SH 2013: for yakiseop
For: yakiseop
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: senza
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Lay
Length: 5,263
Summary: Where Joonmyun walks the straight-and-narrow, Yixing voluntarily veers off the path to and fro, only stopping to walk along the “right” road for a few minutes at a time if it pleases him.
Warnings: mild language, brief mentions of sexual content
Notes: Your prompts all looked so intriguing! But as a former violin player, this one called to me. Happy Holidays! ♥
Joonmyun doesn’t understand, and he’s not sure he ever will.
He sighs over the tantalizing sound of ivory keys and antique brass pedals as he presses forward in what seems to be a fruitless attempt at continuing to practice with his focus in-tact. He’s staring, he realizes, and would be mildly abashed at his nearly-unconscious act, had it not been for the purportedly-soundproof door that separated him from his small living room (which, had been one of the selling points to him and his roommate, its falsehood only providing Joonmyun with even more ample reason to openly despise any sort of realtor that crossed his path).
In the middle of tuning for what seems to be the thirtieth time that night - it had only been forty minutes and his trained ear perceived that his D-string had begun to fall flat - he (gingerly, carefully) sets his violin down in frustration, ultimately deciding that any sort of progress he attempts to make right now would be stupid.
Not when such ethereally effortless music is emanating from the crack beneath the door.
The “practice room” Joonmyun haunted in their own home didn’t have a clock - he’d always insisted adamantly that the passage of time didn’t matter when he had no obligations and could simply practice, uninhibited and undisturbed, at least until his fingers began to ache with what his roommate had jokingly “diagnosed” as arthritis (because, after all, according to him, his living habits resembled those of a crotchety old man). But in spite of the fact that the tiny room stuffed with boxes they’d never gotten around to unpacking seemed to be the exception to temporal laws, Joonmyun always knew what time it was.
Because of the music drifting beneath the door.
At that particular moment, he judges it to be either three o’clock in the morning or close to it, no thanks to the sickeningly-cliché strains of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 permeating the dense wooden door and ensnaring his senses in what sounds to him like his roommate’s insistent demands that he stop and sleep.
And damn it, is it affecting him in ways even he, music theory and pathology extraordinaire, doesn’t really understand.
But Joonmyun knows, if he opens the door at that precise moment, if he looks across the living room to the wall that is saved for only the piano - at the insistent claims of its operator, who hadn’t taken an acoustics course in his life and still insisted that it sounded better without the ugly silk Ficus in the corner - he won’t find a single slip of paper on the ledge that houses sheet music. If he opens the stool tucked beneath the upright piano, he won’t be overwhelmed with books that weigh the seat down and make it impossible to move.
But he tries, anyway.
“Hey - ” he throws the door open, just as the music swells around him like a warm blanket, building intensity through the only time marking the performer seems to know, senza - without - tempo.
(To be fair, though, the climax and lulling end to the piece is to be played how the performer deems fit. But this particular performer seems to take liberties like that all the time, even when the tempo markings are exact, down to the hundredth of a beat.)
“Yixing!” Joonmyun calls harshly, and the high, tittering notes that alternate on atop the highest ledger lines of the treble clef like some overexcited songbird cut off abruptly as the man on the bench whirls around and meets his gaze head-on.
The violinist doesn’t quite understand how it’s even remotely possible to look quite as breathtaking in sweatpants and a paint-stained t-shirt as Yixing does, but he doesn’t really think to question it.
When it comes to Yixing, he’d realized and accepted quite some time ago, things are better left untouched and simply accepted as things that are; instead of being turned and mulled over in the head until the paradoxes his young roommate poses in the most casual ways seem as though they could carry him to the mental ward in a handbasket.
Which is precisely why he chooses to completely disregard his prior acceptance and ask him outright, “Why are you up at 3:00 in the morning?” Yixing always says he’s beyond crazy, anyways.
The brown-haired man seated at the bench smiles up at him sheepishly, but given how well Joonmyun knows him, he can see the beginnings of a sort of impish taunting tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Says the one who is also up at 3:00 in the morning.”
“What on earth are you doing playing piano at this ungodly hour? Do you want to get us evicted or crucified with the wood from your upright by our neighbors? I don’t want Mrs. Rhee from upstairs coming back down here - ”
Yixing swivels his body around to face him atop his stool and quirks an unconvinced eyebrow. “Then what precisely where you doing?” He asks, but the accusatory tone in his voice is hardly meant.
Joonmyun shrugs, as though the answer is plainly obvious. “Practicing.”
“I’m not sure you can call running through scales you could play flawlessly in a coma ‘practicing,’” he declares dubiously as he turns himself back around to the piano. As an afterthought, he tosses over his shoulder, “Nice try, though.”
“Scales and arpeggios are fundamental to playing an instrument,” the other protests from the doorway, but even he winces at how unconvinced he sounds. He frowns as he watches Yixing’s shoulders quake as he laughs.
“You should try that one again, too,” he declares flippantly as his fingers quietly ghost over the keys, and the piano hums to life once more as he plays a hushed version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
“Your repertoire is underwhelming,” Joonmyun jabs, though there is no malice in his voice as he ventures out of the door jamb and over to the piano bench across the living room, and Yixing shrugs as he scoots over obligingly.
“It’s all I know,” he offers, and the violinist understands all too well what he means. However, a jab of the pianist’s elbow to his ribs causes him to twitch away defensively as he laughs and manages a teasing, “Maybe I’d know more if you, I don’t know... played for me, Mr. Virtuoso?”
He frowns in response. “Not now.”
“Oh, why ever not? According to you, I’ve awoken the entire complex. What could we possibly have to lose?”
Joonmyun laughs and gives him a light shove. “You’re an idiot,” he says lightly, “I don’t know any other piano player that doesn’t know how to read sheet music.”
Yixing makes a graceful transition into Arabesque I, all the while nodding in mock-thoughtfulness. “This again,” he states with an understanding smile on his face, “I already told you - I was dropped on my head as a child.”
He rolled his eyes. “That only explains how weird you are - do you wait up for me at night or something to do... all this?”
An amused snort is his only reply for a moment as he watches pale, graceful hands glide across the ivory and black keys with a beautifully fluid ease, not once hinting at any sort of theoretical ineptitude, not once hinting at the fact that perhaps the owner of the hands hasn’t a clue where the middle C key even is on the board; because the star Joonmyun had scribbled onto it in Sharpie one evening had been rubbed away by countless hours spent listlessly entertaining himself and others, never really practicing. Always enjoying what he did.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Yixing says in reply, and there is a twinkle in his downcast eyes that are gazing so intensely at the keyboard. Joonmyun can only wonder what sort of path his mind follows for his mind to translate the beautiful melodies it captures into a recreation done in his own style and method, making the previous version - no matter how well technically proficient - look like some sort of poor, crass imitation. “Your warm up exercises haunt my nightmares.”
