Chapter Text
The first proper piece Renjun ever learns to play is a Clementi sonatina. Opus 36, Number 1. He is six years old, and very scared, though he’s not sure exactly what is scaring him. He sits in front of the piano, his legs not long enough yet for his feet to reach the pedals, and he cries, and he cries, and he cries some more.
“Why are you crying, little one?” his grandmother asks. She’s soft-spoken, but a strict teacher. Renjun is afraid to disappoint her.
“It’s too hard,” Renjun sobs, his vision blurry with tears, and her hand comes to rest atop his.
“How about this,” she says. “You play the left hand. I’ll play the right. We can do it together. How does that sound?”
Renjun looks up at her. “Just the left hand?”
“Just the left,” she says, smiling. “For now.”
“Is that allowed?”
“Sure it’s allowed. Did you know some music is made for two people to play at once?”
How, Renjun wonders. “Really?”
“Really,” she laughs, melodic, and some of the fear slips away from him. “So what do you think? Shall we give it a try?”
Renjun is six years old, and a little less scared now. “Yes,” he says, sniffling. “I want to try.”
When he only has to focus on the left hand, it feels manageable. He can do this, he thinks. The impossible made possible. He must be playing more slowly than he should—Spiritoso, the top of the sheet reads, and his grandmother tells him it means spirited, lively—but she matches him note for note all the same. The music comes alive underneath his—their—fingers, and slowly, surely, a grin breaks out over his face.
“It’s like magic,” he says quietly.
“It is magic,” she replies. “If you play with the right person.”
It’s the beginning of a love story. He just doesn’t know it yet.
🎹
“—Jun,” a voice is calling. “Renjun, are you listening?”
Renjun snaps out of his haze. Paper crumples underneath his fist. “Yes,” he lies.
Yizhuo levels him with a withering stare that feels misplaced for her usually-bubbly demeanor. One thing Renjun likes about Yizhuo: she is not afraid to call anyone on their shit. One thing Renjun dislikes about Yizhuo: she is not afraid to call Renjun on his shit. “Liar,” she says.
“Okay, I wasn’t.”
“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I thought. I was saying, Chenle and I are going to grab lunch before the recital workshop at three. Are you coming?”
There’s nothing Renjun could say that wouldn’t be incriminating. As easy going as she likes to act, Yizhuo is still too sharp for her own good sometimes. “I have to go somewhere else,” he says.
“No you don’t,” Yizhuo says. “Chenle and I are your only friends. And the practice rooms are all booked. I checked already.”
“I have other friends,” Renjun retorts. “And I do things other than practicing piano.”
"Donghyuck doesn’t count as a friend. And having sex with him doesn’t count as doing things other than practicing piano either. I’m talking about real activities.”
Renjun grumbles under his breath. What does she know? Sure, Donghyuck is a friend. It’s true they don’t do a whole lot of actual talking, but Renjun’s never been great at talking anyway. His mother used to say his ability to express emotion through music stunted his actual ability to express the same things in words. “Not all of the practice rooms are booked. Room 406 is open.”
“Is that the one at the end of the hall?” Yizhuo asks, and her face is truly mortified. “You can’t be serious. You know everyone says that one is haunted.”
Yizhuo is a smart girl. Definitely smarter than Renjun, and the evidence of this is reflected in just about everything, including their grades. But even smart people can be prone to irrationality. “You believe in ghosts?”
“Don’t you?” she counters, like Renjun is the odd one.
Renjun believes in aliens, and generally all things supernatural or mystical. But he doesn’t believe in ghosts. He knows what’s in Room 406, and it’s much, much worse than any ghost.
“I’ll see you at three,” he says, preferring not to answer the question for now. He’ll get an earful from both her and Chenle later. But he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
For now, he turns the corner.
🎹
Most people understand that playing the piano is difficult. What they don’t understand is how hard on the fingertips it can be. Renjun’s just mastered the Prokofiev Sonata No. 7, and he keeps bandaids on his pinkies now, because the 9ths at the beginning of the first movement are a bitch for his less-than-average sized hands, and the jumps in the third movement are even worse. Even before that, his fingertips were permanently sore from the glissandos in Totentanz. It never stops, and barely ever gets easier. It’s relentless.
He doesn’t have to strain his ears to hear the music coming from Room 406. Renjun’s fingers throb with a phantom ache just at the sound of it. When you spend the better part of your life playing music, it only follows that you learn to interpret it, too.
