Archive of Our Own ^beta

Now

Fuck.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Bcc: [email protected]
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS [Principal Percussionist Audition Results]

Dear Ms. Niima,

We would like to congratulate you for successfully passing the audition for the chair of principal percussionist at the Ilum Philharmonic. After having stayed with us as a percussionist for half a decade now, you have shown tremendous growth as a musician and a member of the ensemble. It is for this reason that we believe you to be exceptionally qualified to be named our new principal percussionist.

Please tell us your dates of availability so that we can discuss things with the admin moving forward re: changes to your salary, benefits, etc. for the upcoming season.

Hoping to hear from you at the soonest possible time and many, many congratulations again.

Kind regards,
Dopheld Mitaka
Ilum Philharmonic Orchestra – Personnel

She deserves it.

Of course she deserves it. More than Dameron or literally anybody in that goddamn section. More than him too, much as that stings to admit.

Not out of some deep-seated insecurity. Not out of some fragile opinion of his own worth that he’d go mad at the idea of losing to a woman of all people, as his mentor used to say.

No, not that. Because he’s honest enough to know just how talented she is. And above all else, because he knows that he has no one else but himself to blame for this crushing disappointment.

Because that is his chair. Or was.

Technically, it would still be up until August. But who is he kidding? It’s already as good as gone.

By the end of summer, Benjamin Solo’s name would be cut and pasted to the very bottom of the ensemble list on the Ilum Phil’s website. Because the percussion section is always at the bottom. Because Frederica Niima would replace his name now, right under the label Principal Percussionist.

It took her five seasons but she finally did it. And of course she deserves it.

Fuck—

He can’t loathe her, no matter how much he tries. If it were Dameron stealing his chair, then it would have been fair game and his living room wall, his bookshelves, and his record player would now be completely decimated. But she won it fair and square, the only one worthy of prying it from his helpless hands.

So he tears the newspaper to shreds instead because he needs to lash out at something. The scraps get into his cup of lukewarm coffee, on top of his half-eaten omelet. By the time he steps out of his house and into the real world in the afternoon, he can no longer behave like this. Like a child letting his feelings get the better of him at best and fully poison him at worst.

The last time he did, it cost him. And now—by all intents and purposes, and in every way except official—he’s at the bottom of that list.

And she deserves it. If he keeps telling himself that often enough, maybe he’ll finally retch out that bitterness from the pit of his stomach. If he starts acting his age, maybe he’ll finally see sense in the admin’s decision, why she’s the best choice moving forward, why they needed this change in the first place, why he should consider himself lucky that he even has a job after everything that he did.

It is his fault. He’d never admit that to a single soul, but he knows it’s his.

For now, though, resentment simmers. But not at her. Just at himself.

At his countless failures.

Half A Year Ago

He drums his fingertips on the smooth tabletop, absently settling on a syncopated rhythm. Common time, roughly 90bpm, marcato with every second beat.

Only the clacking of the laptop’s keyboard competes with his own steady thrum. He glances at the source of the unwelcome noise, right there across the long conference table—that stick-in-the-mud HR guy Mitaka typing away, lifting up his hands from the keyboard every now and again so Canady beside him could peer at the words on the screen. The director only makes the tiniest nod before Mitaka starts typing again.

To Canady’s left, Maestro Holdo quietly peruses a stapled stack of printouts. E-mails, screenshots of Messenger group chats, transcriptions of phone calls, incident reports. Whenever she shakes her head at what she’s reading, her purple curls fall over her eyes. She’s the least well-versed in this whole affair that he’d really like to put behind him by now; after all, she’d just replaced its instigator.

And to her left is deputy director Hux, an even stickier stick-in-the-mud. Fingers laced together atop his own identical copy of Holdo’s printouts, back ramrod straight, nostrils flaring. Ben has already counted how many times—three—the fucker’s eyes have fallen on him, disdain and disapproval in that sneering green.

God, he hates these people. Minus Amilyn Holdo because she just got here. But god, he hates them.

They haven’t done anything, honestly. But that’s just it, isn’t it? They did nothing.

Finally, Canady remembers why the hell they even called him for a meeting. And of course he’d go through the checklist of niceties first.

“So, Benjamin,” he says, evidently trying to keep his tone light. “How are you?”

But Ben has no patience for that stupid list.

“Can we please get to the point?” he asks, chewing on the inside of his mouth. A bad habit he never broke.

His fingers change up the rhythm. A new section. 6/8, 156bpm, staccato triplets for each beat.

