how he could give Zhou Mi a mini heart attack by not shoulder-checking before changing lanes. He liked the feel of the guy’s Rachmaninov hands on his own, large and bony and protective at the same time. He liked making Zhou Mi’s face turn red by calling him Mr. McFlufferson. He liked his eyes, his smile, his bony arms, his long legs.
Well, that is seriously inconvenient.
“Want me to tell him?” Sungmin half-squealed, one moment from bouncing off the walls.
“No-just-shut up.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Sungmin!”
“What? I’m just asking!”
The tips of Kyuhyun’s ears were red, and the pianist cursed his paper white complexion. “Just shut up, okay? I’m not having this discussion with you.”
Sungmin pouted, and Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “Then who will you have this discussion with? Your mom? Come on, Kyuhyun, you can tell me. I’m your best friend!”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then who is?” he challenged, unfazed as he crossed his arms, lightly tapping the foot joint of his flute against his hip.
Kyuhyun opened his mouth to answer but found nothing to say. “Holy shit, how did that happen?”
Sungmin smiled smugly. “I’m a crafty little bastard.”
Kyuhyun glared and started playing the opening lines of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto transcribed for flute. (Everything for flute was pretty much transcribed, come to think of it.) “I’m still not having this discussion with you,” he muttered, banging out the chords with a vengeance, making the sforzandos sound more like gunshots than musical dynamics.
The second Rachmaninov piano concerto was known for having one of the most beautiful melodies in classical music history. It was like the mainstream kind of classical music that most non-classical musicians knew from soundtracks, the epitome of classical “pop” music aside from the first eight bars of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Kyuhyun had a theory that as long as most of the notes were intact and nothing stuck out, the piece would sound amazing to the general audience-but real pianists knew that only when crying tears of blood would they truly be able to bring out the true greatness that was Rachmaninov’s voice.
Zhou Mi was not one to cry. He smiled, he pouted, he laughed, he whined, but he was not the kind who cried, especially not tears of blood. He played the concerto like the whole piece was the most beautiful melody in the world, the happiest memory he could fathom, the most breathtaking expanse of sun and glory and everything wonderful.
The first time Kyuhyun heard him play, he hung his head at how happy Zhou Mi had made it sound. Rachmaninov had happy romantic moments, yes, but there was always great pain behind everything, something that made every audience member clutch at their heart and weep at something they cannot pinpoint. All great music had great pain.
“You’re too happy,” he deadpanned two seconds after Zhou Mi finished the first movement.
“Is there something wrong with being too happy?”
“It’s Rachmaninov,” Kyuhyun shot back, as if that answered everything. “He’s Russian. Russian music is about folk songs, war, Siberia, and bells. And not the happy Christmas-type bells.”
Zhou Mi crinkled his eyes in a tacit smile. “But behind all sadness, there is happiness. They’re the same thing, essentially. I mean, nobody can truly know what sadness is until they know what happiness is, right?”
Kyuhyun scowled. “I don’t do philosophy. Happiness and sadness are complete different things in my book.”
A soft look appeared on Zhou Mi’s face, darkened by the shadows cast under his eyes. “The most powerful kind of sadness is unattainable happiness. Sort of like knowing you could have something wonderful but in the end realizing that you just can’t.”
“So you decided to play Rachmaninov like it’s a song about unicorns that explode into rainbows?”
“No, I decided to play Rachmaninov like a reminder that unicorns, no matter how wonderful they are, don’t exist.”
That was the crudest thing that had ever come out of Zhou Mi’s mouth, and Kyuhyun found it hard to swallow. “Let’s just run through the second movement, shall we?” he murmured after a moment’s hesitation, immediately positioning his hands onto the first chords of the orchestral reduction. From the corner of his eye, Kyuhyun saw Zhou Mi smile brightly as he played a minor triad, relishing the sad overtones and pained intervals, an intangible happiness that was there and yet not there. It made Kyuhyun’s heart break a little.
“Thanks for rehearsing with me, Kyuhyun.”
“Yah, no problem. It’s my job.”
Zhou Mi pinched his eyebrows together. “It’s not just a job, Kyuhyun. You can’t truly accompany somebody only for the money. And even if you think it’s for financial purposes, you are nonetheless being your soloist’s backbone, someone your soloist can fall back on. Good accompanists, like you, take care of their soloists.” He smiled softly. “So thank you, Kyuhyun, for taking care of me.”
And if that did not make Kyuhyun’s heart flutter, nothing would.
Lunch from Zhou Mi’s Delivery Service became a daily thing. Somehow he had incorporated himself into the routine that Kyuhyun and Sungmin created with their two-hour breaks, always showing up the moment the both of them emerged from their respective practice rooms. From there, they would lounge in front of their doors, eat, and in general just take up space and get glared at by other people who were looking for practice rooms.
He would never admit it aloud, but Kyuhyun loved Zhou Mi’s lunches. They were always decorated cutely, packed perfectly into little bento boxes. Zhou Mi was especially good with sushi, and always made sure to strategically place them in certain areas to create some sort of cuisine design. One time, Kyuhyun opened the bento box to find a very realistic-looking panda face looking back at him.
It made Kyuhyun’s ears turn red.
The only drawback with their shared lunchtime was Sungmin’s collection of just kiss him already! faces. They communicated about Kyuhyun’s pining via knowing glances and quick eyebrow raises.
(Just tell him already! Sungmin glared.
Shut up, Sungmin! Kyuhyun glared back.
If you don’t tell him, I will, Sungmin said with a quirk of his eyebrow and a twitch of his lips.