“And your ignorance to time signatures is my waking nightmare.”
“I’m not ignorant to them,” he protests conversationally as he deliberately slows a technically-challenging piece down to what Joonmyun recognizes as less than half-tempo. “I just choose to disregard them.”
The violinist rolls his eyes. “I’m going to sleep before the landlords come up and kill you,” he sighs, extracting himself from the bench with a sudden weariness. “I have Concerto practice tomorrow, too,” he informs him casually, “so I’ll be back late.”
“Mmmhmmm,” Yixing mutters absently as he slips into a traditional Chinese song, and as Joonmyun packs his violin away in the other room, he feels lulled and comforted by the undulating strains of music that seem to swathe around him like scarves of precious silks. The slow, quiet cadence of the piece has his eyelids drooping as he enters his room, and he slips into an easy, dreamless sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Joonmyun nods up at the conductor, his fingers resting against the neck of his violin, the tips of them applying the perfect amount of pressure he knows will provide a rich, full sound identical to the one in his maestro’s mind.
“The beginning,” the conductor and his private professor to boot mouths to the orchestra seated neatly before him, Joonmyun standing as the principal violinist for this particular concerto. He holds his breath as the conductor raises his baton in a grandiose manner, and brings it down into a steady, unwavering beat, pointing with his free hand at the gathered string section. Joonmyun gazes openly at the synchronized bows that pull across strings in perfect harmonies and octaves, filling the rehearsal auditorium with the distinctive boom of violins, violas, cellos, and basses mixing together in well-directed unison.
He listens carefully as the music swells and swells, and he keeps his eyes transfixed up on the conductor, the sheet music before him useless - he’s had this piece memorized for as long as he can remember now, had it worked and picked over and stripped down and made slower and faster, all by his private teacher, who has wanted him to play this since day one. He knows he’s capable of it.
Joonmyun counts the rests in his head, though he’s listened to the recordings given to him to analyze style so much it’s automatic as his bow draws across the strings, echoing and reaching far beyond the melded sounds of the orchestra, until he himself is the only thing he can hear in his focused ears.
His fingers dance down the board, growing closer and closer to the bridge of his violin, allowing the notes to climb higher and higher. He soars from the rich middle tones that ebb and flow in synchronization to the backing orchestra, to the high, full-bodied notes he builds up and as close to the clouds as he can possibly make them without any thin, reedy qualities to them. In lieu of staring at the sheet music, he instead focuses his full attention on the conductor, his mind allowing his fingers to work of their own accord due to their drilled muscle memory as he places the notes exactly with the swiping beats of the maestro’s baton.
After what seems like a few brief moments (though in actuality is nearly the entire thirty-minute piece), the conductor cuts off in a graceful place, easily capturing the attention of the orchestra and declaring a few closing remarks before dismissing them with a smile and a thank you for all their hard work.
The conductor takes his student aside and offers him a genuine smile and a pat on the back for his hard work. However, after accepting his praise, Joonmyun sees his brow furrow in thought, a surefire way he knows that the elder man is trying to find a way to appropriately convey constructive criticism without offending him.
“Just tell me,” Joonmyun states almost automatically as he packs up his violin. “I can take it.”
But what he doesn’t expect is for the man to laugh. “You can,” he concedes, “I just don’t know how to explain it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well... You need to... feel more.”
Joonmyun stops and looks up at him. “What?”
“Exactly,” he laughs, and gesticulates into the air as though it would help him find the words to elaborate. After a moment, however, he sighs. “You are my most technically-proficient student, Joonmyun. But,” the warmth in his voice melts away slightly to reveal a clinically-educational tone. “You are almost too focused on the technical aspect of things.” He laughs. “You’re too perfect. You imitate the style of everyone I can throw at you without any flaws, but it’s time to find your own niche. Do you get it?”
He doesn’t get it at all. But in spite of himself, Joonmyun finds himself nodding with a quick thank you, and he, too, is dismissed.
Joonmyun pushes out of the doubles doors of the music building with a confused sigh, still turning his teacher’s words over in his head. He needed a sense of personal style, according to him. He’d always prided himself on his ability to be adaptable and applicable to any sort of piece, but it seemed like that set him at a significant disadvantage this time. Style... he muses, almost like -
“Hey.”
Joonmyun jumps as Yixing stands from his seat on a bench beside the front walk of the music building, and offers a small smile once he recovers.
“Skipping class again?” he queries lightly as the pianist falls into step beside him.
Yixing shrugs.
“I could hear you two floors up in that old practice room,” Joonmyun informs him evenly, “the one with the grand piano.”
He shoots him an incredulous look.
“Not really,” he relents with a smile, “the doors here are actually soundproof.”
This causes a small smirk to appear on Yixing’s face as he absently picks at the threads on the sleeve hems of his old hoodie.
“When are you going to throw that old thing away?” He asks plainly with a teasing smile. “You look like you rolled out of the garbage.”
“Oh, sorry - it was a rough morning, you see. I got out of your bed late.”
Joonmyun laughs at his own expense and prods him on the leg with the neck of his violin case. “I’m guessing you slept in?”
“7:00 AM class?” Yixing replies, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, no thanks.”
“You signed up for it!”
“Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it!”
“Whatever you say. What’s your major this week again?”
“Creative Writing. I feel like this one’s a winner.”
“I don’t know, as opposed to Radioactive Cardiology?”
“Now, now,” Yixing chides, “let’s not be silly here. When I majored in Cardiology we were studying a unit on dyes containing radioactive isotopes that we administer to people when we need to image their circulatory systems.”
Joonmyun nods and casts a sidelong glance at him. “And I have the complicated major?”
“Double Major in Music Therapy and Theory? Who needs to know the musical alphabet, anyways?”
He passes his case over to Yixing, deciding his arms are much too tired to be lugging such a heavy object back to the other side of campus where their apartment rests in a complex beyond the school’s boundaries. The two continue down the familiar streets that they’d come to know through simple muscle memory (Yixing had a nasty habit of skipping his evening math class to come pick him up from Concerto), and Joonmyun allows his thoughts to wander back to what his teacher had told him.
He sneaks a glance at Yixing, who is gazing all around him, seemingly in a completely different world than him, but he somehow manages to miss the way the pianist is actually so openly staring at him.