There’s a sort of longing, a hunger to this music that Renjun doesn’t fully understand, even years later. This has always been the difference between them. Renjun plays piano like he loves it. Jaemin plays piano like he’s fucking starving for it.
He reaches out, and his knuckles go pale around the door handle as he freezes, his knees temporarily weakened. Make no mistake—Renjun does not believe in ghosts, but Room 406 is haunted. Renjun’s heart beats a staccato rhythm against the inside of his chest. Allegro, vivace, presto, prestissimo. He could turn around and join Chenle and Yizhuo for lunch, and not reopen this wound.
But Renjun wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t his only option. He turns the handle. The door swings open without fanfare.
Na Jaemin, sitting at the piano bench, blinks at him with wide, innocent eyes. His hands are at his sides. He is heartbreakingly beautiful, even with the bright blue bangs, and Renjun hates him for it. “Oh, Injunnie,” he says, deliberately casual, like this isn’t their first encounter in nearly six years. “What a surprise.”
The nickname is meant to get under Renjun’s skin. Renjun knows this, and still he can’t stop himself from visibly bristling. Jaemin grins at him like a shark who’s smelled blood. He always loved to get a reaction out of him.
Renjun would like to say he doesn’t give him the satisfaction, but he knows Jaemin doesn’t miss the way his shoulders stiffen, his hands curling into fists at his side. His heart is beating double-time against his chest, sixty-fourth notes in 4/4 time. He wonders if Jaemin notices that, too.
“Jaemin,” Renjun says stiffly, and gets right to business. This isn’t old friends catching up. They both know that. “I have a proposal for you.”
“A proposal,” Jaemin says. “Should I be expecting you to get on one knee in the next few minutes or so?” His eyes search Renjun’s face. Renjun wonders what changes he sees there.
It’s been six years since the last time they saw each other face to face. Jaemin looks more of a man than he did before. Renjun still feels like a child. “Don’t fuck around.”
Jaemin grins too-wide, baring all his teeth in a way that is as unsettling as it is attractive. “But it’s so fun.”
Renjun closes his eyes, takes one deep breath, and envisions a headline. Twenty-two year old piano performance major Huang Renjun was taken into custody today for the murder of Na Jaemin. The murder weapon was a metronome sitting atop the piano in a practice room at Seoul National University. Blunt force trauma to the head. His future was bright—
“I’m serious,” he says. “Just listen to me.”
“Okay,” Jaemin agrees.
Pride. Renjun has so much of it, and he protects it so fiercely, partly because of the man in front of him. It hurts to swallow now. “I need you to play a duet with me. For the year-end competition.”
The slouched curve of Jaemin’s back straightens, razor-quick, and suddenly he seems very interested in what Renjun has to say. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
It sucks a little to have his words thrown back in his face. But Jaemin has always been the type to hold grudges, and Renjun doubly so. “I don’t. But I want to win this. I need to win this, and you’re the only one who can make that happen.”
No one else knows my music like you do. No one else knows me like you do, even six years removed, and isn’t that unfair?
“Mm,” Jaemin hums. “I don’t know. I don’t play anymore.”
Renjun’s patience, already wearing thin, says, “You were just playing.”
“Maybe you heard wrong. You know what people say. This room is haunted.”
“You might be able to fool other people with your stupid tricks, Na Jaemin,” Renjun says. “But you’ll never be able to fool me. The flickering lights? The strange, disembodied voices?” Jaemin only grins wider. They used to pull childish pranks like this all the time as kids.
It’s a little comforting. Renjun might be transparent in some ways to Jaemin, but it works the other way around too. “There are better ways to book a practice room than to scare everyone else off. Even students who aren’t in the music program can access the reservation system, you know. No need to spread stupid rumors.”
Jaemin puts his hands up as if in surrender. “You got me. I’m impressed, Injunnie. You still know me so well.”
Renjun gnaws on his lower lip. “Don’t call me that.”
“But you used to like it so much when—“
“Don’t.”
“You know,” Jaemin says, and as he stands, the bench screeches against the floor. Like a dissonant chord in a minor key. “For someone who’s come here to ask a favor of me—and a pretty big one, at that—you’re making a lot of demands.”
Renjun holds still, gaze fixed firmly ahead as Jaemin stalks towards him. Predator hunting prey. “So what?”
