Play!

LII

Brett stood in the middle of a wide corn field peppered with bright red poppy flowers, his hair getting ruffled by a mild breeze. He inhaled deeply, peace filling his heart as he propped up the violin he was holding and without a second thought, Brett started to play the Korngold violin concerto’s first movement. His tone was resonant, his bow strokes sure and his instrument singing, just how he liked it. Suddenly, a long, white table appeared about ten meters in front of him, along with a round of chairs. Five old men in suits took shape on those chairs, one after another. Their hands were folded and placed on the table, their faces all carrying the same, stern, cold, emotionless expression. Brett’s pulse rose as cold sweat made it hard to properly hold his bow. The bow hair skidded across the strings and the run he was playing broke apart. 

“Shit!”, he wanted to hiss, but no tone came out and all of a sudden, his violin got muted as well. He could press into the strings as much as he wanted, but nothing! Now, panic overtook him and threatened to consume him whole, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and looked into Eddy’s kind, gentle eyes, giving him strength without saying a word. Brett took deep breaths, repositioned his bow and there! The music was back! The adjudicators were still sitting at the table, no one had pressed the bell yet, so it had to be fine, right? He played and played, Eddy’s hand never leaving, but then, the palm on Brett’s shoulder began to shake. Brett threw an anxious glance at his friend, who shook his head wildly and muttered “No, no, no!” incessantly, as if Brett’s panic from before had been transported to Eddy. 
“Eddy? Eddy, it’s all good!”, Brett assured, but Eddy’s voice only shot up, screaming gut wrenching negations as he clasped his hands over his head. 
“Eddy! I’m here! It’s all good!”
“No, nooo!”

“No, no! I’m… no!”
Huh? Where the hell was he? And was that Cole? It kinda sounded off though. Brett groaned, rubbed his eyes, stretched his right arm to grab his glasses on the nightstand…
but instead, reached something soft and warm. 
“What the-”, he jolted back, and hit a bunch of pillows over. 
What the fuck? Who was that in his bed? Brett scratched the back of his head in distress as he tried to remember what had happened the night before. He blinked rapidly while his mind paired the blurry silhouette wriggling around on the other side of a pillow wall with the voice he heard begging. Right! Eddy. He was in Eddy’s room because he’d been so stupid to get stuck in a student dorm long after midnight.

“Eddy, mate!”, Brett whispered and grabbed those trembling shoulders, not before throwing a bunch of pillows to the side. 
“No.. don’t….”
“Eddy! It’s all good! Wake up!”
“...”
“Eddy, shhh…”, Brett tried again and shook him lightly, “You’re okay. I’m here. You’re safe.”
The words which tumbled out of him on their own accord seemed to work, or maybe he’d simply shaken him hard enough, because Eddy sat up with a shock and a sharp intake of breath and threw his arms around Brett in an instant. 
“No! No! I can’t!”
“Eddy, Eddy! Look at me! You’re in your room, you’re fine!”
The boy in his arms blinked frantically and took in air so quickly Brett feared he was going to enter hyperventilation. He stroked Eddy’s back slowly in an attempt to calm him down while whispering, “Shhh, it’s all good. I’m here.”
“Br… Brett?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
“Brett…” 
“You’re fine. Take deep breaths for me, alright?”
Eddy did as told and little by little, Brett could feel Eddy’s heart beat finally slow down. 

“Hey, you okay? Was that a nightmare?”
Eddy’s grip around Brett got tighter, prompting Brett to move his arms on Eddy’s back up and down again. 
“Something like that”, Eddy sighed shakily.
“Wanna talk about it?”, Brett whispered next to Eddy’s ear and strengthened his hug in the process. 
Eddy shook his head by the crook of Brett’s neck. “It’s stupid.”
“If it makes you shiver like that, I’m pretty sure it’s not.”
Brett could hear Eddy’s watch tick on the nightstand as he waited without loosening his embrace. 

“I have them almost every night.”
“The dreams?”
“Mhm… One would think I should be used to it by now.”
Brett gave Eddy’s frame a little squeeze. “What are they about?”
Eddy buried his face deeper into Brett’s, or rather his, shirt. “I’m on some stage, an audition panel in front of me. I play, I fuck up. My dad appears and smiles at me, despite my crap playing. But then, he gets ripped away. Just like that. Into the darkness. I try to run towards him, but you know how it is, to run in a dream. You get nowhere and it’s so fucking frustrating. I never get to him and that’s when I normally wake up.”
All the nos Eddy had screamed made an awful lot of sense now. 
“That’s some shitty nightmare.”
And then, Brett realized something. “Is that why you’re always late in the morning?”
Eddy shrugged. “I’m bad with being on time anyway… but yeah.”
“Jesus…”

They fell silent again, the light from the moon or the street lamps outside, Brett couldn’t really tell, illuminating parts of Eddy’s room through the slits of the not entirely shut blinds and although the reason for their embrace was quite concerning, Brett found himself burying his nose deeper into Eddy’s hair as a deep calmness overcame him. 
“This helps, you know”, Eddy murmured eventually, his voice heavy, tired. 
“Really?”, Brett asked while a weird happiness washed over him. 
“Mhm.”
“Wanna lay down so we can go back to sleep?”
Eddy hesitated. Brett could feel it in the way his breathing stilled and his body got more stifled and was already wondering which part he’d said had made Eddy uncomfortable and was ready to curse his unattentive ass, when the taller uttered, “Uhm… will you… can you keep your arms like this?”
“You mean… around you?”
“Sorry!”, Eddy immediately cut in, “That was dumb! Sorry I brought it-”
“No! It’s not! Of course I will!”, Brett replied, a bit too enthusiastically maybe, but who the hell cared at this point? He laid both of them down, the pillows thankfully long tossed to the side by now and drew Eddy closer to him, throwing all caution and doubt off Eddy’s bed and very likely out the window as well.

“This good?”, he asked quietly and allowed himself to inhale more of Eddy’s wonderful, kind of musky and yet sweet scent. 
A small nod. “Yeah.”
“You think you can go back to sleep like this?”
“To be honest, this is probably the only way I can go back to sleep”, Eddy maffled. 
“Go ahead. I’ll keep you here. Maybe you’ll dream of bubble tea?”
“That’ll be awesome actually!”
“I’ll get you some as a thank you tomorrow.”
“Brett. What you’re doing now is more than enough, you know”
Brett smiled and closed his heavy eyelids as his unfiltered tongue formed, “And you do know it’s my pleasure?”
Brett could hear the smile in Eddy’s next words before he slowly drifted off. “Thanks anyway.”