Style, Joonmyun thinks enviously as he looks at the hoodie-and-jeans-clad twenty-one-year-old in step beside him. His piano playing is some of the most obviously-stylized he’s ever heard, but indescribably, Yixing is that kind of person. Joonmyun wears collared shirts and sweaters to his low v-necks and ripped jeans; has envelopes full of perfect grades and exam reports in the same basket as Yixing’s C’s and threatening promises that there is no extra credit in college, especially in senior year; and does dishes with the sensitive, hand-care grade dish soap because otherwise his hands will get as dry and rough as Yixing’s calloused palms, which have spent years of running, jumping, and flipping over things, walking off cracked bones and sprained ankles getting injured was a separate pastime all its own.
Where Joonmyun walks the straight-and-narrow, Yixing voluntarily veers off the path to and fro, only stopping to walk along the “right” road for a few minutes at a time if it pleases him.
“Hey,” Yixing calls softly, pulling Joonmyun from his musing with a blinking start. “You alright?”
“Ah,” Joonmyun begins eloquently. “Yeah. Something from Concerto, that’s all.”
“Well?”
He laughs at his roommate’s insistence that he share his problems. He’d always been like this - concerned and stubborn to a fault.
“I don’t...” he holds his hands out to emphasize something that Yixing doesn’t understand yet. “Have music style. I guess. According to my teacher. Um.”
At this, Yixing lets out an incredulous laugh. “Are you kidding me? You have everything else any music student could possibly want and you’re caught up in style?”
Joonmyun shrugs, at a loss of how to explain such a thing that was equally as baffling and frustrating to him as it was surprising to Yixing.
“I don’t - ” he attempts, but he takes a deep breath. “Will you help me?”
Yixing quirks an amused eyebrow, and Joonmyun suddenly feels self-conscious beneath his scrutiny. There’s something shining in his eyes he can’t quite recognize, but it stirs something inside him. “Sure,” he says encouragingly, “but as you must know by now - like when I tried to help you cook lasagna once - I’m a terrible teacher.”
Joonmyun laughs in spite of his slightly-dampened mood and reaches over to pat him on the back. “I’m still finding pasta sauce on the kitchen walls,” he supplies unhelpfully, and Yixing gently shushes him as he wraps his own arm around the violinist.
“So,” he begins easily as they approach their building, “I say we drop off your instrument and get directly started on learning style.”
“And how might one accomplish that?” He queries lightly as they ascend the open-air steps up to the fifth floor upon arrival.
Yixing remains silent until they enter their apartment through Joonmyun’s ring of keys, and gingerly sets the elder’s violin on the clean coffee table. Suddenly, he whirls around and reaches his fingers up to the base of Joonmyun’s neck, and undoes the top button of his white collared shirt.
“Loosening up,” he informs him clinically before turning him around in the direction of his bedroom and giving him a firm pat on the ass to get him moving. “I want to see you come out of there in that sweater, a pair of jeans, and those Vans I bought you last Christmas.”
Joonmyun let out a sigh. “You know I don’t - ”
“Ah, ah,” Yixing chides, “you want to learn, don’t you?”
“Yes, but - ”
“I’m a hands-on teacher.”
“Alright, fine,” he relents as he slips into his bedroom and leaves the door ajar so his voice can travel. Yixing watches in a sort of distracted fascination as the sweater and collared shirt cling to his well-defined body and travel up, up -
“Where are we even going?” He asks, pulling the pianist from his shameless ogling.
“The bar,” Yixing answers distantly. Pulling himself firmly back in place, he adds with a small smile, “Hurry up, I’ll be the emperor of China by the time you’re done.”
“That must take a really long time - I mean, every other remotely-Chinese person would have to die first, right?” Joonmyun asks as he adjusts the way the collar of the sweater sits on his shoulders as he exits the room, clad in dark-wash jeans that hugged his legs more than the dreary slacks he was wearing previously and a pair of shoes that looked better suited to Yixing (they had the same foot size, so it was more of a Christmas present to the both of them).
Yixing rolled his eyes. “No respect,” he sighed dismally. “Now let’s go.”
It takes Joonmyun being drunk off his ass for him to suddenly realize what Yixing’s been attempting to tell him all along, and to the pianist, that’s quite sad.
Because, if he’s honest, he hasn’t exactly been the most subtle with his attempts to win Joonmyun. Even Mrs. Rhee, the old bat straight from Hell that lives above them, has his number on speed dial in order to call him during the night and tell him that if Joonmyun hadn’t noticed his affections by now, he was completely and utterly hopeless.
At first, Yixing had scoffed at this notion, but when his romantic pursuits were being brought up on a regular basis with people he didn’t even know in at the mailboxes in the lobby and in the laundry room, he began to comprehend the sheer obliviousness Joonmyun carried around in his head like all those fancy pieces of violin music he always refused to play for him.
Yixing sighs as he downs another shot, shooting a clandestine glance to the obviously-buzzed Joonmyun who is sitting on the stool next to him, talking animatedly to the bartender about nothing in particular with a pretty flush on his pale face and a winning smile on his lips.
He doesn’t understand -
He stops as he notices a group of girls at the end of the bar whispering excitedly and giggling to one another, not trying to conceal the flirtatious looks they were giving the cheerful man beside him. He frowns deeply as one gasps to the others when Joonmyun turns and waves amicably at them.
“Hey,” he calls gently to the bartender, and the elder man gives him a knowing smile.
“Ready to leave?”
Yixing fiddles with his credit card on the surface of the table and nods. “Both of us, please,” he states plainly as he fishes out a ten-dollar bill. He passes the bill to the man as he passes back the card and a flutter of receipts wrapped around it. He signs the bar copy and passes it back to him with a nod and a farewell, and taps Joonmyun on the shoulder, who swivels around with a smile and twinkling eyes that make Yixing’s heart constrict.
“Time to go,” he informs him smoothly, his own vision swimming just a bit as everything begins to become hot all around him. A bulletproof feeling of invincibility begins to pour into his system, and he reaches out to take Joonmyun by the arm and lead him out of the bar through the maze of tables all around them.
Somewhere along the way, Yixing doesn’t question when Joonmyun’s arm slips up out of his light hold until their fingers are intertwined and he can feel the warmth of the violinist’s soft palm in his, exactly the way he’d imagined it for as long as he’d known him (since they became roommates freshman year, but Yixing won’t ever admit he’d been enraptured by the man since the start of Freshman Orientation and tried so desperately to get into his tour group at the very start when he’d glimpsed Joonmyun’s name on a packet that read “Group R”).