“So I’m not so sure I like your tone, Injun-ah.” That’s not much better. Jaemin’s voice is low, dangerous. The vibrations ricochet through Renjun’s body, up his spine. Against his will, he shudders. “Why don’t you ask me nicely, hm? And then I’ll consider.”
Renjun grits his teeth. His head is spinning from frustration and general proximity to the one man he’d swore he’d never involve himself with again. Jaemin is so close now Renjun can practically feel the heat rolling off him in waves.
They say people with cold hands have warm hearts. The opposite must also hold true. “Please,” he says.
Jaemin’s face is entirely unimpressed. He tilts his head to the side. “You can do better than that.”
“Please, I need your help,” Renjun says, barely a whisper. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. You know that. I’m desperate.”
“Getting warmer,” Jaemin sing-songs.
The cologne Jaemin uses is different now. Headier, darker. It overwhelms the senses. Maybe that’s why Renjun gives in. He shudders over his next breath. “I need you.” It would be so easy to say Jaemin had forced the words out of him, but the truth is these words have been stuck in his throat for a while.
Jaemin forcing his hand is not the same as Jaemin forcing him to say something he does not mean. Renjun needed him six years ago. Renjun needs him now. Knowing it’s true doesn’t make it any less cruel.
“See? Was that so hard? I know you do,” Jaemin croons, syrupy and exaggeratedly sweet.
“So you’ll help?”
“As much as I’d love to help an old friend out of the kindness of my own heart… what’s in it for me?”
“The begging wasn’t enough?” Renjun asks bitterly, straining his neck to look up at him.
“It’s a pretty big favor.” Jaemi’s not even pretending to look him in the eyes, just staring, unashamedly, at Renjun’s mouth.
“There’s prize money.”
“I don’t need money. That’s not what I want.”
“Fine,” Renjun swallows. It’s dry, sticks in his throat. “What do you want, then?”
Jaemin takes his sweet time mulling it over. If he’s trying to unnerve Renjun even further, it works.
“How about this? A favor for a favor. I do you a favor, you do me one too.”
“What favor,” Renjun asks, because aside from piano the only hobby Jaemin really has is—well, nothing. Photography, maybe. Getting on Renjun’s nerves, definitely.
“I don’t know yet,” he shrugs, infuriatingly calm. “Any favor I want. At any time. No questions asked.”
“Why would I agree to th—“
“You’re desperate, aren’t you?”
He is, unfortunately, not wrong. Renjun can’t deny what he’s already said no matter how much he’d like to. “Fine,” he mutters under his breath.
“What was that, Injunnie? I couldn’t quite hear that.”
“I said fine. You help me, I’ll help you. Whatever.”
A smirk curls at the corner of Jaemin’s lips. “Let’s shake on it, then.”
His outstretched hand feels like a trap. But what else can Renjun do, really, except take it? His hands are bigger now, Renjun realizes. Maybe he should’ve expected that too.
“So we have a deal,” he says, trying not to take notice of the calluses on Jaemin’s hands or the length of his fingers.
Jaemin squeezes too-tight and leans in, his breath warm over the shell of Renjun’s ear. “It’s a deal.”
It took Renjun two years to learn how to play the glissandi in Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso without causing his fingers to bleed, two years for his skin to harden enough that the black-and-ivory of the keys didn’t tear it apart.
It’s been six years since Renjun last saw Jaemin, and he wonders how long it’ll take to learn to have a conversation with him without feeling like he’s split wide open and bleeding all over the crisp white pages of his own sheet music.
🎹
Here is something Renjun knows: The art of having sex is not so different from playing music. Especially when two instruments are involved. Four hands, two pianos; four hands, two bodies. Beautiful with the right notes. Renjun likes Donghyuck because he knows he moans just as pretty as he sings.
The grip of his hands around Renjun’s waist is bruising. But unlike Renjun, Donghyuck is a vocal student. He doesn’t have to worry about being careful with his fingers. Renjun likes the bruises, if he thinks about it, so he says nothing.
Donghyuck turns his face to the side, and Renjun stops him with a palm fitted to his mouth. “Mmmf,” he whines, muffled.
“Boundaries,” Renjun says, pulling his hand away with a grimace when Donghyuck licks it spitefully.
“Boundaries,” Donghyuck mimics him, shrill and high-pitched, but there’s no actual bite to it. “You’ll put my dick in your mouth, but you won’t let me kiss you.”