Canady sighs heavily, the furrow in Holdo’s brow and the roll of Hux’s eyes the backdrop of his disappointment. “All right. Well, then… I’m sure you know exactly why you’re here.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Solo,” says Hux, throwing him a withering look. “We’ve been through this a hundred times—”

“We have, haven’t we?” he replies, this close to actually snapping. “There is no ground left to cover. He’s gone. It’s over.”

“It is far from over.”

Canady raises a hand to shut his deputy up. “Thank you, Armitage. And yes, Maestro Snoke is no longer with the Ilum Phil. We owe our eternal gratitude to Amilyn for filling in on such short notice—”

The maestro’s smile is almost cursory, disappearing as soon as she gazes back at Ben again.

“But you are still here,” Canady goes on.

He slouches on his seat, relaxed, cool. The complete opposite of the version of himself screaming and stomping only in his head. “Oh, I see what this is. You’re firing me.”

“Not yet.”

And of course Hux speaks up again. “But one more incursion—”

“Thank you, Armitage. But no. Benjamin, I need you to understand that what happened in September—what you did—has serious consequences. We can agree that you were in the right, from a moral standpoint. Maestro Snoke was not—”

About damn time you realized it.

“—and as you can see, he paid the price for it. But the way you went about involving yourself in that conundrum was wrong.”

What the fuck did they think would happen? That Snoke would stop if everyone played nice? Kindness doesn’t beget kindness. You’d be naïve to believe that.

“But… You’re not firing me?”

“If we intended to, you too would have been dismissed. Now answer this, no sarcasm, no snappy retorts. Why do you think you’re still here?”

Ben stares at him. “You want my honest opinion?”

“Yes.”

“Because I’m the best you’ve got,” he declares.

It’s true. It has to be true. Because those sticks and mallets, those timpani, that snare, that marimba, that xylophone, those tubular bells, that triangle, that tambourine, and whatever the fuck else he has to play—Those are all he has left in his life. Without his music? Ben Solo is nothing. Just some nepo baby who over-grew and overstayed his welcome. Even now.

He has to be the best. He can’t afford not to be.

“Much as some here would prefer not to believe that,” says Canady, voice laced with resignation, the only consolation the way Hux bristles at the jab, “we have to agree that it is—by a decent margin—the truth. Your service to the Ilum Phil has been invaluable.”

Niima is the only one who could compare. She could even best him if she really tried. The only percussionist on the entire planet he’d allow that privilege. The only one he’d settle on #2 for just so she could be #1.

And this whole mess? It was all for her.

“But.” And the way the director says that one word makes him freeze and drop the mask of his cool veneer for the briefest moment. “Innate talent and skill are not necessarily the qualities that make a fine leader.”

He narrows his eyes. “I don’t follow.”

“Your closeness to Maestro Snoke—”

“We’re not close.”

“You were. And in the fallout of that relationship, your fellow percussionists under your leadership bore the brunt of its consequences.”

“Only because the old man was a percussionist himself. He kept attacking my section and—”

“This is not about the maestro, this is about you. You did not protect your section members, you led them right into the crossfire. Could you imagine Enric or Jannah abandoning all sense and leaving behind the first violins—and the entire orchestra, at that—by the wayside just like you did?”

“I didn’t abandon my members.”

“A blatant lack of transparency. No teamwork whatsoever. By involving yourself in this, you reeled them in with you… They only supported you out of loyalty. Especially Frederica, bless her. You ought to consider yourself lucky.”

“I do.” And he means it. Known and self-declared asshole that he is, he can’t even begin to think of how he could repay her.

“But we have to tell you now—with this investigation business finally behind us—that there are repercussions that you need to face,” Canady explains. “You’ve broken the trust of the administration, but more so of your colleagues. We are not getting rid of you, merely considering that perhaps leadership of your section would be better suited to someone else… And this is why we’re dismissing you from your chair as principal percussionist and opening auditions for the next season—”

“You can’t!” he cuts in viciously, his blood hissing in his veins.

“We can. You may be tenured and protected by the union, but the orchestra is well within its rights to ask you to re-audition as it sees fit. This is the same practice we’ve applied to all sections, in both regular and special cases. You are not exempted from this.”

He hides his hands under the table if only to ball them up into fists, desperate knuckles threatening to rip through his skin. “I earned that chair.”

“Prove that you still deserve it, then. Re-audition. And if you come out the best, as you believe yourself to be—”

“As you agreed I am not five minutes ago.”

But Canady ignores him. “—then we can put this matter to rest.”