They stumble home, Yixing feeling like the blind leading the blind amidst a flurry of senseless laughter and jokes that he doesn’t really bother trying to recall as they increase in number and lameness. All that registers in his alcohol-buzzed mind is that Joonmyun is too close as he unlocks their apartment door. He can smell the elder’s cologne as it emanates from the heated pulse points on his neck and the intoxicating mix of fabric softener added to the cologne’s heart of cardamom when Yixing feels the soft texture of the fabric that clings to Joonmyun’s chest as he presses against his back. The hand holding his set of keys is shaking and he’s struggling to slot it into the lock, but the hand that still clings to Joonmyun’s like it’s the answer to life itself remains steady.
As Joonmyun shifts marginally behind him, his warm fingers shift in the spaces between Yixing’s. His breath hitches in his throat, and he practically bursts into the entry hall, Joonmyun not far at all behind.
He turns around to utter a smart word of greeting to him, but Joonmyun suddenly reaches up and kisses the smirk cleanly off his face.
Yixing stares up at him, positively floored. But he doesn’t stop him, not at all, when Joonmyun strains up again and whispers against his lips in a devilishly amused voice that doesn’t even sound like his normal roommate, “You’ve been staring all night.”
He frowns in response when Joonmyun pulls away, breathless, eyes alight and searching the pianist’s with a clarity that he hadn’t noticed before.
Lowering his head, he presses his own lips flush against Joonmyun’s soft, yielding mouth, and mutters, “And if I was?”
He doesn’t get an answer to his question, but he finds that he doesn’t really mind, not when Joonmyun abruptly takes him by both hands and leads him step by step further into the apartment, not even stopping as Yixing stumbles after him, their faces locked impossibly close the whole way, breathing erratic and mouths red and warm against the other.
Joonmyun awakens with sunshine warming his face, and as he opens his eyes, icy air chills his skin. He squints in discomfort when goosebumps raise on his arms, and in response he pulls the comforter covering his naked chest up and over his freezing arms. He feels a warm sensation tickle his back, between his shoulder blades, and he slowly opens his eyes.
“Morning,” Yixing murmurs next to him, and he looks more contented and satisfied than Joonmyun ever sees him, the glow from the sun’s rays through the window illuminating all the stray strands of hair that are sticking up at odd angles and directions in swaths of golden light. Joonmyun has half a mind to reach up and smooth them over, but his arms are just beginning to warm back up.
“Hey,” he manages in reply, a soft smile on his face as he shifted his head against the other’s upper arm. “What time is it?”
“About 11:00.”
Almost immediately, Joonmyun bolts upright in bed, the needs of the good student in him suddenly kicking into overdrive. He’s never missed a day of school in his life. “Shit,” he whispers under his breath, “If I run, I can make it to my - ”
Wordlessly, Yixing takes a gentle hold of the arm supporting all his upper body weight, and Joonmyun turns to look at him. However, his gaze is shaken when the pianist abruptly pulls it out from underneath him, and Joonmyun topples over onto his chest with a cry of surprise.
“Go back to sleep,” Yixing instructs, “I already called your professors and told them you weren’t feeling well.”
“But that’s dishonest - ”
“You have a hangover, don’t you? You drank a shit ton last night.” He ventures, brushing his hands idly through Joonmyun’s dark hair before guiding his shoulders back to his previous place on the bed. “Go back to sleep. Everyone needs a day off. And that includes you.”
Joonmyun sighs, the will to fight with him about going to class sorely losing against the sense of warmth and security he feels as he lies between the sheets of his bed, Yixing tucked in beside him.
But, comparably, the will to tell Yixing that he was not hungover in the slightest is a battle that will never be fought. The pianist doesn’t have to know that among his dedication to violin is both a natural affinity for acting and an impeccable tolerance to hard liquor.
But he thinks Yixing knows anyways, just like he’s known all along that the pianist waits up for him every night and openly stares.
And the thinks that he will be more than fine with it, just like he is with him.
The next time Joonmyun attends Concerto practice, the conductor has him turn toward the orchestra and makes him receive a rousing round of applause, because it’s the best he’s ever played the piece. Joonmyun flushes proudly beneath the assault of congratulations, and many ask about his stylistic improvement.
The kind, sensible side that he shows to everyone but Yixing tells him to just inform them that practice and dedication really do pay off.
But the biting side that only the rough-handed pianist sees is the side that openly admits the low, rich vibrato found throughout the piece was due to the fact that Joonmyun couldn’t banish the thought of Yixing’s hands for thirty minutes to play the damn piece, and that his own fingers had been jittering violently because of it.
Yixing is in the lobby of the music hall this time, his old hoodie that he still refused to throw out draped unceremoniously around his shoulders and paired with a white tee and light jeans and his Vans (the ones the pianist had gotten him for Christmas - though he’d lose the opportunity to rough him up for it if he just plainly told him they looked much better on him, anyways). There’s a congratulatory smile on his face that makes everyone else’s praise seem that much more insignificant, and Joonmyun realizes that there are a lot of facets about the paradoxical Chinese man that make him see the world in a comparatively more mundane light because of him.
But he tells himself he can’t be bothered to mind it, not when Yixing’s holding his hand out to take the violin case from him as he works to get a handle on the binder that contains al his sheet music.
Joonmyun slips his warm hand into Yixing’s, and he feels a familiar tremor creep up his spine as the mutinous thoughts enter his mind once again.
“So,” Yixing begins easily as they step out into the chilly air, “I take it your style improved this time over last time?”
Joonmyun shrugs. “They really loved it.” He omits the part about his bastard of a mind and decides to save it until they are out of earshot from the music students pouring out of the building.
Yixing looks around in a shy way that is very uncharacteristic of him. “So, I guess you don’t need any extra lessons, then?” He asks quietly, ducking his head.
This causes the violinist to chuckle loudly. “No,” he finally manages after Yixing repeatedly runs him into sides of benches as he walks looking paths around the actual sidewalk.
“But I’m sure you’re ready for me to open my practice routine up to new things other than scales and arpeggios, yeah?”
Yixing’s exaggerated whoop of victory is cut short when Joonmyun knocks his violin case into the side of his knee, and he crumples slowly to the ground.
At least the violinist has it in his good graces to simply drag his stumbling form down his own straight, narrow sidewalk, and not through the fanciful routes the pianist is, in contrast, so privy to taking.
MUSIC
“ ... no thanks to the sickeningly-cliché strains of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 permeating the dense wooden door ... ”
Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 - Chopin
“ ... he plays a hushed version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune ... ”
Clair de Lune - Debussy
“ ... Yixing makes a graceful transition into Arabesque I ... ”
Arabesque I - Debussy
“ ... he slips into a traditional Chinese song ... ”
Autumn Moon Over the Calm Lake - Lu Wen Cheng
“ ... Joonmyun standing as the principal violinist for this particular concerto ... ”
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 - Tchaikovsky
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: senza
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Lay
Length: 5,263
Summary: Where Joonmyun walks the straight-and-narrow, Yixing voluntarily veers off the path to and fro, only stopping to walk along the “right” road for a few minutes at a time if it pleases him.