Renjun kisses him on the cheek and slides off his lap. The noise Donghyuck’s cock makes as it slips out of him is obscenely filthy. “Yes,” he says, gathering the sheets around him so he’s less bare, not that it matters when Donghyuck has seen all there is to see of him already. “Exactly.”
Donghyuck disposes of the used condom, then flops back onto the bed with a sigh. “Stop being emotionally unavailable. You know it turns me on when you do that.”
“Everything turns you on.”
“Ooh. We’re feeling feisty today, aren’t we? You were really in the zone just now, too. That thing you did with your hips—”
Renjun pinches him. Donghyuck squeals. “Shut up.”
“You’re meaner than usual.”
“I’m not mean.”
“You are. It’s why I like you so much.” Renjun isn’t sure what to say to that, so he says nothing. “Does this have anything to do with the flier on your desk you’ve been staring a hole through for the past month?”
“You really want to talk about this right now?”
“Sure I do,” Donghyuck says. “We’re friends. Friends talk about things. Also, do you have a light?”
Ha. We’re friends. Take that, Yizhuo. “Nightstand.” Without moving his head, Donghyuck gropes blindly across the surface of Renjun’s bedside table. “To the left.” His fingers fumble over a box of condoms. “Very funny, but I’m all fucked out for the day. Further to the left.” Donghyuck’s hand finally closes around the shitty Bic lighter Renjun stole from Yangyang’s place.
“Finally,” Donghyuck says, as though this couldn’t have been easily solved if he just bothered to look where his hands were reaching. Next, he rifles through the pockets of his jeans, tossed over Renjun’s headboard, and comes up with a box of Newports.
“That can’t be good for your voice,” Renjun says, because they are friends, but he is not Donghyuck’s boyfriend and he is also not his mother, so he doesn’t stop him when he brings a cigarette to his lips. His sheets will stink of smoke later, but he was going to wash them anyway.
“Don’t try to distract me. We were talking about you, and that flier on your desk.” Donghyuck is always unrelenting, always insistent. Renjun likes it in bed, and not-so-much out of it.
He hesitates over his next words. “It’s…for a competition. I was thinking about entering.”
“So enter.”
“I needed a partner. For a duet.”
“So get one.”
“No, it’s—” Renjun sighs. It’s not that simple. “No, I have a partner already. He’s just frustrating.”
Donghyuck wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully. “Frustrating like?”
A flush rises to Renjun’s cheeks before he can think of stopping it. “It’s not what you’re thinking. We just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”
“We don’t see eye to eye on most things, either.”
“Well, yes. But that’s different.” Whatever he has with Donghyuck is almost entirely physical, and as long as they see eye to eye on what happens in bed, Renjun doesn’t particularly care if they hold differing opinions on other things out of it. “Jaemin is…”
Jaemin’s name itself is a loaded word. He’s meant too many things to Renjun at different parts of his life. Renjun doesn’t know how to begin to describe him. “I hate him, I guess.” There’s no easy word to capture what Renjun feels about him. Hatred is as close as it will get.
“I thought you had to be compatible to play duets together,” Donghyuck says thoughtfully.
“You do,” Renjun replies. “Jaemin and I are compatible. Just not emotionally. Or mentally. Or stylistically.”
“You realize that’s very confusing, don’t you?” Donghyuck blows a wisp of smoke into the air, and Renjun watches as it dissipates above them.
Of course it’s confusing. Renjun is confused about it all, too. He tries to explain it the best way he knows how.
“It’s like this—” Music comes alive when we play together in a way it doesn’t when I play with other people. And I’ve tried to play with other people. Good fucking god, I’ve tried. “He’s a part of me,” Renjun says. “The worst part of me.”
🎹
So Renjun doesn’t believe in ghosts. He believes in shadows, though. Shadows are worse. A shadow is real. A shadow follows you, but it doesn’t stay; it disappears as soon as the conditions are ripe. A shadow is finicky like that. A ghost follows you, and it haunts you. The word haunt implies a level of permanence.
Renjun had a shadow once. He was born only five months after Renjun, two weeks premature. Renjun’s mother joked that his shadow came into the world because he loved him so much he couldn’t stand to spend one more second apart from him.
In reality, Renjun has always thought that she had it all backwards. Renjun was the one who loved his shadow so much that he couldn’t wait one second longer for him.
“What are you playing?” his shadow asks one day, peering curiously over the raised lid of a Steinway. It belongs to Renjun’s grandmother and it’s exquisitely maintained, all sleek lines and smooth curves.