“For what it’s worth…” says their new music director, speaking at last. Her lips form a thin line, but he can see a flicker of sympathy in her eyes, even empathy on the crease on the bridge of her nose. When did he become this good at reading people? Or is he only seeing what he wants to see…?

“—the board has agreed that it would be a closed audition process,” Holdo explains. “Only for you and your fellow section members. As I’ve come to understand, these are people you trust. Your friends. If you do lose out to one of them, you can still hand over the chair to someone you can believe will take care of the section just the way you did.”

Hux barely manages to hide a scoff.

With a rapid glare at his deputy, Canady adds, “I hope you understand why we’re doing this. You are not barred from trying for the chair again. We’re still giving you a chance to reclaim it. But there’s no guarantee that you will. If one of your members bests you, be a good sport and accept defeat. And behave. We’ve faced enough scandals already.”

“You’re still a member of the Ilum Philharmonic,” says Holdo as she offers a small smile. “Whether you are a principal or not, this is one of the most prestigious ensembles in the world. The chair just means a bigger salary. But the reputation…”

He gets it already. Fuck.

As if he hasn’t spent twelve damn seasons with one of the most esteemed orchestras in the British Isles, possibly in the whole of Europe. As if he hadn’t endured insult after insult hurled in his and his fucking section’s direction at every rehearsal. As if he hadn’t struggled day in and day out not to speak, not to react. Until he couldn’t bear to be silent any longer because that asshole planned to target her and only her. Until Ben saw red and risked the last thing he had left in his life. For her.

And not a single one of them across that table—not even Frederica Niima herself—has a single clue.

He could just tell her. But what would be the point? It’s over. She’s safe.

That’s enough.

Though he keeps his eyes on Maestro Holdo as she speaks, none of the words make it to his ears. He can no longer register a single sound.

Once the admin has exhausted their explanations and he’s exhausted his arguments, they finally let him go. He practically drags himself to the library at the end of the corridor, his legs transformed to lead, the mallet bag strapped to his shoulders burning a hole through his clothes before deciding to burn his bare skin too.

Music has always been his greatest burden. But never before has it felt this heavy.

The library door is ajar by an inch or two, but he immediately recognizes the voices within.

“—husband is a git.”

“You take that back, Niima. Or I’ll—”

“What? Not give me my sheet music for the month?”

“Don’t tempt me!”

Her laughter mingles with the librarian Finn’s. His at G3, hers at D5. His with a damper, hers with an accent over each giggle. And every single sound is genuine.

He’s never made her laugh like that before.

Ben pushes the door open, already expecting the laughter to be snuffed out in an instant and for her face to fall at the sight of him.

Of course he’s right.

But Finn smiles, even if it does seem forced. “Here for your sheet music?”

“Yes.” And before he forgets, he adds, “Please.”

“I’m just about to get Rey’s too,” Finn replies, already heading down a sterile, brightly lit row of shelves. “Be right back.”

Left alone, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Finn’s desk piled high with loose, unsorted pages of sheet music, a little hill of eraser shavings in a corner. When she ventures a split-second look at him, he glances back. She looks away just as quickly.

“How was it?” she murmurs.

“Well.” His temper is already beginning to calm. Naturally, as it always does, when she’s near. He still can’t make sense of how she does it, when she barely does anything at all. Her presence alone is a balm to his permanently open wounds.

“Well?” she asks under her breath.

“They’re not firing me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nodding.

“I knew they wouldn’t,” she says. “You’re too good.”

He leans close, a swift chill surging across his skin when she doesn’t move away, when she even meets his eyes and he doesn’t see that default look in them halfway between sheer loathing and resigned tolerance. “Is that a compliment?”

Then she rolls her eyes and it’s over.

“A statement of fact,” she replies. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

After a stretch of awkward silence, he swallows and spits out the news she’ll eventually learn about anyway. “They’re opening auditions for the principal chair.”

She looks up at him. “You’re… You’re leaving?”

Her voice has grown mousy and unsure, a quiver rattling each syllable.

He stares back at her in confusion. Shouldn’t you be thrilled?

“No. I’m still staying.”

Her sigh is near-silent. But in the quiet of the little library, he hears it well enough.

All at once, he wonders if the frantic beat of his heart is loud enough for her to make out.

She speaks over the annoying noise, drowning it out just when she needs to. Does she just know? “Trying out for new ensembles is a pain. Not that you’d remember, it’s been ages since your last audition—”

“Of course I remember. That’s not something you forget.”

“I’m just saying,” she says with a huff, her eyes narrowed.