Warnings: mild language, brief mentions of sexual content
Notes: Your prompts all looked so intriguing! But as a former violin player, this one called to me. Happy Holidays! ♥
Joonmyun doesn’t understand, and he’s not sure he ever will.
He sighs over the tantalizing sound of ivory keys and antique brass pedals as he presses forward in what seems to be a fruitless attempt at continuing to practice with his focus in-tact. He’s staring, he realizes, and would be mildly abashed at his nearly-unconscious act, had it not been for the purportedly-soundproof door that separated him from his small living room (which, had been one of the selling points to him and his roommate, its falsehood only providing Joonmyun with even more ample reason to openly despise any sort of realtor that crossed his path).
In the middle of tuning for what seems to be the thirtieth time that night - it had only been forty minutes and his trained ear perceived that his D-string had begun to fall flat - he (gingerly, carefully) sets his violin down in frustration, ultimately deciding that any sort of progress he attempts to make right now would be stupid.
Not when such ethereally effortless music is emanating from the crack beneath the door.
The “practice room” Joonmyun haunted in their own home didn’t have a clock - he’d always insisted adamantly that the passage of time didn’t matter when he had no obligations and could simply practice, uninhibited and undisturbed, at least until his fingers began to ache with what his roommate had jokingly “diagnosed” as arthritis (because, after all, according to him, his living habits resembled those of a crotchety old man). But in spite of the fact that the tiny room stuffed with boxes they’d never gotten around to unpacking seemed to be the exception to temporal laws, Joonmyun always knew what time it was.
Because of the music drifting beneath the door.
At that particular moment, he judges it to be either three o’clock in the morning or close to it, no thanks to the sickeningly-cliché strains of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 permeating the dense wooden door and ensnaring his senses in what sounds to him like his roommate’s insistent demands that he stop and sleep.
And damn it, is it affecting him in ways even he, music theory and pathology extraordinaire, doesn’t really understand.
But Joonmyun knows, if he opens the door at that precise moment, if he looks across the living room to the wall that is saved for only the piano - at the insistent claims of its operator, who hadn’t taken an acoustics course in his life and still insisted that it sounded better without the ugly silk Ficus in the corner - he won’t find a single slip of paper on the ledge that houses sheet music. If he opens the stool tucked beneath the upright piano, he won’t be overwhelmed with books that weigh the seat down and make it impossible to move.
But he tries, anyway.
“Hey - ” he throws the door open, just as the music swells around him like a warm blanket, building intensity through the only time marking the performer seems to know, senza - without - tempo.
(To be fair, though, the climax and lulling end to the piece is to be played how the performer deems fit. But this particular performer seems to take liberties like that all the time, even when the tempo markings are exact, down to the hundredth of a beat.)
“Yixing!” Joonmyun calls harshly, and the high, tittering notes that alternate on atop the highest ledger lines of the treble clef like some overexcited songbird cut off abruptly as the man on the bench whirls around and meets his gaze head-on.
The violinist doesn’t quite understand how it’s even remotely possible to look quite as breathtaking in sweatpants and a paint-stained t-shirt as Yixing does, but he doesn’t really think to question it.
When it comes to Yixing, he’d realized and accepted quite some time ago, things are better left untouched and simply accepted as things that are; instead of being turned and mulled over in the head until the paradoxes his young roommate poses in the most casual ways seem as though they could carry him to the mental ward in a handbasket.
Which is precisely why he chooses to completely disregard his prior acceptance and ask him outright, “Why are you up at 3:00 in the morning?” Yixing always says he’s beyond crazy, anyways.
The brown-haired man seated at the bench smiles up at him sheepishly, but given how well Joonmyun knows him, he can see the beginnings of a sort of impish taunting tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Says the one who is also up at 3:00 in the morning.”
“What on earth are you doing playing piano at this ungodly hour? Do you want to get us evicted or crucified with the wood from your upright by our neighbors? I don’t want Mrs. Rhee from upstairs coming back down here - ”
Yixing swivels his body around to face him atop his stool and quirks an unconvinced eyebrow. “Then what precisely where you doing?” He asks, but the accusatory tone in his voice is hardly meant.
Joonmyun shrugs, as though the answer is plainly obvious. “Practicing.”
“I’m not sure you can call running through scales you could play flawlessly in a coma ‘practicing,’” he declares dubiously as he turns himself back around to the piano. As an afterthought, he tosses over his shoulder, “Nice try, though.”
“Scales and arpeggios are fundamental to playing an instrument,” the other protests from the doorway, but even he winces at how unconvinced he sounds. He frowns as he watches Yixing’s shoulders quake as he laughs.
“You should try that one again, too,” he declares flippantly as his fingers quietly ghost over the keys, and the piano hums to life once more as he plays a hushed version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
“Your repertoire is underwhelming,” Joonmyun jabs, though there is no malice in his voice as he ventures out of the door jamb and over to the piano bench across the living room, and Yixing shrugs as he scoots over obligingly.
“It’s all I know,” he offers, and the violinist understands all too well what he means. However, a jab of the pianist’s elbow to his ribs causes him to twitch away defensively as he laughs and manages a teasing, “Maybe I’d know more if you, I don’t know... played for me, Mr. Virtuoso?”
He frowns in response. “Not now.”
“Oh, why ever not? According to you, I’ve awoken the entire complex. What could we possibly have to lose?”
Joonmyun laughs and gives him a light shove. “You’re an idiot,” he says lightly, “I don’t know any other piano player that doesn’t know how to read sheet music.”
Yixing makes a graceful transition into Arabesque I, all the while nodding in mock-thoughtfulness. “This again,” he states with an understanding smile on his face, “I already told you - I was dropped on my head as a child.”
He rolled his eyes. “That only explains how weird you are - do you wait up for me at night or something to do... all this?”
An amused snort is his only reply for a moment as he watches pale, graceful hands glide across the ivory and black keys with a beautifully fluid ease, not once hinting at any sort of theoretical ineptitude, not once hinting at the fact that perhaps the owner of the hands hasn’t a clue where the middle C key even is on the board; because the star Joonmyun had scribbled onto it in Sharpie one evening had been rubbed away by countless hours spent listlessly entertaining himself and others, never really practicing. Always enjoying what he did.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Yixing says in reply, and there is a twinkle in his downcast eyes that are gazing so intensely at the keyboard. Joonmyun can only wonder what sort of path his mind follows for his mind to translate the beautiful melodies it captures into a recreation done in his own style and method, making the previous version - no matter how well technically proficient - look like some sort of poor, crass imitation. “Your warm up exercises haunt my nightmares.”
