Play my heart

Chapter XVII

Lee's apartment is much less grandiose than Darren's mansion, though he suspects it's mostly to make a point. It's the top floor of a flashy building, complete with wooden floors, ceiling high windows and an upright piano with dinosaur stickers on it.

After shrugging off their coats and taking off their shoes, Lee guides him to the lounge, uncharacteristically quiet. Darren's eyes fall on the mess of music sheets scattered on the ground in front of a black couch. He gets closer to inspect them—they're handwritten scores, he realizes, scribbled in blue and black ink, several bits crossed out and rewritten. There's no telling what's the beginning and the end, if an order like that even exists. He spots a word sprawled out at the top of a random page: 'Confession'.

"What do you have to confess?"

A few steps ahead of him, Lee practically jumps out of his skin, whipping around.

"What?!" he yells. His eyes widen like saucers upon discovering the mess of sheets on the floor, and scrambles to pick them up in a flash of movement. Darren backs away, confused.

"Are you composing something?"

"Of course not!"

When he's done gathering the papers, Lee gets up, beet red and avoiding his gaze. He stuffs the sheets in a bag and disappears into the kitchen. Darren follows after a second.

"Not a word, Darren Kohn," Lee warns. He's holding a knife now, and Darren knows him well enough to keep his mouth shut tight.

He leans on the doorway, content to watch Lee work around in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, taking things out of the fridge. He ties a bandana on his forehead to keep his hair from falling on it, and rolls up his sleeves—it all gives him a weird, casual look that Darren never expected to be so entranced by.

"So anyway," the pianist starts, still not looking at him. "Wanna tell me what happened?"

"Hm?"

He gets a vague gesture in response. "I don't know about your experience, but in mine, people don't just start bawling their eyes out for no reason. Most of the time, at least. Lisa gets a bit like that a week before her period, but still, like. Did something happen?"

Darren frowns, he'd rather not think about what happened at all. Still, he assumes Lee deserves an answer, what with everything he's done so far. He crosses his arms in front of his chest to brace himself.

"Well, uh... You know how Adryan's been away for some time?" he starts and Lee nods, mixing some things in a bowl. "We haven't been able to reach him at all, but Caesar and I wanted to make something to send him or whatever. So I was doing my part, getting Dawn to record a message for him—she didn't even get to say goodbye so I imagined that'd be good for her."

He pauses, swallowing around the lump in his throat. Despite his fumbling, he doesn't miss the way Lee glances at him out of the corner of his eye, feigning nonchalance.

"Stuff happened and then she tried to kiss me," he rushes, barely opening his mouth. For a moment, he harbors the hope that Lee hasn't heard him, but it crumbles when the boy arches his brows. "I mean, she did kiss me, I guess... so I panicked, ran away, and you know the rest."

A heavy silence falls between them. Lee keeps his face blank with evident effort, but Darren can't tell what kind of reaction he's trying to hold back. He stops mixing the ingredients, seemingly forgetting about his task entirely. Darren chews the inside of his cheek and tenses his shoulders.

"Hey, you can't tell anyone about this," he says as an afterthought. "You hear me? If Adryan finds out, he'll kill me first, then Dawn, and then you, just for good measure. We need to focus on rehearsing for the concert, so we can't get into any trouble."