Étude

by xlydiadeetz

Chapter 5: Dissonance

Notes:

Hello, I'm back!
I have to admit I was stuck with this chapter until thursday night when I miraculously wrote most of it. And now I'm back at being stuck, but I'll try to keep updating regularly.

Thank you so much for all your kudos and comments and your support, it's been amazing.<33 As always thanks to my beautiful betas Ellen and Lee (who actually made the BEST moodboards ever for violinist!Laurent and pianist!Auguste, let me know if you wanna check them!), and also my Pain friends Kelly and Becky. This journey is getting interesting, and I hope you all stay with me to see where it'll take us.

P.S. The soundcloud playlist is also updated.

“I met a girl.”

Laurent looked up from his history homework and blinked at his brother, who looked happy, and excited, and breathless, like if he had ran all the way back home.

“A girl?” Laurent said, and put his pencil down.

Auguste bit his lip and nodded. "A girl. Oh God, I think she could be my soulmate."

“But you just met her.”

"Yes, but, since the moment I first saw her, my heart's been singing." Auguste said, and chuckled. "Singing, singing, I can't stop it from singing.”

Laurent couldn’t help but start to laugh. His brother was in the clouds. “Did you even talk to her?”

“Of course I did. Listen, I was walking out of class when I saw her. It hit me hard. I couldn’t keep on walking, I just stood there and then I heard it. And of course, I had to follow her, I had to go talk to her.”

“Heard what?”

“The melody! The… the singing! It was coming from my insides, and I couldn’t think of anything else but her. This has to mean something, Laurent. Maybe…Maybe when we meet our soulmates, we hear music. Maybe that’s how we find them!”

“Auguste, are you serious? Do you even listen to yourself when you speak or do you ban yourself?”

Auguste whined, “Why do you have to be such a mood-killer, brother? Can‘t you be happy for me? I think…I think I’m in love.”

“I don’t believe in love at first sight.”

“Right.” Auguste made a small ‘tsk’ sound with his tongue and rolled his eyes.

Laurent narrowed his eyes, “What was that?”

“Do I have to spell it to you? His name starts with a D and finishes in an N.”

Laurent felt himself flushing. He looked down at his history book and grabbed his pencil again. Auguste was insane if he thought…

“I don’t—“

“Save it. I know you better than you know yourself, little brother. I know the violin usually does the talking for you, but don’t expect the poor guy to get your indirects by playing songs like Love’s Sorrow or Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.”

“He was a stalker who enjoyed watching me play.”

“Oh yeah, and you hated that so much.”

Laurent ignored the last comment and returned to his homework, trying not to think of his past crush. A crush that graduated and who was now attending University in another state. A crush that he never reached. A song he never played.

“Hey…Laurent,” Auguste moved from the door and sat on his bed, gently petting a pillow and putting it in place, like a mom. “Now being serious, why don’t you call him? I mean…after the graduation…”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Auguste.” He murmured. They hadn’t talked about what happened that spring, and he surely didn’t wish to talk about it now, months after.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right? What happened wasn’t your fault, and I’m sure Damen knows that too.”

“Why do you have to get Damen into this whole situation? He had nothing to do with it! You think you know everything, but you don’t even know a quarter of the truth,” Laurent snapped, a strange rage proper of his adolescence filling up his guts before he could even understand what was what got into him.

“I’m only saying it because I know that you care about what he thinks.” Auguste said calmly, looking into his identical pair of blue eyes, searching for the correct strings inside Laurent to calm him down.

“I don’t care about what he thinks. He’s gone, anyway. He was your best friend, not mine.”  Laurent spat.

Auguste sighed and stood up to pet Laurent’s head, but Laurent shook his hand away.

“Go away.”

“Don’t be childish, come on.”

“Don’t be annoying.”

An odd silence stood between them, something that never happened. They usually got along pretty well. Laurent’s rage was slowly calming down on its own again, and he felt slightly guilty about snapping at Auguste.