“It’s called a sonatina,” Renjun explains patiently, as his hands still, hovering above the keys. He’s older, and so teaching is what he’s meant to do. “Do you want to play with me?”
His shadow frowns. “I don’t know how,” he says. He only started taking lessons two weeks ago, after he learned that Renjun was taking lessons, too. They share everything. Piano is just one of these things. “It’s too hard.”
“Here,” Renjun says, outstretching his hand. “You play the left hand. I’ll play the right.”
Before Renjun and his music, there was Renjun and Jaemin and their music. Four hands, one piano. Then, one day, Renjun looked up to the sky, only to find that the sky was dark and the sun had set. His shadow was nowhere to be found.
People write letters to ghosts sometimes. But that’s silly. And it’s even sillier to write letters to shadows. So Renjun writes one ten fifteen twenty letters and stops keeping count after that, and instead of sending them off he shoves them on a shelf behind his old exercise books.
Hey Jaemin, one of them reads, wedged behind Hanon’s In Sixty Exercises. I played through three whole songs without thinking of you today.
Hey Jaemin, another says, next to Liszt’s Technical Exercises. I hate hate miss hate hate hate you.
Hey Jaemin, says the second-to-last one he writes, shoved into the very, very, very back of the shelf. I was wrong. The sun didn’t set. You stopped being my shadow because you started eclipsing me.
Sometimes, Renjun wishes he believed in ghosts. It’d make it easier to sit at the piano bench and pretend he could still feel the presence of a boy who’d left him behind.
🎹
The Fantasia in F minor is a love story, but it’s not a happy one. Schubert was in love with the Countess Caroline, they say, though it was an unrequited love. She was the daughter of one of his patrons, and surely she must have been aware of his feelings, but either did not or could not return them. He composed the Fantasia in such a way that their hands would touch from time to time as they played, and later dedicated the piece to her, too.
Prior to that, the Countess had famously reproached Schubert for having no composition dedicated to her, his muse. Schubert replied, simply, “What’s the point? Everything is dedicated to you anyway.”
(It’s a painfully familiar sentiment, in a way. How many times can you play a song while thinking about one person in particular before it becomes unofficially dedicated to them? What’s the magic number? Renjun isn’t sure if he wants to find out.)
Yizhuo clutched her hand to her chest and said it was romantic. Renjun just thought it was cruel. Cruel that a piece written about the heartache of unrequited love—an intensely lonesome emotion—could only be played with another person. That he loved her so much but could only hope for a brushing of the hands, and that his music was so composed for such a purpose.
Chenle notices the sheet music one day while Renjun is rifling through his bag for his composition assignment. It’s not exactly a secret that Renjun is playing a duet with Jaemin for the upcoming competition, but it’s also not exactly something they’ve talked about yet.
He’s quiet for a very long time. It’s not characteristic of him. “Schubert’s Fantasia is—what—twenty minutes long?” he asks, under his breath. “Are you sure you can handle that?”
Renjun plays dumb. “Seventeen minutes. I’ve played more technically difficult pieces before,” he says. “And longer ones, too.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Chenle says. “And you know it.” He knows better than anyone else how deeply his roots to Jaemin run. Even then Renjun thinks there’s no way Chenle can fully grasp the depth of their shared history.
The Fantasia in F minor is a love story, and it’s not a happy one, but it can’t be reduced to just that. It’s about longing. Desire. Above all of that, it’s about tension. Tension between light and dark, between the soft primary melody and the turbulent fitfulness of desperation as the secondary, two contrasting themes forced to work in tandem. It’s best demonstrated in the final movement. In the last eight bars of the work, the dichotomies of the two themes condense into one, coming to a close. They sound like they shouldn’t work together. But they do.
Renjun figures there is some inherent symbolism in that.
It’s intense, to say the least. For the piece to be played in its proper form, to do justice to Schubert’s work, you and your partner need to be extraordinarily compatible. This is true of all duets. But it’s especially true here.
There’s only one person Renjun could imagine playing it with. He and Jaemin aren’t compatible, but they have chemistry and they have history, and that has to count for something.
“I can handle it,” he tells Chenle.
“You know,” Chenle says, after a long pause. “Just because you think all the greatest artists were tortured somehow doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to be the same way.”
“Who said anything about forcing,” Renjun replies. He pretends not to notice the unreadable expression that flashes across Chenle’s face as he looks away.
Later, Jaemin flips through the sheet music and he, too, goes quiet for a very long time.