Kyuhyun clenched his teeth together, boring a hole into the flutist’s head. Just shut up!
“Then you add a sugar topping,” Zhou Mi finished, jerking both of them back into a conversation on how to make crème brulée or something like that-what were they talking about again?)
Soon, lunchtime became longer and longer, and their original ten-minute breaks became twenty minutes, which then became thirty, until finally plateauing at a ground-breaking forty-five minutes. And strangely enough, Kyuhyun found that he didn’t mind. Sure, he had a lot of practicing to do, but let’s face it, an extra thirty-five minutes of practicing to Kyuhyun meant that he got to run through the Beethoven Appasionata sonata again.
So instead of running through the scales and arpeggios that littered most of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, he spent those forty-five minutes basking in the cheerful aura that Zhou Mi provided, and glaring at Sungmin’s I totally saw you staring at his nice piece of ass expressions.
Zhou Mi had three more rehearsals with Kyuhyun before he deemed himself ready for his concert, and on their fourth and last rehearsal Zhou Mi handed his accompanist a ticket. “You don’t need to come if you don’t want to,” he said, watching Kyuhyun from behind his lashes. “It’s just that I would really like you to be there. Sungmin’s playing in the orchestra, too.”
“I’ll be there,” Kyuhyun nodded. It was a promise. “Mr. McFlufferson,” he added quickly.
Zhou Mi laughed.
Zhou Mi was up after the intermission, so he spent the first half reading the program notes while listening to the familiar tunes of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty orchestral suite and Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition-typical choices for a charity concert, really. Kyuhyun just listened passively, content just to sit there and watch as the Maestro Shin Donghee waved his arms around and urged the brass section forward. Brass instruments were known for being late; it was like a law of musical nature.
Kyuhyun spent intermission dawdling around the lounge before heading back to his seat. Not two seconds after he finally settled in, his phone buzzed with a text Zhou Mi send him, come to the dressing room, left exit down the hall displayed on the screen. Not caring that the lights have dimmed and the redhead concertmaster was strutting across the stage, Kyuhyun stood and muttered apologies and insincere excuse me, pardon mes as he shuffled his way out of the row, bumping his shins against the other audience members’ knees.
He found Zhou Mi standing in front of the dressing room mirror adjusting his bowtie and smoothing out the non-existent wrinkles on his tuxedo jacket.
(“How do I look?” he asked without turning around.
“You look good,” Kyuhyun lied. Good was a drastic understatement; he looked stunning.
Moments later, a small girl knocked against the dressing room door and turned the knob. “It’s time, Zhou Mi,” she called, smiling sweetly. “The orchestra is almost finished tuning.”
Zhou Mi grinned back. “Be right there.” He turned to Kyuhyun and the grin broadened. “Wish me luck!”
“Good luck!” Kyuhyun said, and before he could stop himself: “I’ll be waiting for you backstage.”
Something soft was in his eyes as Zhou Mi pulled him into a hug. “Thanks. I’ll see you after the concert.”)
The audience clapped enthusiastically when Zhou Mi appeared on stage, and Kyuhyun could see why. The guy was already a star in real life, but under the spotlight one almost had to shield their eyes from how brilliant he looked. Gracefully, charismatically, Zhou Mi took a bow, and waited for the audience to quiet down.
“I want to thank all of you for being here. It’s always so wonderful to stand on a stage and look out to see a full concerto hall! I’d like to take this moment to say that I am beyond delighted to be here, and I would like to thank each and every one of you for coming. I also want to thank all the staff and coordinators who made this concert possible, and as well as the orchestra; they all have worked so hard this past month, and without them this concert would never have come to life. I owe all of you the deepest thanks.”
The audience clapped, and Kyuhyun clapped from behind the curtains, smiling.
“But on a personal note,” Zhou Mi’s voice cut through the applause, “I would like to thank all of my friends and family who have supported me this whole time. They were the ones who made sure that I practiced, that I kept my head on straight, and that by the time I got on stage I felt ready and capable of doing the best I ever could. So thank you, mom and dad, I know you are both out in the audience somewhere. Thank you, Sungmin, for lending me a score and letting me doodle all over it. Thank you, Heechul, for being an amazing concertmaster and in general just being your usual wonderful unique self. And thank you, Kyuhyun-”
Kyuhyun’s head snapped upwards.
“-for rehearsing with me and being there for me whenever I needed you.” Zhou Mi paused. “I love you more than you know,” he said, almost an afterthought. “Thank you all, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the concert!”
And while Zhou Mi’s belted out his overly happy Rachmaninov melodies with those massive hands of his, Kyuhyun stood backstage, unable to move, unable to breathe, and let the beauty of the concerto’s long lines wash over him.
Zhou Mi’s performance was a huge success, and the reception was deafening. The applause started three bars before the last note of the third movement, and lasted long after the piece finished, intermittent Bravo!s bouncing around the concert hall. Zhou Mi was called on for three encores before the audiences started thinning out. Rachmaninov would have been proud.
Just like he said he would, Kyuhyun was waiting for him backstage. His face was flushed and his heart was pounding, but he still held eye contact as Zhou Mi approached.
(“You did great,” he managed to croak out. “Really great.” He almost felt like crying, though whether from happiness or sadness he had no idea.
“Thanks.” Zhou Mi beamed, leaning down to press a slow chaste kiss on Kyuhyun’s chapped lips. “I meant every word.”)