“And your ignorance to time signatures is my waking nightmare.”
“I’m not ignorant to them,” he protests conversationally as he deliberately slows a technically-challenging piece down to what Joonmyun recognizes as less than half-tempo. “I just choose to disregard them.”
The violinist rolls his eyes. “I’m going to sleep before the landlords come up and kill you,” he sighs, extracting himself from the bench with a sudden weariness. “I have Concerto practice tomorrow, too,” he informs him casually, “so I’ll be back late.”
“Mmmhmmm,” Yixing mutters absently as he slips into a traditional Chinese song, and as Joonmyun packs his violin away in the other room, he feels lulled and comforted by the undulating strains of music that seem to swathe around him like scarves of precious silks. The slow, quiet cadence of the piece has his eyelids drooping as he enters his room, and he slips into an easy, dreamless sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Joonmyun nods up at the conductor, his fingers resting against the neck of his violin, the tips of them applying the perfect amount of pressure he knows will provide a rich, full sound identical to the one in his maestro’s mind.
“The beginning,” the conductor and his private professor to boot mouths to the orchestra seated neatly before him, Joonmyun standing as the principal violinist for this particular concerto. He holds his breath as the conductor raises his baton in a grandiose manner, and brings it down into a steady, unwavering beat, pointing with his free hand at the gathered string section. Joonmyun gazes openly at the synchronized bows that pull across strings in perfect harmonies and octaves, filling the rehearsal auditorium with the distinctive boom of violins, violas, cellos, and basses mixing together in well-directed unison.
He listens carefully as the music swells and swells, and he keeps his eyes transfixed up on the conductor, the sheet music before him useless - he’s had this piece memorized for as long as he can remember now, had it worked and picked over and stripped down and made slower and faster, all by his private teacher, who has wanted him to play this since day one. He knows he’s capable of it.
Joonmyun counts the rests in his head, though he’s listened to the recordings given to him to analyze style so much it’s automatic as his bow draws across the strings, echoing and reaching far beyond the melded sounds of the orchestra, until he himself is the only thing he can hear in his focused ears.
His fingers dance down the board, growing closer and closer to the bridge of his violin, allowing the notes to climb higher and higher. He soars from the rich middle tones that ebb and flow in synchronization to the backing orchestra, to the high, full-bodied notes he builds up and as close to the clouds as he can possibly make them without any thin, reedy qualities to them. In lieu of staring at the sheet music, he instead focuses his full attention on the conductor, his mind allowing his fingers to work of their own accord due to their drilled muscle memory as he places the notes exactly with the swiping beats of the maestro’s baton.
After what seems like a few brief moments (though in actuality is nearly the entire thirty-minute piece), the conductor cuts off in a graceful place, easily capturing the attention of the orchestra and declaring a few closing remarks before dismissing them with a smile and a thank you for all their hard work.
The conductor takes his student aside and offers him a genuine smile and a pat on the back for his hard work. However, after accepting his praise, Joonmyun sees his brow furrow in thought, a surefire way he knows that the elder man is trying to find a way to appropriately convey constructive criticism without offending him.
“Just tell me,” Joonmyun states almost automatically as he packs up his violin. “I can take it.”
But what he doesn’t expect is for the man to laugh. “You can,” he concedes, “I just don’t know how to explain it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well... You need to... feel more.”
Joonmyun stops and looks up at him. “What?”
“Exactly,” he laughs, and gesticulates into the air as though it would help him find the words to elaborate. After a moment, however, he sighs. “You are my most technically-proficient student, Joonmyun. But,” the warmth in his voice melts away slightly to reveal a clinically-educational tone. “You are almost too focused on the technical aspect of things.” He laughs. “You’re too perfect. You imitate the style of everyone I can throw at you without any flaws, but it’s time to find your own niche. Do you get it?”
He doesn’t get it at all. But in spite of himself, Joonmyun finds himself nodding with a quick thank you, and he, too, is dismissed.
Joonmyun pushes out of the doubles doors of the music building with a confused sigh, still turning his teacher’s words over in his head. He needed a sense of personal style, according to him. He’d always prided himself on his ability to be adaptable and applicable to any sort of piece, but it seemed like that set him at a significant disadvantage this time. Style... he muses, almost like -
“Hey.”
Joonmyun jumps as Yixing stands from his seat on a bench beside the front walk of the music building, and offers a small smile once he recovers.
“Skipping class again?” he queries lightly as the pianist falls into step beside him.
Yixing shrugs.
“I could hear you two floors up in that old practice room,” Joonmyun informs him evenly, “the one with the grand piano.”
He shoots him an incredulous look.
“Not really,” he relents with a smile, “the doors here are actually soundproof.”
This causes a small smirk to appear on Yixing’s face as he absently picks at the threads on the sleeve hems of his old hoodie.
“When are you going to throw that old thing away?” He asks plainly with a teasing smile. “You look like you rolled out of the garbage.”
“Oh, sorry - it was a rough morning, you see. I got out of your bed late.”
Joonmyun laughs at his own expense and prods him on the leg with the neck of his violin case. “I’m guessing you slept in?”
“7:00 AM class?” Yixing replies, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, no thanks.”
“You signed up for it!”
“Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it!”
“Whatever you say. What’s your major this week again?”
“Creative Writing. I feel like this one’s a winner.”
“I don’t know, as opposed to Radioactive Cardiology?”
“Now, now,” Yixing chides, “let’s not be silly here. When I majored in Cardiology we were studying a unit on dyes containing radioactive isotopes that we administer to people when we need to image their circulatory systems.”
Joonmyun nods and casts a sidelong glance at him. “And I have the complicated major?”
“Double Major in Music Therapy and Theory? Who needs to know the musical alphabet, anyways?”
He passes his case over to Yixing, deciding his arms are much too tired to be lugging such a heavy object back to the other side of campus where their apartment rests in a complex beyond the school’s boundaries. The two continue down the familiar streets that they’d come to know through simple muscle memory (Yixing had a nasty habit of skipping his evening math class to come pick him up from Concerto), and Joonmyun allows his thoughts to wander back to what his teacher had told him.
He sneaks a glance at Yixing, who is gazing all around him, seemingly in a completely different world than him, but he somehow manages to miss the way the pianist is actually so openly staring at him.