There. The Rey that he knows is back, her glares more familiar and more comforting than her smiles. He ignores the stabbing sensation in his chest at the thought.

“There are more upsides than downsides if you stayed,” she goes on, reeling off a list of things he already knows. Tax exemptions and end-of-the-year bonuses and food allowances during their summer tours. His eyes flit down to her fingers fidgeting with the straps of her mallet bag.

“Save your breath,” he replies. “I’m staying.”

She closes her eyes as if to resist rolling them. “But you are re-auditioning for the chair?”

“I have nothing to lose in trying.”

A lie. For one, he could lose his pride.

“Thinking of doing it?” he asks.

You should.

She shrugs. “There’s more to it than just performing. I’m not cut out for leadership.”

“There are more upsides than downsides,” he says, taking the risk by incurring her inevitable glare. His comfort.

And of course it works.

He keeps at it, knowing how much it riles her up. Just because it invigorates him. He needs this, as selfish as his motives are. He needs her and her temper and the bare minimum of what he can ask her to give him. “You’re stronger than you know… You know?”

“Oh, please. Don’t patronize me.”

“It was a compliment.”

“Tch.”

But Finn’s footsteps are growing louder again and, within seconds, he reappears with two matching black binders. He hands one to each of them and brings out his logbook for them to sign.

“Exciting stuff for you lot next month,” he says. “More of the Mahler cycle. Resurrection, this time.”

All useless words that they already know. Just to cut through the airlessness. 

Rey beams regardless, casting him a smile far too cloying to be real. But he knows why she does it too. Because she can’t help riling him up either. Whatever her reasons, he dares not ask. He hasn’t—not once—within the last five years.

Coward.

“Lovely, we need the whole gang for that piece!” she exclaims. “I’m sure Ben would appreciate that.”

“You know me so well,” he murmurs, shaking his head as he gives Finn back his pen.

As he pockets his pen again, Finn gives him a look that he assumes must be sympathetic. His eyes are kind, though guarded. Not that he can blame the man. They’re not really friends.

“You’re still with us next season, yeah?” asks Finn.

He does his best to give an almost flippant upwards nod and shoves his rising bile back down his throat. “I’m re-auditioning for the chair too.”

Finn’s mouth drops open before he checks himself.

“Best of luck to your husband,” Ben goes on smoothly, his mask firmly back in place. “If he attempts to steal it from me.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that she’s scowling at him again.

Finn hesitates for a moment. “And you, Rey?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Well, you both know I’m siding with the hubs on this one.”

“Everyone for themselves, then,” replies Ben, waving his binder as he slowly backs out of the room.

But Rey isn’t too far behind. He holds the door open for her.

“After you,” he whispers.

“No, you bloody go first,” she says sharply, giving his shoulder the softest whack with her binder.

So he does.

“See you, Finn!” she calls over her shoulder before joining him in the corridor. They revert back to their utterly uncompanionable silence on the way out of the building.

It’s long past lunchtime and his stomach is empty, but he has no appetite. Not when his guts are filled with rage just waiting for a go-signal to be let out, tempered only by the one person capable of calming him down. She’s hungry, though, unsurprisingly.

“God, I’m starving,” she mutters, adjusting the strap of her mallet bag over her shoulder as they walk past tour groups and suit-clad barristers along the Strand.

This happens often enough that neither of them asks each other anymore. The two of them on that short eight-minute walk from the concert hall to Temple Station, as long as they have no other gigs. Every afternoon from Tuesdays to Thursdays. Every Sunday evening too. But not on Friday and Saturday nights because the station closes at 7PM and she has to take the bus and he a taxi instead. And not on Mondays either because that’s their day-off, the one day of the week when he misses her.

And that’s really only if the repertoire asks for more than just one person from their section. Which hardly ever happens, thanks to the Western canon. He gives Beethoven some rights only because he scored his Ninth with the bass, the cymbals, and the triangle, besides the usual timpani. A genius, truly, but too early for their section’s time.

It’s nothing, those eight minutes. Just a daily routine. He’d be loath to admit that it means far more than nothing to him, when it’s undoubtedly nothing more than a daily nuisance she’s learned to tolerate.

Ilum Phil percussionists just banding together when they can, that’s all.

After crossing the intersection, she leads him to a Greggs. Because of course she would. The cheapskate. If she tries for the chair and nails it, then she’d get a salary increase. Then maybe she’d stop stuffing herself with sausage rolls.

But still he follows her into the bakery. She even buys two sausage rolls. Sweet Jesus.

