In Hybrid Moments

Chapter I: Kidnappendence Day

[AN: More allegorical guys being dudes :v! Sorry not sorry I'm about to call definitely-not-Daron's hands tiny like 500 times in this story. Also disclaimer, I don't know how to play guitar I just started... I also barely know piano, I haven't played since I was like ten, so I don't know if I've written something regarding these instruments that makes no sense haha whoops ;P]

The Gavorkian brothers had actually played really well at the Independence Day anniversary thing at their church, to Rouben's surprise. They'd played an old-timey melancholy tune, Hassan on guitar with Hirsh singing low and playing a few backing chords on his keyboard. Rouben thought his friend really was too damn humble, claiming he was "hardly a musician", "really no good at all", that he "just messes around with it every now and then", so he made sure to smack his face once he saw him at the cookout after.

"What did you tell me you can't sing for?" the young man accosted, glaring at Hirsh as they sat on the slope of the hill in the field behind their church.

"Ow," Hirsh had laughed, "What? No, no, that was just one of those songs from freaking choir, anyone can sing that stuff. Not that everyone should..."

"You've got range like crazy, though! And you play too! I can't even – Wait a minute..." Rouben pondered an idea, then calls up to one of his friends, some gangly dude who was piling up pastries on a plate up on the crest of the hill. "Sako!" he shouted.

"What?" Sako asked.

"Dude, Hirsh can be our keyboardist!" Rouben said and then, swiveling to face Hirsh, "You should play for our band, dude!"

"You have a band?" Hirsh replied.

"Yeah, I mean it's mostly just the two of us," Rouben said, tilting his head toward Sako who himself started to nod as he lowered himself to sit by Rouben's side, "sometimes Shaggy – but if we had you on keys we could get real vicious with some of the more complex stuff I've been trying to do..." He trailed off wistfully. "The sound would be way cleaner, yeah!"

"Oh man, I've been meaning to get a band started with some guys for the longest time...," Hirsh mused aloud, rubbing the back of his neck.

"For real, dude, you need to be jamming with us!" Rouben asserted while stealing a morsel from Sako's plate.

"So you play, what, guitar?" Hirsh asked.

"Yeah I'm guitar, Sako's bass," Rouben answered, voice muffled by a half-mouthful of cookie as Sako waved. "And Shaggy's on drums. And I sing too. But we'd sound way better with a keyboard."

"Wait, so you sing and play guitar at the same time?" Hirsh said, fiddling contemplatively with his beard. "Oh man, I could never get the hang of that."

"Yeah, jam master right here" said Sako, as he cocked his brow and nodded toward Rouben.

"Ah, well, I mean, you know..." Rouben stammered in response, shrugging.

Hirsh looked at Rouben a moment before smirking and pointing out, "You're doing the same thing you told me not to do...!" The guys matched each other's gaze for like a second and a half before Hirsh placed a soft little retaliation slap on Rouben's cheek.

"I mean I'm not, like, good," Rouben giggled, rubbing his cheek sheepishly. "You're, like, 'good' good, you know? Like you sound good, but I don't know if I could really say I'm good or anything..." He brushed a few strands of hair out of his face awkwardly. "I honestly probably sound like shit most of the time but I just don't give a fuck, you know? I just like getting loose with it."

Hirsh realized that this was the first time that he'd ever heard Rouben use profanity in direct conversation with him, probably because this was the first time the two of them had ever really talked for any significant span of time without Hassan or either of their parents being around. He was unexpectedly intrigued to hear Rouben speak uncensored, as it seemed like an indicator that he might actually be getting to know him as a man rather than as the neighbors' kid who he'd had to keep and eye on a few times at the library when his parents hadn't been able retrieve him from school right away.

Rouben convinced Hirsh to go find Hassan's guitar where he'd left it indoors and bring it back out to the hill so the kid could show him a couple of songs that he and his friends had come up with. From the second song onward, Rouben would pass the guitar back to Hirsh for a bit so he would try his hand at the song Rouben had just played, mess around with the rhythm and put a little of his own spin on it. At one point he impressed Rouben with this one really tricky chord that suited the song in a way he had never expected to appeal to him so much, so Rouben hastened to take the guitar back and try that out himself.

"Ugh, I can't get it!" Rouben groaned after Hirsh showed him about three times how he'd done it. "Fucking crazy, how do you do this.."

"Shrimpy baby hands—" Sako muttered under his breath.

"I will make you death look like an accident!" Rouben yelled without lifting his gaze from the instrument. The young man hazarded few more increasingly frantic attempts to play the chord before he slowly lifted his face toward Hirsh with a pitiful look and peeped "...Help..."

Hirsh ended up half-kneeling behind Rouben, trying to guide his pressure on the frets. "You really have to clamp down on these two," he said, pressing the kid's middle and index fingertips into the strings with his own. And... wow..., Sako was so right, the kid's fingers were so impossibly tiny.

"Damn, that is sexy, though" Rouben muttered over the sound of the crisp, clean chord that Hirsh helped him to produce. The latter loosened his grip slowly as Rouben tried to strum it a few more times. The note came out more messily as Rouben strove unsuccessfully to keep the same pressure on his own. "Aauuuggghhh!" he groaned in frustration.

"Too bad it's not a left-handed," Sako snickered, "you'd probably have way better grip on the other side."

"Shut uuuuuuuup," Rouben shouted sardonically before clarifying under his breath, "That is true though, I won't even fight that." He peeked over his shoulder then darted his eyes away when Hirsh's expression of half-disbelief half-amusement confirmed that he'd caught that dirty little innuendo.

After a few minutes, Rouben gave up, returned the guitar to Hirsh, and let himself flop backward onto the grass. "Ugh this thing is taking forever," he muttered, noticing his mother was still quite engaged in conversation up on the crest of the hill where all the food was. "Hirsh- you should kidnap me!"

"What?" Hirsh laughed in response, looking down toward his young friend.

"Kidnap me, Hirsh, I'm bored!" Rouben repeated, flailing his arms melodramatically. "Look at my mom, she hasn't moved in a fucking hour. Just go tell her you're taking me! And then buy me snacks with the ransom money!"

So Hirsh and Rouben strode up the hill to where the latter's mother was chatting with some other old people. "Mom, Mom," Rouben had called, tugging on the woman's sleeve. "Can I go home? Hirsh says he'll drive me!"

Rouben's mom, laughing, thanked Hirsh for taking "the little terror" off of her hands. Hirsh tried not to look too eager when he said it was no problem at all because it really wasn't but still, he just tried not to look too eager. He didn't exactly have any nefarious plans regarding her kid or anything, but something about the prospect of being alone with him stirred up all kinds of inexplicable, anxious energy in his chest.