Style, Joonmyun thinks enviously as he looks at the hoodie-and-jeans-clad twenty-one-year-old in step beside him. His piano playing is some of the most obviously-stylized he’s ever heard, but indescribably, Yixing is that kind of person. Joonmyun wears collared shirts and sweaters to his low v-necks and ripped jeans; has envelopes full of perfect grades and exam reports in the same basket as Yixing’s C’s and threatening promises that there is no extra credit in college, especially in senior year; and does dishes with the sensitive, hand-care grade dish soap because otherwise his hands will get as dry and rough as Yixing’s calloused palms, which have spent years of running, jumping, and flipping over things, walking off cracked bones and sprained ankles getting injured was a separate pastime all its own.
Where Joonmyun walks the straight-and-narrow, Yixing voluntarily veers off the path to and fro, only stopping to walk along the “right” road for a few minutes at a time if it pleases him.
“Hey,” Yixing calls softly, pulling Joonmyun from his musing with a blinking start. “You alright?”
“Ah,” Joonmyun begins eloquently. “Yeah. Something from Concerto, that’s all.”
“Well?”
He laughs at his roommate’s insistence that he share his problems. He’d always been like this - concerned and stubborn to a fault.
“I don’t...” he holds his hands out to emphasize something that Yixing doesn’t understand yet. “Have music style. I guess. According to my teacher. Um.”
At this, Yixing lets out an incredulous laugh. “Are you kidding me? You have everything else any music student could possibly want and you’re caught up in style?”
Joonmyun shrugs, at a loss of how to explain such a thing that was equally as baffling and frustrating to him as it was surprising to Yixing.
“I don’t - ” he attempts, but he takes a deep breath. “Will you help me?”
Yixing quirks an amused eyebrow, and Joonmyun suddenly feels self-conscious beneath his scrutiny. There’s something shining in his eyes he can’t quite recognize, but it stirs something inside him. “Sure,” he says encouragingly, “but as you must know by now - like when I tried to help you cook lasagna once - I’m a terrible teacher.”
Joonmyun laughs in spite of his slightly-dampened mood and reaches over to pat him on the back. “I’m still finding pasta sauce on the kitchen walls,” he supplies unhelpfully, and Yixing gently shushes him as he wraps his own arm around the violinist.
“So,” he begins easily as they approach their building, “I say we drop off your instrument and get directly started on learning style.”
“And how might one accomplish that?” He queries lightly as they ascend the open-air steps up to the fifth floor upon arrival.
Yixing remains silent until they enter their apartment through Joonmyun’s ring of keys, and gingerly sets the elder’s violin on the clean coffee table. Suddenly, he whirls around and reaches his fingers up to the base of Joonmyun’s neck, and undoes the top button of his white collared shirt.
“Loosening up,” he informs him clinically before turning him around in the direction of his bedroom and giving him a firm pat on the ass to get him moving. “I want to see you come out of there in that sweater, a pair of jeans, and those Vans I bought you last Christmas.”
Joonmyun let out a sigh. “You know I don’t - ”
“Ah, ah,” Yixing chides, “you want to learn, don’t you?”
“Yes, but - ”
“I’m a hands-on teacher.”
“Alright, fine,” he relents as he slips into his bedroom and leaves the door ajar so his voice can travel. Yixing watches in a sort of distracted fascination as the sweater and collared shirt cling to his well-defined body and travel up, up -
“Where are we even going?” He asks, pulling the pianist from his shameless ogling.
“The bar,” Yixing answers distantly. Pulling himself firmly back in place, he adds with a small smile, “Hurry up, I’ll be the emperor of China by the time you’re done.”
“That must take a really long time - I mean, every other remotely-Chinese person would have to die first, right?” Joonmyun asks as he adjusts the way the collar of the sweater sits on his shoulders as he exits the room, clad in dark-wash jeans that hugged his legs more than the dreary slacks he was wearing previously and a pair of shoes that looked better suited to Yixing (they had the same foot size, so it was more of a Christmas present to the both of them).
Yixing rolled his eyes. “No respect,” he sighed dismally. “Now let’s go.”
It takes Joonmyun being drunk off his ass for him to suddenly realize what Yixing’s been attempting to tell him all along, and to the pianist, that’s quite sad.
Because, if he’s honest, he hasn’t exactly been the most subtle with his attempts to win Joonmyun. Even Mrs. Rhee, the old bat straight from Hell that lives above them, has his number on speed dial in order to call him during the night and tell him that if Joonmyun hadn’t noticed his affections by now, he was completely and utterly hopeless.
At first, Yixing had scoffed at this notion, but when his romantic pursuits were being brought up on a regular basis with people he didn’t even know in at the mailboxes in the lobby and in the laundry room, he began to comprehend the sheer obliviousness Joonmyun carried around in his head like all those fancy pieces of violin music he always refused to play for him.
Yixing sighs as he downs another shot, shooting a clandestine glance to the obviously-buzzed Joonmyun who is sitting on the stool next to him, talking animatedly to the bartender about nothing in particular with a pretty flush on his pale face and a winning smile on his lips.
He doesn’t understand -
He stops as he notices a group of girls at the end of the bar whispering excitedly and giggling to one another, not trying to conceal the flirtatious looks they were giving the cheerful man beside him. He frowns deeply as one gasps to the others when Joonmyun turns and waves amicably at them.
“Hey,” he calls gently to the bartender, and the elder man gives him a knowing smile.
“Ready to leave?”
Yixing fiddles with his credit card on the surface of the table and nods. “Both of us, please,” he states plainly as he fishes out a ten-dollar bill. He passes the bill to the man as he passes back the card and a flutter of receipts wrapped around it. He signs the bar copy and passes it back to him with a nod and a farewell, and taps Joonmyun on the shoulder, who swivels around with a smile and twinkling eyes that make Yixing’s heart constrict.
“Time to go,” he informs him smoothly, his own vision swimming just a bit as everything begins to become hot all around him. A bulletproof feeling of invincibility begins to pour into his system, and he reaches out to take Joonmyun by the arm and lead him out of the bar through the maze of tables all around them.
Somewhere along the way, Yixing doesn’t question when Joonmyun’s arm slips up out of his light hold until their fingers are intertwined and he can feel the warmth of the violinist’s soft palm in his, exactly the way he’d imagined it for as long as he’d known him (since they became roommates freshman year, but Yixing won’t ever admit he’d been enraptured by the man since the start of Freshman Orientation and tried so desperately to get into his tour group at the very start when he’d glimpsed Joonmyun’s name on a packet that read “Group R”).