“I’ll leave you to your homework.” Auguste whispered and walked away towards the door.

“Wait, Auguste,” Laurent called, and his brother turned around. Instead of apologizing, he asked, “What song did you hear?”

Auguste smiled proudly, like he had expected this outcome of events all along. “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”

“Mozart?” Laurent couldn’t help but chuckle. That song was made for orchestra, and was also very dramatic, explosive, radiant, and beautiful. He thought that the girl who had gotten that song out of his brother’s heart was definitely something else. If he thought about it, maybe if he played the song, he would be able to see her, even without knowing her. That’s a thing about music, you can get to know someone you haven’t even met yet, just by the music impression they leave on you.

“And you?” Auguste asked, “What song did you hear?”

 

***

 

With Damen gone, Laurent closed the main door and pressed his back against it. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, until air finally left his lungs and he swallowed against the hammering beats of his heart. He thought it was going to crawl up his throat and then jump out of his mouth.

He had agreed to teach Damen how to play the piano.

Why had he done that?

He repeated  himself that it was just one song, anyway, and then afterwards he could tell Damen to fuck off. He could. He would.

To calm himself down, he decided to clean away the dust off the piano, then clean the rest of the studio. Pack up music books and scores that he would never use again. He wondered if he could sell them, too. They were used, and old. Some pages already had yellow stains on the letters. Maybe he could donate them to the music conservatory. He remembered Auguste spending a fair amount of money buying books about the history of music, biographies of his favorite classical musicians, or their parents getting easy guides to help a beginner Laurent start with the violin and the piano.  It wouldn’t be fair to simply throw them away with the trash.

Being in that room was making him more uneasy than he already was. He couldn’t think, his mind was crowded with memories he wanted to avoid and the annoying insistence of Damen, telling him not to sell the piano. It’s like he couldn’t hear anything else but his voice pleading him to change his mind. It was making him crazy.

His hands and heart ached for his violin. He grew up relieving his exasperation and anxiety through music. Now that he was no longer a musician, he had no idea how to make his thoughts stop. It was too loud. Everything was too loud. Laurent stood in the middle of the studio, staring at the piano of his dead brother, and it felt as if all the music scores came alive and started to sing at the same time. They were loud and demanding and angry. Angry at him for deciding to leave them.

He was going mad.

He really was going mad.

 

Play.

Don’t play.

Play.

Don’t play.

 

This was all Damen’s fault. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, about music, since he had played that children’s song with him. It was like if some part of him that had been sleeping had awoken again, and he found himself thinking of his violin, who lay in his case somewhere in his closet. He hadn’t played in months, his last time being when Auguste had begged for Laurent to play his favorite song. The last time they played together, before Auguste got worse and slammed the piano keys. The last time they shared music. And then, after Auguste’s rage attack, he had promised it.

I won’t play again. If Auguste can’t play, then I won’t either.

Even when Auguste had asked him to play the violin for him afterwards, he had refused each time. That truth had two sides. Partially, he was being selfish, but also partially he was doing it because he knew how much it still hurt Auguste not being able to play the piano anymore, less being in a hospital bed. But, that was another truth, between many, many lies. Being out of songs, and promising to be out of songs were two different things. He had thought he could just stop, make a line between him and music. He thought that, with Auguste gone, his will to play was also gone.

But then, Damen showed up.

That brute.

He was torn between wanting to play, and not wanting to. Torn between liking Damen, and hating him. Torn between missing his brother, and wishing for him to be alive so he could beat the shit out of him for leaving him an étude.

In other words, he was a mess. Like a bad medley, or an orchestra that was out of sync. Like if something inside him didn’t quite fit. Like Damen, trying to play his brother’s piano with his big hands and Damen’s curls falling off his bun. It was dissonant.

Damen. Damen. Damen.

It was like a high school nightmare happening again.

He grabbed a box, and started to throw the scores and books inside. Kreisler, Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, Czerny, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Paganini, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Mozart. All of them gone. It wasn’t until the box was full and the shelves empty that he managed to calm down.