Renjun isn’t sure if that’s characteristic of him or not. Six years ago, it wouldn’t be, but six years is a long time to not speak to someone. People change. Renjun hates that about people.
It’s so easy to read music. Everything can be broken down into manageable pieces. The notes are straightforward. The dynamics and tone markings mean what they say. What you see is what you get. Your source material never changes. Your source material doesn’t one day decide it is tired of being a pair and turn into a solo instead.
If Jaemin was a piece of music, he would be an entire symphony, and Renjun would need to peel him back layer by layer to understand him, isolate him piece by piece to understand each individual part and how they work together as a whole.
But Jaemin isn’t a piece of music. Jaemin is tragically human, and he squints as he reads, even though Renjun knows for a fact he has 20-20 vision. “This is pretty long.”
“Sure,” Renjun says. He’s already identified and mentally cataloged each measure where their hands will overlap or make contact. Whether he’s dreading those moments or anticipating them for another reason altogether is still unknown to him. “But it’s not difficult.”
“I won’t know that for sure until I actually start playing,” Jaemin says, oddly non-combative for once. “But I suppose you were always better at sight reading.”
Yes, Renjun thinks. And you were always better at everything else. If I was a piece of music, would you be able to read me?
Some days he feels more sound than human. Some days he thinks it would be easier if he could communicate by keyboard than by words.
Reading music is easy. He just wishes reading people was easy, too.
🎹
Their first practice goes terribly. The beats per minute of Jaemin’s allegro skew towards the one-hundred-fifties and Renjun’s linger in the one-hundred-twenties, and the metronome does little to help. Jaemin plays too soft, Renjun too loud. Overcompensating. They can’t agree on who should turn the pages or who should pedal or whether their hands overlapping should be over-under or under-over. It cements Renjun’s belief that they were a match made in hell all along.
Jaemin still knows Renjun’s art better than anyone else, but six years of not playing together has made their jagged edges fit together a little more crookedly than they did before. Renjun leaves with frustration in his throat and the memory of Jaemin’s sneer burned into the backs of his eyelids. They have to deliberately relearn where they fit together. Renjun just hopes it will be worth it.
It has to be worth it. He needs it to be worth it.
In photography, there’s a superstition—that every time you take a picture, it steals a little piece of your soul. There are some times when Renjun feels that way with music. Like every time he plays through a piece, he loses a little bit of himself. But repetition is the foundation of music, of practice, and it’s only through hours of repeating the same motions over and over and over again that anyone ever improves. Other times, Renjun thinks it’s a wonderful thing. There is sound, and then there is art, and it’s only through repetition that something beautiful can be made out of something entirely ordinary.
“Moonlight Sonata,” Jaemin says, dropping his bag at the door as it slams shut behind him. “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting that from you.” Something about his tone is familiar.
This was one of the first pieces his grandmother taught Jaemin to play, but Renjun isn’t sure if Jaemin remembers that, or if he’s being deliberately obtuse. He falters on a C-sharp minor chord. “You’re late.”
“You’re smudging,” Jaemin replies easily.
“No, I’m not.” Renjun lifts his foot off the sustain pedal. Not because Jaemin is right, but because he wanted to.
“Don’t be embarrassed, it’s adorable. Do you take requests? There’s this one piece, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s called Fur Elise, and—”
Renjun turns on him with a defensive glare, a retort on the tip of his tongue. Music that is simple can sometimes be the most revealing of a pianist’s skill level. If he only played pieces based on technical challenge or skill level, that would make him—
Well, that would make him Jaemin. Or even Chenle.
“I had to find a way to distract myself, since you couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.”
“Don’t stop on my account.” Jaemin leans over the piano with a grin. “You know, maybe I should just leave, since you clearly enjoy playing solo so much.”
In a world where they’re on equal footing, maybe Renjun actually says what he’s thinking, which is—go ahead, Jaemin, maybe you should leave, since you clearly enjoy doing that so much.
They’re not on equal footing, though, so he settles for, “What happened to the promise you made?”
“Injunnie,” Jaemin croons, condescending. “Are you saying that you trust me? That’s sweet.”
“Just because we don’t like each other doesn’t mean you have to actively try and be as insufferable as possible,” Renjun snaps. “Could you at least pretend to take this seriously? You’ve been late to every practice we’ve had this week.” And every single practice had been as terrible as the first. “Just… be professional. Please.”
