Play my heart

Chapter XII

 All this time, things have only been getting better. They get worse in the blink of an eye.

It's their first day back in the city and he gets a desperate call from Adryan. His words all jumble together, a mix of panicked and furious Darren knows all too well. He's out of the comfort of his house before Adryan finishes the first sentence. They don't need many words to understand each other, so it only takes a minute for Darren to get the essential bits.

He finds Dawn where Adryan had told him, sitting in the cold with a tiny picnic basket in her small hands, and pretends he doesn't see the disappointment in her face when it's him and not Adryan who drives up to her. Ushering her to get on behind him, he explains the situation as fast as he can.

They rush through the darkening streets on his motorcycle, and he barely registers Dawn's arms holding onto his waist. Never has he wished more to be able to drive faster, to bend time and distance to his will. Every red light seems to last centuries; Dawn's desperation drips through his clothes and onto his skin like acid.

Darren slows down on the deserted street as Adryan's plane takes off and cuts through the sky above their heads. When he stops the motorcycle, Dawn climbs down, still holding the basket in her hands, and stumbles a few steps forward. He can tell she's weeping without having to see her face. She keeps her eyes glued to the plane shrinking in the distance.

"Adryan, you idiot," she whispers, and it breaks Darren's heart to hear her like this. "I didn't get to say goodbye... didn't even get to tell you I..."

Darren stops a step behind her. Tell him what? His stomach turns into a ton of rocks falling to his feet. They're both still frozen on the spot when Dawn's phone buzzes with a text. She brings it to her face and Darren reads the message over her shoulder.

I'll be back soon. Don't move and wait for me.

I love you, Dawn Wu.

He drives her home, unable to get a word past the knot in his throat. The instinct of trying to make it better is nowhere to be found—there is no cheering her up, anyway, not in these circumstances. She hops off in front of her place and doesn't say goodbye.

Two things wait for him back home: Nini, turning her curious eyes up at him, and a text from Lee telling him where and when they're meeting tomorrow.

"You look like shit," is how Lee greets him the next morning, in one of the music rooms at their empty school.

"Shut up," Darren grumbles, lowering his violin case to the ground.

Lee, of course, doesn't listen.

"No matter how pathetic you look, I won't hold back on you, just to be clear from the beginning," he threatens, taking his place in front of the piano and displaying the sheet music.

Darren rolls his eyes and takes his violin out of its case. He doesn't need anyone to hold back on him, thank you very much.

When thinking that, though, he wasn't expecting Lee to be this fucking ruthless.

He makes Darren go through the piece twice on his own, then does the same himself. After that, they start putting their parts together. They go from top to bottom twice without stopping, no matter the mistakes they make on the way. The third time, on the contrary, Lee makes them halt at every passage they have trouble with, and they go over it again and again until sort of getting a handle of it. It all doesn't sound like much until taking into account the fact that the piece lasts around thirty minutes, and has a lot of passages where they keep messing up.

By the end of the afternoon, Darren has memorized the first two pages out of repetition alone. They've stopped once to get lunch and that's as much of a break they've allowed themselves.

Exhausted, Darren drops to the floor and watches Lee's profile as he works on the third page, trying to get the pedals on the right places. The same few lines fill the room over and over, piling on each other at the corners and pressing on the windows.

He's not as talented as Darren, he considers, but he makes up for it with unrelenting practice. Lee purses his lips in a focused gesture, and his fiery eyes scan over the sheet with such intensity it seems likely for it to burst in flames at any time. After a minute, he seems to forget about Darren's presence and, to be honest, he's not complaining.

His tired eyes roam the boy's figure, barely paying attention to the notes on repeat. Lee's brown hair sticks up in weird places—it started unassuming, hours earlier, and it got progressively worse as the time passed. His clothes are as flashy as usual, black turtleneck under an angry red jumper, almost offensive to the eyes, and a jean jacket covered in messy highlighter doodles.

His fingers are what catches Darren's attention the most. Long and slender, they fly through the air and press down on the keys with seemingly no effort. He can't say they're graceful—he has the tiny nails of someone who regularly bites at them, and his brown skin gets a new gray stain with every annotation Lee does on the sheets. He wears a plastic pink ring on his index finger, and it no doubt bothers him with every move, judging by how he keeps adjusting it. No, Darren can't say they're graceful hands but, somehow, he finds them as mesmerizing as the sounds they produce.

"You can go now, you know," Lee's voice shakes him out of his thoughts, making him jump. Darren looks back at his face, barely in time to catch him looking away. "I'll stay a bit longer, there's still some things I wanna fix by today."

He can't tell how long it's been, or if he's been caught staring.

"I can wait," Darren's mouth says without his permission.

Lee keeps his gaze stubbornly fixed on the black and white keys.

"You don't have to."

Darren gets up and stretches his back like a cat. Locking the violin away in its case, he glances around and makes a decision.

"I'll get us something to eat, yeah? What do you want?" They aren't supposed to bring food to the practice room, but that's hardly going to stop them.

Finally, Lee peers up at him out of the corner of his eye. "I'll accept some coffee."

"Gotcha."