Then, he remembered.                                                                   

Mozart.

He opened the box again, and took out the last music score he had shoved in. It was a bit crumpled, but his heart stopped the moment he saw Auguste’s handwriting on the upper right corner. A single word in cursive, written in black ink.

Victoria.

That was Victoria’s song, Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik . This was Laurent’s music score, a solo violin arrangement of the original orchestral version. It wasn’t one of his favorite songs to play, so it didn’t surprise him that Auguste had taken it and written the name of his girlfriend on it. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Always the romantic, his brother.

What had been always odd was the fact that Auguste had chosen that song for Victoria, when it was for violin, and they both were pianists. It would have been more normal to choose one of Chopin’s ballades or études.

“I didn’t choose a song for her. That’s the song I heard when I saw her. It was already chosen. Have you ever thought about the sound of destiny?”

“Choosing a song from Don Giovanni isn’t exactly the proper way to get a girlfriend, Auguste.”

“Choosing a song from Kreisler’s Old Vienesse Dances isn’t the proper way to get a boyfriend, Laurent.”

The sound of destiny. Auguste believed in fate, in soulmates and romance, in the power of “friendship and love.” He was the perfect candidate for a Disney prince. He believed Auguste had been a Prince in his past life, maybe even a King. The Crown Prince of a powerful Kingdom, adored by everyone, the heir, the hero.

But heroes…they weren’t meant to survive.

Not in this life, or another. In all stories, the hero must fall.

He thought of Victoria, the Golden Princess of piano, left alone on her throne. Left alone with her wedding dress and the promise of a lifetime they never shared.

He wondered if, like Auguste, she had a song for him. Maybe she did, although she didn’t seem as disgustingly cheesy as his brother.

“And you?” Auguste asked, “What song did you hear?”

Laurent flushed at the memory of it. Because that was another truth. A very hidden truth inside the cave of his heart, where all  of his emotions lived.

It was stupid to think one could hear a song when finding your soulmate. But, a truth always had two sides. Laurent did have a song for Damen, and it wasn’t Kreisler’s Love’s Sorrow, or Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, he didn’t even choose it.

It wasn’t at first sight, much less at second or third. But as time progressed, Laurent was able to listen to it, to Damen’s song. It was strange, to say the least. He wasn’t sure whether to believe in soulmates or not, probably not, but something happens to musicians when they like someone. When they like someone more than just like them. It was as if, the person in question, emanated music. Maybe it was a musicians thing, or maybe there were just people in the world whose souls could actually sing. Maybe those people’s hearts called for musicians, in a way or another.

Damen was also dissonant. A combination of wrong notes arranged perfectly to ruin your ears. The first time, Laurent was not able to hear anything else besides quick minor seconds, and his hatred for Damianos grew. But, eventually, he had came to understood Damen was not just a fausse note, he was also leggiero, vivace, scherzando, più lento. And Laurent couldn’t understand why, being a violinist, he could only hear Chopin in his mind.

Like their relationship, Chopin’s Étude in E minor, Op. 25, No. 5 was rather unpleasant at the beginning, but then consonance took over, and you were able to listen to the true sounds of the song, hidden behind a cape of fake minor seconds. It was a mix of harmony and pandemonium that somehow managed to create a melody.

Damen, back then and now, was dissonant, but also consonant. Sweet yet harsh, pleasant and unpleasant. Damen, who had been just noise at first, became music. And Laurent wasn’t sure how that happened, or how he had let it happen, but at some point he had felt almost happy about it. Almost happy to hear an étude every time Damen smiled at him.

Thinking of him was like pressing play to an everlasting music box.

The song had stopped the year of Damen’s graduation, after the incident that had dissolved Auguste’s group of friends. The incident he had never been able to talk about, and that costed him his relationship with Damen.

But then, Damen was back. And the song was starting to play again, slowly, like if the music box was cleaning off dust and spider webs off it’s clockwork motor.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that yet.