Kyuhyun still hated being an accompanist. He still hated the fact that while he was working hard in the background, fingers flying around to fill in the harmonies that the solo line left open, the audience never paid him any attention and focused instead on the soloist in the spotlight. He hated that he had to sacrifice at least one hour every day just to practice the difficult chamber pieces thrown at him in order to have their performance-ready within a week. He hated that he was also expected to follow the soloist, watch their every move, and whenever they were off-balance it was always the accompanist’s fault.
Nonetheless-and he would never admit it out loud-he found something meaningful to it. He was an accompanist, and in being such he held indiscreet power as the man behind the curtain, the guy who called the shots. Whether he meant to or not, he took care of his soloist.
(Just like Zhou Mi took care of him.)
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, classical music AU
Length: 6264 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kyuhyun hated being the accompanist.
Inspiration(s): As a piano student at my university, I have a lot of things to do-solo recitals, classes that teach you how to teach others, dry nitty gritty lectures like music theory and music history, and chamber music, for example. And just recently, I got a text from a singer I used to accompany and she told me that I was probably the main reason why she stayed musically sane throughout her fourth year.
```
Kyuhyun hated being the accompanist. It implied that he was inferior to the soloist he played for, which was completely untrue considering how difficult his music was in comparison-for every note the soloist played, he played four. Aside from the complicated, usually anti-pianistic passages, it was his job to tailor to the soloist, figure out where to enter, how to enter, whether he was too loud, whether he needed to lighten the pedal, and so on. There was a lot to do while accompanying, and he was always bitter that the audiences never seemed to realize that his job was just as if not more important than the soloist’s.
Life was difficult enough as a classical musician. Young people hardly ever went to classical music concerts unless their well-meaning parents forced them to, and usually the only people who attended on their own terms were the performers’ friends and family, the elderly, and the occasional hobo who only needed a place to sleep for a few hours. A pathetic outcome after spending hours upon hours locked up in a practice room in pursuit of artistic perfection.
Kyuhyun practiced eight hours a day, which was average for every conservatory student. Around the school he was known as the Boy With Fast Fingers, and Kyuhyun worked hard to keep up that reputation. Every student in that school had won at least one huge international competition, and most were already signed into a company as official recording artists. The lucky few became concert artists, while the less successful ones became teachers. Only the least successful students resorted to accompanying.
Kyuhyun was not unsuccessful in the least. By the time he was sixteen, he had already won his fair share of competitions and was relatively well-known in the classical music world-and at his current age of eighteen, he was doing quite well, thank you very much. He only started accompanying because he needed the money to pay for his schooling. He already crossed teaching out-the last time he taught someone, the eight-year-old had run out of the room crying-and there was no time to wait for some recording company to sign him on. Moreover, it was always a gamble when the next concert performances were, and it was even more of a gamble as to whether these performances were going to bring back any income.
So accompanying was his only choice, and Kyuhyun resented his life. The moment he put up his availabilities on the Student Bulletin Board, he had already resigned himself to the status of the Loser Pianist, the Burnt-Out Prodigy, the Nameless Musician.
He clenched his teeth together and slammed the practice room door shut.
His first major gig was with a flutist named Sungmin. Very talented guy, and goal-oriented to boot. Could hit high notes with enough ease to put a starling to shame. He hired Kyuhyun to be his competition accompanist. “My usual accompanist is out of town for another competition and won’t be back in time for next week,” he explained tautly. “And I heard that you learn fast.”
Sungmin gave him the music as soon as they agreed on the arrangements, cleanly photocopied and organized into a black binder. He told Kyuhyun exactly how he wanted his pieces to go, circling the repeat signs he followed and the crossing out the ones he ignored, let him know exactly which passages to play and which ones he needed to cut out. He was always in control, cued clearly, and always made sure that their articulations matched. He was pretty much a professional already. The two got along immediately.
The two-hour rehearsals were carried out in an efficient time is money and money is time fashion, just the way Kyuhyun liked them. Sungmin never needed breaks but had the courtesy to ask if Kyuhyun needed to take a short intermission (to which the pianist answered with a derisive snort and yah right).
“Please play a little bit louder here,” Sungmin asked in his even tone of voice, pointing to bar 72 with his skinny finger. “I want this passage to be richer in sound and I can’t do it alone.”
Kyuhyun suppressed a scoff. Flutists couldn’t do anything alone.
The competition went smoothly, and Sungmin played impeccably. In the end, he placed second, beaten by an oboe player who was one of the judges’ students. “At least it reimbursed my travel expenses,” the flutist muttered, grinding his teeth together as he cleaned his mouthpiece.
Kyuhyun snickered. “You had no connections to the jury. At least you placed.”
“Of course I would place,” Sungmin shot back, not unkindly. “I know I play well.”
“You didn’t play well. You played amazingly.” Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. He was a good judge of talent-it took one to know one. “Lot of politics in this competition, though. It has a reputation of favoritism. I wondered why you entered in the first place.”
Sungmin shut his flute case with an extra newton of force. “Guess I was too egotistic to believe that I could win through my talent.”
“Probably.”
“You played well today, by the way,” Sungmin quipped. “I’d like to work with you more often.”
“You also played well today,” Kyuhyun deadpanned. “I’d like to cheat you out of the money you’re paying me.”
This garnered a laugh from the guy, and Kyuhyun knew a good relationship to keep when he saw one.
