Music to my Ears

Interlude 2

It was a beautiful day. 

The sky was singing.  The birds were blue.  Everything was tranquil as Jin and Yoongi walked side by side, holding ice cream cones tight within their sticky grips.

"I can't believe you just got plain vanilla!" Jin said, staring at the pure white ice cream in Yoongi's hands.

"And I can't believe you got cotton candy!  I feel like you're definitely going to get a sugar shock from that."  He eyed Jin's cone.  " I don't know how anyone can stomach anything so sickly sweet."

"Clearly, I can.  You can have your basic flavor.  Leave me and my cotton candy alone in peace,"  He said as he licked the pink ice cream, the bright, colorful sprinkles falling off and onto the concrete path beneath as he did so.

"You know," Yoongi paused in brief contemplation.  "This was a good idea—coming here, to the park."

"You deserve it!  Did you hear yourself back there?  That was magical.  You were in need of a treat after that performance you pulled off." He said, in between licks of his sugary dessert. "And I was in need of a break."

Yoongi blushed as Jin continued to lick the edges of the cone, making sure that none of the melted ice cream dripped onto the side of his hand.  As they walked under the shade of the willow trees, Yoongi thought back to the practice room.

----------------------------------------------------

He was staring absentmindedly from his usual seat behind the piano, his arms folded on top of the piano case, his cheeks pressed up against his folded arms.  He stole a glance at Jin, sitting beside the open window, the translucent, pale white curtains fluttering behind him as the wind brushed past.  He sat crosslegged in the black plastic chair.  In his lap was a novel he had been obsessed with recently, the open pages revealing that he was a good three-quarters of the way through.

Something inside him changed when he looked at Jin. There was nothing special, no grand revelation, and yet, something was different.

Yoongi flipped the piano case open, his chest feeling light as he looked up at the music sheets in front of him.  Then, he began.

He started off slowly, the pace calm and serene, building up in intensity as more and more arpeggios joined the mix.  His back bent as he hunched over the piano, Yoongi swayed upwards with each crescendo and back down with each diminuendo, each bounce and lilt of the music displaying itself physically through his actions. His hands throbbed against the clack of the keys like a drumming heartbeat.  His breaths were rough and shallow, as if he were racing alongside the notes that were escaping from the open back of the grand, his hands moving about the keyboard erratically as he dissolved into the music. It made its way into every corner and crack of the classroom, the sonorous deep voice of the piano leaving no silence behind.

As his breath stilled and his eyes closed, he could only see that freeze frame image of Jin sitting next to him, silently.  The warm light scattered through his smooth black hair.  A glint bouncing off of his glasses and onto the pages in front of him.  Jin's lips pursed as he was absorbed into a particularly dramatic scene, from what Yoongi could only assume, as his index and middle finger gripped tight onto the next page, eager to flip it and continue on with the story. 

Time stood still inside that head of his.

Even while closing his eyes, the notes came naturally to Yoongi, who had played this piece dozens of times over the course of Jin's mentorship so as to cement it in his muscle memory.  His chest swelling and dying as the notes did, his breath slowing as the song came to an end, Yoongi's eyes fluttered open.  He was back to present reality, a reality where he had noticed that he was beaming the entire time.