They stumble home, Yixing feeling like the blind leading the blind amidst a flurry of senseless laughter and jokes that he doesn’t really bother trying to recall as they increase in number and lameness. All that registers in his alcohol-buzzed mind is that Joonmyun is too close as he unlocks their apartment door. He can smell the elder’s cologne as it emanates from the heated pulse points on his neck and the intoxicating mix of fabric softener added to the cologne’s heart of cardamom when Yixing feels the soft texture of the fabric that clings to Joonmyun’s chest as he presses against his back. The hand holding his set of keys is shaking and he’s struggling to slot it into the lock, but the hand that still clings to Joonmyun’s like it’s the answer to life itself remains steady.
As Joonmyun shifts marginally behind him, his warm fingers shift in the spaces between Yixing’s. His breath hitches in his throat, and he practically bursts into the entry hall, Joonmyun not far at all behind.
He turns around to utter a smart word of greeting to him, but Joonmyun suddenly reaches up and kisses the smirk cleanly off his face.
Yixing stares up at him, positively floored. But he doesn’t stop him, not at all, when Joonmyun strains up again and whispers against his lips in a devilishly amused voice that doesn’t even sound like his normal roommate, “You’ve been staring all night.”
He frowns in response when Joonmyun pulls away, breathless, eyes alight and searching the pianist’s with a clarity that he hadn’t noticed before.
Lowering his head, he presses his own lips flush against Joonmyun’s soft, yielding mouth, and mutters, “And if I was?”
He doesn’t get an answer to his question, but he finds that he doesn’t really mind, not when Joonmyun abruptly takes him by both hands and leads him step by step further into the apartment, not even stopping as Yixing stumbles after him, their faces locked impossibly close the whole way, breathing erratic and mouths red and warm against the other.
Joonmyun awakens with sunshine warming his face, and as he opens his eyes, icy air chills his skin. He squints in discomfort when goosebumps raise on his arms, and in response he pulls the comforter covering his naked chest up and over his freezing arms. He feels a warm sensation tickle his back, between his shoulder blades, and he slowly opens his eyes.
“Morning,” Yixing murmurs next to him, and he looks more contented and satisfied than Joonmyun ever sees him, the glow from the sun’s rays through the window illuminating all the stray strands of hair that are sticking up at odd angles and directions in swaths of golden light. Joonmyun has half a mind to reach up and smooth them over, but his arms are just beginning to warm back up.
“Hey,” he manages in reply, a soft smile on his face as he shifted his head against the other’s upper arm. “What time is it?”
“About 11:00.”
Almost immediately, Joonmyun bolts upright in bed, the needs of the good student in him suddenly kicking into overdrive. He’s never missed a day of school in his life. “Shit,” he whispers under his breath, “If I run, I can make it to my - ”
Wordlessly, Yixing takes a gentle hold of the arm supporting all his upper body weight, and Joonmyun turns to look at him. However, his gaze is shaken when the pianist abruptly pulls it out from underneath him, and Joonmyun topples over onto his chest with a cry of surprise.
“Go back to sleep,” Yixing instructs, “I already called your professors and told them you weren’t feeling well.”
“But that’s dishonest - ”
“You have a hangover, don’t you? You drank a shit ton last night.” He ventures, brushing his hands idly through Joonmyun’s dark hair before guiding his shoulders back to his previous place on the bed. “Go back to sleep. Everyone needs a day off. And that includes you.”
Joonmyun sighs, the will to fight with him about going to class sorely losing against the sense of warmth and security he feels as he lies between the sheets of his bed, Yixing tucked in beside him.
But, comparably, the will to tell Yixing that he was not hungover in the slightest is a battle that will never be fought. The pianist doesn’t have to know that among his dedication to violin is both a natural affinity for acting and an impeccable tolerance to hard liquor.
But he thinks Yixing knows anyways, just like he’s known all along that the pianist waits up for him every night and openly stares.
And the thinks that he will be more than fine with it, just like he is with him.
The next time Joonmyun attends Concerto practice, the conductor has him turn toward the orchestra and makes him receive a rousing round of applause, because it’s the best he’s ever played the piece. Joonmyun flushes proudly beneath the assault of congratulations, and many ask about his stylistic improvement.
The kind, sensible side that he shows to everyone but Yixing tells him to just inform them that practice and dedication really do pay off.
But the biting side that only the rough-handed pianist sees is the side that openly admits the low, rich vibrato found throughout the piece was due to the fact that Joonmyun couldn’t banish the thought of Yixing’s hands for thirty minutes to play the damn piece, and that his own fingers had been jittering violently because of it.
Yixing is in the lobby of the music hall this time, his old hoodie that he still refused to throw out draped unceremoniously around his shoulders and paired with a white tee and light jeans and his Vans (the ones the pianist had gotten him for Christmas - though he’d lose the opportunity to rough him up for it if he just plainly told him they looked much better on him, anyways). There’s a congratulatory smile on his face that makes everyone else’s praise seem that much more insignificant, and Joonmyun realizes that there are a lot of facets about the paradoxical Chinese man that make him see the world in a comparatively more mundane light because of him.
But he tells himself he can’t be bothered to mind it, not when Yixing’s holding his hand out to take the violin case from him as he works to get a handle on the binder that contains al his sheet music.
Joonmyun slips his warm hand into Yixing’s, and he feels a familiar tremor creep up his spine as the mutinous thoughts enter his mind once again.
“So,” Yixing begins easily as they step out into the chilly air, “I take it your style improved this time over last time?”
Joonmyun shrugs. “They really loved it.” He omits the part about his bastard of a mind and decides to save it until they are out of earshot from the music students pouring out of the building.
Yixing looks around in a shy way that is very uncharacteristic of him. “So, I guess you don’t need any extra lessons, then?” He asks quietly, ducking his head.
This causes the violinist to chuckle loudly. “No,” he finally manages after Yixing repeatedly runs him into sides of benches as he walks looking paths around the actual sidewalk.
“But I’m sure you’re ready for me to open my practice routine up to new things other than scales and arpeggios, yeah?”
Yixing’s exaggerated whoop of victory is cut short when Joonmyun knocks his violin case into the side of his knee, and he crumples slowly to the ground.
At least the violinist has it in his good graces to simply drag his stumbling form down his own straight, narrow sidewalk, and not through the fanciful routes the pianist is, in contrast, so privy to taking.
MUSIC
“ ... no thanks to the sickeningly-cliché strains of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 permeating the dense wooden door ... ”
Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2 - Chopin
“ ... he plays a hushed version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune ... ”
Clair de Lune - Debussy
“ ... Yixing makes a graceful transition into Arabesque I ... ”
Arabesque I - Debussy
“ ... he slips into a traditional Chinese song ... ”
Autumn Moon Over the Calm Lake - Lu Wen Cheng
“ ... Joonmyun standing as the principal violinist for this particular concerto ... ”
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 - Tchaikovsky