Kyuhyun’s reputation as a “collaborative pianist” became an increasing exponential curve after that. Sungmin was a social butterfly when he was not locking himself up in a practice room, and soon most of his friends from orchestra were hiring him for performances and competition rounds. Sometimes two people competing in the same festival hired him, and Kyuhyun had to deal with one’s promise of more money if he sabotaged the other’s performance. Morality was never an issue for Kyuhyun, so of course he played better for the one who paid more-anything goes whenever there is money involved.
Money accumulated quickly enough. He was still not even close to the point where he could safely pay off his tuition, even less so if he included his living expenses and transportation, but it was progress.
Sungmin became his first regular customer, and Kyuhyun did not question what happened with his usual accompanist. The arrangement was simple. Sungmin presented him with new music every week, met up for regular two-hour rehearsals once every month, promptly paid him for each session. They had a very good business relationship but hardly met outside of their work. Kyuhyun liked it. He liked the fact that they only met when they needed to and only did what they needed to do. No after-competition parties, no post-performance drinks, nada.
But because they went to the same conservatory, they always bumped into each other in the practice room hallways. In fact, their usual practice rooms were in front of each other. Sungmin always had Room 44B that hosted a beat-up upright Yamaha that was so out of tune even the tone-deaf would notice, satisfied with knowing that no piano student would be desperate enough to kick him out. Kyuhyun, on the other hand, liked the heaviness of the Steinway in Room 44A, and usually woke up as early as six to make sure he made it there before some aggravating first-year snatched it away from him. They eventually assimilated into a routine where they took short breaks every two hours to talk about pieces or complain about life. And before they knew it, they were friends.
(“You up for some Faure?” Sungmin asked one Monday morning. “I’m thinking about playing the Fantasy.”
Kyuhyun wrinkled his nose. “Faure’s not my thing. Impressionistic music is not my thing in general. You play so many notes and nobody expects to hear all of them. What about Franck? I heard that his Sonata In A Major has a flute transcription. Plus, it’s standard repertoire so I may be able to use it again.”
Sungmin laughed. “Your funeral. The piano part is a bitch to learn.”
“It’ll be good for me.” Kyuhyun groaned through his nose. “It’s annoying being a collaborative pianist, though. I can’t practice my solo pieces as much as I would like. Can’t complain, I’m getting money out of this.”
Sungmin snorted. “Don’t say that to Zhou Mi. He’d go all Boy Scout Musician on you.”
“Who’s Zhou Mi?”
“Oh, my accompanist before you came along. Nice Chinese guy, good-looking too.”
“Any good at the keyboard?”
“He’s Chinese,” Sungmin shot him a look. “And if he wasn’t any good, I wouldn’t have asked him to accompany me, now, wouldn’t I?)
Kyuhyun had other people he accompanied, but none of them were quite as ideal. Jungsu, one of the older violin students, coddled Kyuhyun and treated him like a younger brother, insisting on buying him lunch or dinner after every rehearsal and patting his head affectionately after every performance together. Kyuhyun only forced a tight smile and pretended to tolerate the babying. Another example was Jongwoon, a violist who was an odd one to say the least. He had weird interpretations and always strove to sound completely different from what was expected from him, which made rehearsals almost experimental. Jongwoon was the kind of guy who added his own little pieces of style into his performances, and Kyuhyun always got fed up with him halfway through movements since dammit, do you know how difficult it is to follow somebody who never plays the same note the same way twice?.
It was a pain. That was all Kyuhyun could say about it.
In the school, there were plenty of collaborative pianists. The trouble was that they were usually terrible pianists, which would not hold well under any circumstances. Classical music was an art, but “art” did not mean that there was any room for “bad taste”.
So according to Sungmin’s usually accurate statistics, the only good pianists that offered collaborative services were Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. So of course, they were bound to cross paths eventually.
Zhou Mi turned out to be way too happy to be in the more-or-less dreary world of classical music. The guy smiled too much and laughed too loudly and practiced like it was the most enjoyable activity in the world. Honestly, it should have been illegal to be so in love with what most of the other musicians considered work. Zhou Mi was the go-to man for everything, basically. He was always up for performing, whether it was solo or chamber, and he had pretty much played every piece of standard chamber repertoire written in history. He was the kind of guy who never harped on somebody who forgot to pay for a rehearsal, and Kyuhyun heard from Sungmin that he actually volunteered at a children’s hospital as a piano teacher.
Translation: Zhou Mi was talented, smart, good-looking, and nice, which therefore gave Kyuhyun every possible reason to hate his guts.
They first met during the evening at exactly 5:00 pm, when Kyuhyun finally felt his arms give way to near-hazardous limits. It was tiring, practicing from 7:00 am until 5:00 pm, but Kyuhyun was proud of the fact that he never felt tired until the very end, when the pain he suppressed for the eight hours finally caught up to him. Sungmin, for one, could never practice for more than four hours a day. Something about vocal cords and lung capacity and injury and the like.
So there he was, packing up all of his music into his scrappy backpack and carelessly hoisting it over his shoulder. He opened the door abruptly and promptly bumped his nose into a very sharp shoulder blade, the force driving him backwards and almost making him topple over.
"Oh goodness, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there, are you alright--?"
The bombard of apologies and fussing washed right over Kyuhyun's head, and once he regained stable footing, he stared up at the guy who almost broke his nose. "I'm fine. Just what are you doing outside my practice room?"
"Oh, I was looking for Sungmin. He forgot his music at my place, you see." Mr. Sharp Shoulder Blade waved around a hardcover of Gabriel Faure: Fantasy as proof.
"Sungmin? As in flute Sungmin?" Kyuhyun raised an eyebrow. "Are you Zhou Mi?"