Laurent grabbed the box and put it in the living room, along with the other boxes of trash that might or might not include some of Auguste’s things he did not know where to put or if he should keep at all. He could worry about that later, perhaps after he had sold the piano.

Now, he needed a camera.

He had found a website to sell the piano, but he needed to take some pictures. Of course, the piano wasn’t an Alma Tadema, but his brother’s ebony Steinway could easily grant him around forty thousand dollars.

Forty thousand dollars for his brother’s heart.

The only professional camera was Auguste’s, and it was inside his room. His stomach burnt just at the thought of opening that door.

Do you have a professional camera I can use? he texted Jord, knowing he did have one, since he was a photographer.

You go weeks without replying to my texts or calls and this is what you say? For God’s sake, Laurent.

Jord. Yes or No?

He waited for a few minutes, before the response finally came.

Yes. Meet me @ Le Notre in 20 minutes.

Le Notre was the best bakery in town, and also Laurent’s favorite. It was the only one that had a long variety of desserts, including profiteroles and cannelés. Jord knew that if he wanted to have a talk with Laurent, this was a good place to do it.

By the time Laurent arrived to the bakery, Jord was already sitting on a table by the window. He didn’t smile, as he often did, when he saw him, but instead looked angrier.

“Were you even going to let me know you were still alive?” Jord asked sarcastically.

“Yes.” Laurent said and sat down in front of him, “I…” he debated for a moment, but then decided to be direct, like always. “I’m selling Auguste’s piano.”

Jord’s expression changed, from anger to confusion and then worry and sadness.

“Wha—Laurent, you can’t, I…Auguste…”

“I already made up my mind. I need to take a few photos of it for the web page, and I couldn’t find my camera.”

“Are you…sure? I mean…maybe he wanted you to have it. Not give it away to some stranger.”

“You’re acting just like Damen.”

“So Damen knows about it?” Jord raised an eyebrow. “And what did he say?”

“What do you think?”

There was silence between them, and Jord stared at his cup of coffee while Laurent watched him. The whole place smelled of cinnamon and warm bread, mixed with the bitterness of coffee. It was crowded, as always, but the chaos of it all didn’t softened the harsh silence that reigned on their table.

Jord finally sighed, clearly giving up to an idea he didn’t like at all. “I’ll take the photos, if that’s what you want.”

“Thank you.” Laurent said softly.

“Have you been eating?”

Laurent nodded, “I’m not letting myself fall into depression, Jord.”

“And not playing the violin isn’t the same thing?”

“Why does everyone suddenly care about me playing the damn violin?”

“Maybe because you’re a musician.”

“Not anymore.”

More silence followed. Just as he couldn’t stand the loud notes of music, he couldn’t stand the silence. It was an odd thing, for silence had never bothered him before. Again, the dissonant feeling, the awkward in-between. He was off-balance. All of him was off-balance. But if he played the violin, would that make it better?

No. Auguste’s gone. And he’s not going back.

But if Laurent had played him a song, would it have been the same? Why was that ever since his brother had fallen sick, most of his decisions ended up in a Shakespeare’s dilemma? To play or not to play? To sell the piano or not to sell it?

To have music without Auguste, or not to have anything at all?

“I’ll go to your place tomorrow, and I’ll help you post the photos on the web page. Your house has nice natural light we could use, is morning okay for you?”

Laurent nodded and then stopped. Damen was going in the morning. He wasn’t sure Damen and Jord could be together and not side against him and his decision. But it was a risk he needed to take if he wanted Jord to take the photos.

It was that, or entering Auguste’s room.

“Morning is fine.”

 

Laurent returned home and let himself fall onto the bed. It was cold, and the house felt empty. Too big for just one person. There were no other sounds except for his own.

He slid underneath the covers  and grabbed onto his old, forgotten iPod. Plugging in his earbuds, he looked for a song he knew was the only thing that could make him feel better. He clicked on it, and rested his head on the pillow, hoping that Debussy would take him somewhere else. Somewhere pleasant.

And he slept.