“Don’t you think you and I are long past professionalism?” Jaemin asks, one hand trailing over the side arm of the room’s upright Yamaha. It pains Renjun to admit it, but he’s not exactly wrong. “If you hate working with me so much, you could just pick someone else. Or, better yet, you could do it alone.”
He settles next to Renjun on the bench, and Renjun flinches away on instinct. “I told you already,” he whispers, eyeing the centimeters of space between them. Being in such close proximity to Jaemin feels as unnatural as it does familiar. He’s not quite used to it yet. It used to be the simplest thing in the world—breathing the same air, sharing the same space, sharing the same music—and now, Renjun can barely meet his gaze. “You know I can’t do that.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Jaemin challenges him, because that’s all he knows how to do these days. “You said I was the only person you could play this piece with. But you never told me why this had to be a duet at all. You’ve played as a soloist for so many years. What changed?”
“Why do you even care?”
“I don’t.”
I know you don’t. “You asked for a favor no questions asked,” Renjun says, eyes forward, spreading their sheet music out on the rack. “So let mine be the same.”
“Fine,” Jaemin says sullenly. End of conversation. Renjun wonders if the shift in Jaemin’s mood would’ve been palpable to anyone else, too, or if maybe he’ll just always be a little more attuned to Jaemin’s temperament than he wants to be.
Jaemin’s phone vibrates harshly against the hardwood of the piano. “You know the rules,” Renjun reminds him. “Phones off.” They have enough to worry about on their own. Minimizing distractions is Renjun’s only hope if he wants this to work.
Jaemin rolls his eyes at him but obliges. There’s no talking left to be done. So they practice, instead, side by side. The piano bench creaks, groans in protest with every movement made. It’s a terrible thing, this push-and-pull that they do. Every conversation with Jaemin isn’t just an uphill battle, it’s a war, and Renjun doesn’t know how to win without falling on his own sword, too. The only time they’re ever on the same page is when they are—in the literal sense—playing on the same page. The only remaining thing they still share, after everything, is just an instrument.
One of the things Renjun loves most is the point where you know a piece well enough to close your eyes and play. It doesn’t get old to him. Shutting the outside world out and giving yourself up to the music, letting yourself feel it from the tips of your fingers and spreading outward through your body. Your hands move on their own. It’s all muscle memory.
This becomes significantly harder when a second person comes into the equation. Renjun does not—cannot—give himself up to the music. He stares straight ahead, eyes wide open.
If he gives himself up to the music, what might Jaemin hear? This is another thing that Renjun doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to find out. Ignorance isn’t bliss, but when the alternative is awareness, he’d rather take what he can get.
Crescendo, the sheet music reads. Renjun strikes a chord again, and again, louder each time, Jaemin following in close succession. The piano trembles underneath the force of their hands. Renjun feels a little bit like he’s trembling, too.
Room 406 has a window to the west. As the sun sets beneath the horizon, their shadows stretch across the length of the room and become one. For just those few minutes before the automatic lights come on, Renjun has his shadow back.
“Sorry,” he blurts out, as his hand brushes Jaemin’s, the barest touch of skin against skin. He fumbles over the next measure and misses an E-flat. His hand burns, his cheeks burn, and his chest burns even brighter than anything.
Renjun’s not sure why he apologized. Jaemin only gives him an odd look in response. It makes Renjun feel very, very stupid. The Fantasia was composed such that the Primo left and the Secondo right hands would touch from time to time, by design. They both know that.
This would be easier if they didn’t share so much of their past. Wouldn’t it be nice to meet on equal footing, he lets himself think, as the second movement opens into an angry, turbulent F-sharp minor. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t look at you and see my own mistakes reflected back at me, wouldn’t it be nice for us to be two separate circles instead of one big fucked up Venn diagram, wouldn’t it be nice if we never shaped each other irreparably, wouldn’t it be nice to be strangers.
It would be nice to look at you and not know you, for a change.
Then again. This wouldn’t work if they didn’t share so much of their past, either. It would inherently carry less meaning. When Renjun closes his eyes, he can still recall with perfect clarity the exact ugly shade of blue Jaemin’s bedroom walls used to be, the smell of his father’s budae jjigae, the bright-yellow rubber bands he used to wear on his braces because yellow was always their favorite color. They shared that, too. Jaemin has been many things to him over the years. A shadow, a friend, a partner, an enemy—
The only thing he’ll never be is a stranger.