"Oh, why, yes I am, nice to meet you." Without warning, Zhou Mi pulled him into a very enthusiastic very firm handshake. Kyuhyun noticed that Zhou Mi's hands were Liszt-sized--long bony fingers, wide palms, sallow skin, large knuckles--and narrowed his eyes at how small his own hands looked in comparison. "And I'm sorry, I don't think I got your name!"
Kyuhyun fought off the bemused expression on his face. "Kyuhyun."
"Oh, so you're the Kyuhyun that Sungmin is always talking about," Zhou Mi grinned, his teeth blindingly white. "He says that you are awfully talented, and that I should practice harder if I don't want to get left in the dust."
Sungmin would never say anything like that, but flattery was characteristic in the field of music so Kyuhyun made no indication of disagreement and just shrugged. "I have rehearsal with Sungmin tomorrow morning, so if you want I can return it to him for you."
Zhou Mi's grin broadened. "Really? Thanks so much! You're a lifesaver! Can I buy you lunch sometime?"
Alarm bells rang in Kyuhyun's head, and he rolled his eyes. "Dude, I'm just returning music, I'm not performing for charity."
"Yes, well, you're doing me a huge favor. I have four performances to play for tomorrow. And besides, you're friends with Sungmin, and I want to get to know you."
Kyuhyun debated with himself in his mind for a time before relenting. "Alright, fine." Can't hurt to check out the rest of the competition, right?
"Great! Here's my number." Zhou Mi flicked out a pen from his trouser pockets, grabbed Kyuhyun's increasingly dwarfed hand, and scribbled a series of numbers onto his palm before he could do anything about it. "Send me a text sometime! Thanks again!" And with that, he shoved Gabriel Faure: Fantasy into Kyuhyun's hands and bounded off in the other direction, gangly limbs and all.
Strange guy, Kyuhyun thought to himself, left standing alone outside Room 44A.
Just as he said he would, Kyuhyun returned Sungmin's music the next morning. "Zhou Mi says you left it at his house."
"Oh, thanks, I was wondering where it went," Sungmin accepted it without question. "So you met Zhou Mi? Nice guy, isn't he?"
Kyuhyun snorted. "More like an overenthusiastic Labrador Retriever."
Sungmin stifled a laugh, popping his flute case open. "I'll tell him you said that."
"Huge hands, too."
“He can reach a fourteenth, you know."
"Fuck him," the pianist swore under his breath. Kyuhyun could barely reach a tenth, which meant a lot of awkwardly rolled chords when playing Rachmaninov.
"Don't be jealous. Zhou Mi may have big hands, but his running passages are shit. Can't move half as fast as you can. Always used to drive him crazy every time we performed."
"How long have you guys known each other?"
Sungmin did quick math in his head. "Oh, around four years now. I was his roommate when he first moved here. Almost moved out halfway through the lease, though."
Kyuhyun laughed dryly. "Why?"
“Zhou Mi’s the type that loves taking care of people, but one can only take so much coddling in one day, you know. I mean, it’s nice to have a roommate who bakes you cookies all the time and makes sure you sleep enough, but when Mother Hen turns to Nagging Hen it causes friction.” Sungmin started to tune. “Besides, I think of myself as a little bit more independent than that. I need my space to make my own mistakes and choices.”
Sungmin was not kidding when he said that Zhou Mi was the coddling type. Within the first two minutes of their scheduled lunch, Kyuhyun was on the brink of calling Zhou Mi mommy.
Zhou Mi insisted on meeting Kyuhyun outside his door and driving him to their destined diner despite Kyuhyun’s continuous objections that public transportation is there for a reason. Kyuhyun came to regret giving in when Zhou Mi started harping on him for forgetting to put on his seat belt, and refused to buckle up for the sake of his pride (it was only a mild victory when Zhou Mi finally threw up his hands in exasperation and buckled Kyuhyun up himself). “I don’t want to get you killed!” he cried, driving well below the speed limit. “Seatbelts are the first steps to adequate safety, you know!”
Kyuhyun smothered the laugh that narrowly escaped his voice box.
Lunch was unexpectedly lively. Kyuhyun had always found having lunch with other people to be filled with awkward pauses and nervous glances and forced smiles. But with Zhou Mi, it seemed almost comfortable. The guy was a natural conversationalist, and Kyuhyun had a feeling that he could talk to a wall and the wall would be able to talk back.
(“Sungmin tells me that you are quite the technique freak,” Zhou Mi raised his eyebrows playfully. “Lots of notes, and yet you manage to hit all of them.”
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “If you say one word about how music is not only about notes and that I need to put feeling into it, I will not hesitate to start planning your long and painful death.”
Zhou Mi giggled. “Do you always respond to compliments like that?”
“Without fail.” Kyuhyun shrugged. “Normal people don’t give out compliments unless they want something from you.”
“I better start thinking about what I want from you, then.”
Kyuhyun’s lips twitched upwards.)
Zhou Mi loved music. It was almost surreal. Most students in the conservatory were only there because they were good at their instruments. A select few actually enjoyed the art of performing, even less the grueling hours of practicing. Zhou Mi, however, seemed to love anything and everything pertaining to classical music.
“What can I say?” he grinned. “My beloved Steinway baby grand is the love of my life. I can’t see myself doing anything else other than sit in front of the keyboard and listen to the sounds she can make. She’s my baby. I would die before I give her away to somebody else.”
If it had been anybody else, Kyuhyun would have rolled his eyes and said bullshit. “It must have been expensive, then.”
Zhou Mi laughed. “No, actually, I got her from my aunt as a birthday present when I was seven.”
“You’ve kept that piano for almost two decades?”
“Yup. Still sounds as beautiful as before. I had to replace some hammers over the years but other than that, she’s still in good shape.”
An eyebrow quirk. “’She’? Your piano is a ‘she’?”
“I know, I know, it just sounds weird referring to my baby grand as an ‘it’,” Zhou Mi explained, cheeks reddening just a twinge. “I named her, too.”
Kyuhyun’s face twitched. “You named her? What?”
“Don’t laugh, okay? I was just a teenager when I named her.”
“I won’t laugh. Just tell me.”
Zhou Mi was very red by this time and when he finally answered it was barely a whisper. “Frederica Mercury McFlufferson.”
Kyuhyun’s schooled expression broke and he started to laugh. He continued laughing throughout the rest of the meal and didn’t stop even as Zhou Mi drove him back to his dorm, red in the face as he insisted that being a Queen fan was not a crime and that McFlufferson was a perfectly legitimate last name for any musical instrument.
Inevitably, Kyuhyun took to calling Zhou Mi ‘Mr. McFlufferson’ every time they met up. It never got old seeing Zhou Mi flustered and flailing.
Kyuhyun swore under his breath as he turned another page to find a white page saturated with black notes and ever-changing accidentals and ledger lines and crazy dynamic markings. For crying out loud, it would have saved the publishers a barrel of ink if they had printed the notes in white and the page in black. When Sungmin told him that he needed to learn a contemporary piece, he did not warn Kyuhyun that it would be the difficult kind of contemporary piece. He was so going to charge him extra for it, because there were solo piano pieces that were not this annoying to learn.
A soft knock interrupted his irate thoughts, and he shouted an annoyed taken! in the direction of the door and sighed in defeat when it opened anyway to reveal a very large smile and perfect hair. “Hey, Kyuhyun!”
“Hey Mr. McFlufferson,” he greeted back, smirking at the squawk of protest. “What did Sungmin want you to tell me?”
“Sungmin did not send me,” Zhou Mi retorted, not unkindly. “Though he did mention that he owed you rehearsal money. No, I’m here because I need to ask a favor.”
“Well, then, spit it out,” Kyuhyun half-heartedly egged him on as he went back to counting ledger lines in the left hand. Damn contemporary music.
“A friend of mine, Heechul, is the concertmaster of the school orchestra, and he asked if I could be the soloist for a charity they’re doing in a month. I was wondering if you could help me prepare for that.”
“Prepare? As in listen to your pieces and offer bullshit advice on how to play them?”
Zhou Mi giggled. “No-yes-but not like that. I’ll be performing the second Rachmaninov concerto, and I’ve never played it with a second piano, not to mention an orchestra.”
Kyuhyun blinked at him. “You have never played the second Rachmaninov concerto with a second piano? And you call yourself a pianist?”
“Don’t be mean!” the guy pouted. “Not all pianists have played it!”
“The good ones have. The better ones play both the second and the third concerto.” When Zhou Mi pouted, Kyuhyun quickly averted his eyes. “I’ll do it. You will want rehearsals, I assume?”
Zhou Mi brightened by a hundred volts. “That’d be great!” Without warning, Zhou Mi had wrapped his long gangly arms around Kyuhyun and pressed a quick kiss onto his neck. “Thanks, Kyuhyun! I owe you big time for this!”
Kyuhyun sat in front of the piano, unmoving, for a long time after Zhou Mi left. Suddenly the ledger lines and accidentals and overall it should be illegal for that much black ink to be on one page! did not seem too frustrating anymore.
It was easy to figure out how Sungmin and Zhou Mi were friends. First off, both of them were friendly. Sungmin had the kind of cold yet sincere friendliness that clashed with his pure face and innocent smile, Zhou Mi had the all-out everybody is my friend! kind of friendliness that made girls coo and guys laugh. They were also huge fans of Impressionistic music and had this unerring fascination with the works of Faure and Debussy which Kyuhyun could not begin to understand. Mostly, however, they were just socially fluent, and socially fluent people just tended to meet other socially fluent people.
And very socially awkward Kyuhyun still could not figure out how he fit into the equation.
“You like him, don’t you?” Sungmin teased one morning, waggling his eyebrows.
Kyuhyun’s black binder fell off the piano rack, hit the keyboard in a cacophonous cluster, and fell to the floor with a thud, spilling paper everywhere. “What the fuck, dude,” Kyuhyun grumbled as he bent to pick up the mess on the floor.
The flutist’s eyes widened with gleeful amusement. “Oh Kyuhyun, you do like him!”
“Shut up.” Kyuhyun grumbled some more and tried to will away the blush on his cheeks. It was true, he did like Zhou Mi. He liked Zhou Mi’s cheerful voice, a nice contrast to the snarky bored voices of the other conservatory students. He liked how he could give Zhou Mi a mini heart attack by not shoulder-checking before changing lanes. He liked the feel of the guy’s Rachmaninov hands on his own, large and bony and protective at the same time. He liked making Zhou Mi’s face turn red by calling him Mr. McFlufferson. He liked his eyes, his smile, his bony arms, his long legs.
Well, that is seriously inconvenient.
“Want me to tell him?” Sungmin half-squealed, one moment from bouncing off the walls.
“No-just-shut up.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Sungmin!”
“What? I’m just asking!”
The tips of Kyuhyun’s ears were red, and the pianist cursed his paper white complexion. “Just shut up, okay? I’m not having this discussion with you.”
Sungmin pouted, and Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “Then who will you have this discussion with? Your mom? Come on, Kyuhyun, you can tell me. I’m your best friend!”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then who is?” he challenged, unfazed as he crossed his arms, lightly tapping the foot joint of his flute against his hip.
Kyuhyun opened his mouth to answer but found nothing to say. “Holy shit, how did that happen?”
Sungmin smiled smugly. “I’m a crafty little bastard.”
Kyuhyun glared and started playing the opening lines of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto transcribed for flute. (Everything for flute was pretty much transcribed, come to think of it.) “I’m still not having this discussion with you,” he muttered, banging out the chords with a vengeance, making the sforzandos sound more like gunshots than musical dynamics.
The second Rachmaninov piano concerto was known for having one of the most beautiful melodies in classical music history. It was like the mainstream kind of classical music that most non-classical musicians knew from soundtracks, the epitome of classical “pop” music aside from the first eight bars of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Kyuhyun had a theory that as long as most of the notes were intact and nothing stuck out, the piece would sound amazing to the general audience-but real pianists knew that only when crying tears of blood would they truly be able to bring out the true greatness that was Rachmaninov’s voice.
Zhou Mi was not one to cry. He smiled, he pouted, he laughed, he whined, but he was not the kind who cried, especially not tears of blood. He played the concerto like the whole piece was the most beautiful melody in the world, the happiest memory he could fathom, the most breathtaking expanse of sun and glory and everything wonderful.
The first time Kyuhyun heard him play, he hung his head at how happy Zhou Mi had made it sound. Rachmaninov had happy romantic moments, yes, but there was always great pain behind everything, something that made every audience member clutch at their heart and weep at something they cannot pinpoint. All great music had great pain.
“You’re too happy,” he deadpanned two seconds after Zhou Mi finished the first movement.
“Is there something wrong with being too happy?”
“It’s Rachmaninov,” Kyuhyun shot back, as if that answered everything. “He’s Russian. Russian music is about folk songs, war, Siberia, and bells. And not the happy Christmas-type bells.”
Zhou Mi crinkled his eyes in a tacit smile. “But behind all sadness, there is happiness. They’re the same thing, essentially. I mean, nobody can truly know what sadness is until they know what happiness is, right?”
Kyuhyun scowled. “I don’t do philosophy. Happiness and sadness are complete different things in my book.”
A soft look appeared on Zhou Mi’s face, darkened by the shadows cast under his eyes. “The most powerful kind of sadness is unattainable happiness. Sort of like knowing you could have something wonderful but in the end realizing that you just can’t.”
“So you decided to play Rachmaninov like it’s a song about unicorns that explode into rainbows?”
“No, I decided to play Rachmaninov like a reminder that unicorns, no matter how wonderful they are, don’t exist.”
That was the crudest thing that had ever come out of Zhou Mi’s mouth, and Kyuhyun found it hard to swallow. “Let’s just run through the second movement, shall we?” he murmured after a moment’s hesitation, immediately positioning his hands onto the first chords of the orchestral reduction. From the corner of his eye, Kyuhyun saw Zhou Mi smile brightly as he played a minor triad, relishing the sad overtones and pained intervals, an intangible happiness that was there and yet not there. It made Kyuhyun’s heart break a little.
“Thanks for rehearsing with me, Kyuhyun.”
“Yah, no problem. It’s my job.”
Zhou Mi pinched his eyebrows together. “It’s not just a job, Kyuhyun. You can’t truly accompany somebody only for the money. And even if you think it’s for financial purposes, you are nonetheless being your soloist’s backbone, someone your soloist can fall back on. Good accompanists, like you, take care of their soloists.” He smiled softly. “So thank you, Kyuhyun, for taking care of me.”
And if that did not make Kyuhyun’s heart flutter, nothing would.
Lunch from Zhou Mi’s Delivery Service became a daily thing. Somehow he had incorporated himself into the routine that Kyuhyun and Sungmin created with their two-hour breaks, always showing up the moment the both of them emerged from their respective practice rooms. From there, they would lounge in front of their doors, eat, and in general just take up space and get glared at by other people who were looking for practice rooms.
He would never admit it aloud, but Kyuhyun loved Zhou Mi’s lunches. They were always decorated cutely, packed perfectly into little bento boxes. Zhou Mi was especially good with sushi, and always made sure to strategically place them in certain areas to create some sort of cuisine design. One time, Kyuhyun opened the bento box to find a very realistic-looking panda face looking back at him.
It made Kyuhyun’s ears turn red.
The only drawback with their shared lunchtime was Sungmin’s collection of just kiss him already! faces. They communicated about Kyuhyun’s pining via knowing glances and quick eyebrow raises.
(Just tell him already! Sungmin glared.
Shut up, Sungmin! Kyuhyun glared back.
If you don’t tell him, I will, Sungmin said with a quirk of his eyebrow and a twitch of his lips.
Kyuhyun clenched his teeth together, boring a hole into the flutist’s head. Just shut up!
“Then you add a sugar topping,” Zhou Mi finished, jerking both of them back into a conversation on how to make crème brulée or something like that-what were they talking about again?)
Soon, lunchtime became longer and longer, and their original ten-minute breaks became twenty minutes, which then became thirty, until finally plateauing at a ground-breaking forty-five minutes. And strangely enough, Kyuhyun found that he didn’t mind. Sure, he had a lot of practicing to do, but let’s face it, an extra thirty-five minutes of practicing to Kyuhyun meant that he got to run through the Beethoven Appasionata sonata again.
So instead of running through the scales and arpeggios that littered most of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, he spent those forty-five minutes basking in the cheerful aura that Zhou Mi provided, and glaring at Sungmin’s I totally saw you staring at his nice piece of ass expressions.
Zhou Mi had three more rehearsals with Kyuhyun before he deemed himself ready for his concert, and on their fourth and last rehearsal Zhou Mi handed his accompanist a ticket. “You don’t need to come if you don’t want to,” he said, watching Kyuhyun from behind his lashes. “It’s just that I would really like you to be there. Sungmin’s playing in the orchestra, too.”
“I’ll be there,” Kyuhyun nodded. It was a promise. “Mr. McFlufferson,” he added quickly.
Zhou Mi laughed.
Zhou Mi was up after the intermission, so he spent the first half reading the program notes while listening to the familiar tunes of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty orchestral suite and Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition-typical choices for a charity concert, really. Kyuhyun just listened passively, content just to sit there and watch as the Maestro Shin Donghee waved his arms around and urged the brass section forward. Brass instruments were known for being late; it was like a law of musical nature.
Kyuhyun spent intermission dawdling around the lounge before heading back to his seat. Not two seconds after he finally settled in, his phone buzzed with a text Zhou Mi send him, come to the dressing room, left exit down the hall displayed on the screen. Not caring that the lights have dimmed and the redhead concertmaster was strutting across the stage, Kyuhyun stood and muttered apologies and insincere excuse me, pardon mes as he shuffled his way out of the row, bumping his shins against the other audience members’ knees.
He found Zhou Mi standing in front of the dressing room mirror adjusting his bowtie and smoothing out the non-existent wrinkles on his tuxedo jacket.
(“How do I look?” he asked without turning around.
“You look good,” Kyuhyun lied. Good was a drastic understatement; he looked stunning.
Moments later, a small girl knocked against the dressing room door and turned the knob. “It’s time, Zhou Mi,” she called, smiling sweetly. “The orchestra is almost finished tuning.”
Zhou Mi grinned back. “Be right there.” He turned to Kyuhyun and the grin broadened. “Wish me luck!”
“Good luck!” Kyuhyun said, and before he could stop himself: “I’ll be waiting for you backstage.”
Something soft was in his eyes as Zhou Mi pulled him into a hug. “Thanks. I’ll see you after the concert.”)
The audience clapped enthusiastically when Zhou Mi appeared on stage, and Kyuhyun could see why. The guy was already a star in real life, but under the spotlight one almost had to shield their eyes from how brilliant he looked. Gracefully, charismatically, Zhou Mi took a bow, and waited for the audience to quiet down.
“I want to thank all of you for being here. It’s always so wonderful to stand on a stage and look out to see a full concerto hall! I’d like to take this moment to say that I am beyond delighted to be here, and I would like to thank each and every one of you for coming. I also want to thank all the staff and coordinators who made this concert possible, and as well as the orchestra; they all have worked so hard this past month, and without them this concert would never have come to life. I owe all of you the deepest thanks.”
The audience clapped, and Kyuhyun clapped from behind the curtains, smiling.
“But on a personal note,” Zhou Mi’s voice cut through the applause, “I would like to thank all of my friends and family who have supported me this whole time. They were the ones who made sure that I practiced, that I kept my head on straight, and that by the time I got on stage I felt ready and capable of doing the best I ever could. So thank you, mom and dad, I know you are both out in the audience somewhere. Thank you, Sungmin, for lending me a score and letting me doodle all over it. Thank you, Heechul, for being an amazing concertmaster and in general just being your usual wonderful unique self. And thank you, Kyuhyun-”
Kyuhyun’s head snapped upwards.
“-for rehearsing with me and being there for me whenever I needed you.” Zhou Mi paused. “I love you more than you know,” he said, almost an afterthought. “Thank you all, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the concert!”
And while Zhou Mi’s belted out his overly happy Rachmaninov melodies with those massive hands of his, Kyuhyun stood backstage, unable to move, unable to breathe, and let the beauty of the concerto’s long lines wash over him.
Zhou Mi’s performance was a huge success, and the reception was deafening. The applause started three bars before the last note of the third movement, and lasted long after the piece finished, intermittent Bravo!s bouncing around the concert hall. Zhou Mi was called on for three encores before the audiences started thinning out. Rachmaninov would have been proud.
Just like he said he would, Kyuhyun was waiting for him backstage. His face was flushed and his heart was pounding, but he still held eye contact as Zhou Mi approached.
(“You did great,” he managed to croak out. “Really great.” He almost felt like crying, though whether from happiness or sadness he had no idea.
“Thanks.” Zhou Mi beamed, leaning down to press a slow chaste kiss on Kyuhyun’s chapped lips. “I meant every word.”)
Kyuhyun still hated being an accompanist. He still hated the fact that while he was working hard in the background, fingers flying around to fill in the harmonies that the solo line left open, the audience never paid him any attention and focused instead on the soloist in the spotlight. He hated that he had to sacrifice at least one hour every day just to practice the difficult chamber pieces thrown at him in order to have their performance-ready within a week. He hated that he was also expected to follow the soloist, watch their every move, and whenever they were off-balance it was always the accompanist’s fault.
Nonetheless-and he would never admit it out loud-he found something meaningful to it. He was an accompanist, and in being such he held indiscreet power as the man behind the curtain, the guy who called the shots. Whether he meant to or not, he took care of his soloist.
(Just like Zhou Mi took care of him.)