“You know that’ll kill you,” he quips as he sits across from her and watches her pull out the pastry wrapped in blue-and-white paper.

“Everyone dies.” Without any grace whatsoever, she bites into the sausage roll.

“Morbid but okay. Besides, it’s overrated.”

“How dare you,” she says, haphazardly wiping off flakes on her lips with the back of her hand. “Remind me again what your passport is, Mr. Solo?”

“American, why?”

“Then you’d do well to remember not to insult a national treasure whilst on British soil.”

He snorts. “If we’re talking national treasures, then clearly it has to be—”

“Elgar,” she interrupts.

“I was going to say Holst.”

“So predictable. Of course you’d choose the one who wrote more pieces for us.”

“Obviously, we need to further our cause.”

She laughs, the sound coming out like an undignified bark. He knows it isn’t real. “That’s just how it is, isn’t it? Everything has to be about you.”

Well. Damn.

She must see a flash of hurt in his eyes, no matter how desperately he attempts to hide it, because her face falls far too suddenly. But he brushes it off.

“Hitting below the belt, I see,” he says, shaking his head.

“I’m hungry, leave me alone.”

“Not an excuse.”

“Fine.” As she takes another bite, she pushes the other sausage roll towards him.

He gives her a questioning look.

“Isn’t that yours?” he asks.

“No, I bought it for you.”

His stomach does somersaults. Just hunger, most likely. “I don’t eat that shit.”

Groaning, she snatches it back. But he reaches for it just as she does, his hand wrapping around hers. Her breath quickens at the contact yet she swats his hand away.

“Do you want it or not?” she demands.

“Give it to me.”

Pushing it back in his direction, she murmurs, “You’d think a simple ‘thank you’ would be enough…”

“Thank you.”

“Too late.” She frowns at him then takes another big bite. “I know you’ve not had lunch yet, since they called you to that meeting right after rehearsal.”

A realization suddenly comes to him.

“You waited for me.”

The creases between her eyebrows only deepen even further. “No, I was with Finn and I just happened to still be in the library when you showed up. Christ, what did I just say? Everything always has to be about y—”

He wants to tell her.

I put my career on the line for you.

I didn’t even hesitate.

For you.

But what good would that do?

He didn’t do it for her praise or her approval or her gratitude. Not even for her smile.

She finishes her sausage roll in another spell of uncomfortable silence between them, broken only by the din of other customers’ chatter and some autotuned pop hit playing on the speakers.

“I’ll think about it,” she says as she wipes her mouth.

“About what?”

“Auditioning for the principal… We’re still friends, whatever the outcome. Aren’t we?”

Friends.

Is that what we are?

The way things stand, they’re nothing more than co-workers with a passing tolerance for one another. Forced into an eight-minute walk from their workplace to the Tube station for lack of other companions. Sitting in a fucking Greggs together for no explicable reason other than the fact that he just happens to be there while she keeps blatantly ignoring that the bakery sells salads too.

“Yeah, of course,” he replies. “Nothing changes.”

She clears her throat. “Anyway, it’d be nice. I’d love to experience lording over you for once.”

He laughs softly, hastily quashing the flurry of images that suddenly rush into his head at the idea of her lording—dominating him.

Though she presses him to eat his food, he only stuffs it into his bag. And together, they head for Temple Station in the lingering warmth of that early autumn afternoon.

She gapes at him, thoroughly confused when he joins her on her platform.

“This is my side,” she says, then points at the platform across the tracks. “And that is where you belong.”

“It’s called the Circle Line for a reason, it goes in a circle.”

“No, it doesn’t. Besides, you are wasting your time taking the longer route home.”

“What makes you think I’m going home?”

“All right. I won’t ask.”

Good. Because the answer is obvious.

I want more than just those eight minutes. I want more than just sitting across from you in a fucking Greggs.

Seven stations before her transfer at Liverpool Street. Is 15 more minutes of her presence too much to ask for? Just another 15 minutes of her balm on his wounds. Both the ones she sees and the ones she never should.

It isn’t rush hour yet, half of the seats unoccupied, but neither of them makes a move to sit. Instead, they stand facing each other, hands grasping onto the yellow pole. Her palm gradually slides down, landing atop his fist. The contact of her skin against his remains an unacknowledged danger, no matter how much it tortures him not to just wrap his own hand around hers.

“You’re taking the Elizabeth next?” he asks as though he doesn’t already know the answer.

But she nods regardless. “It’s great. More leg room. Have you ever taken the one to Shenfield before?”

“Nope. Maybe one day I’ll have to.”

Most people would probably say, You should pay me a visit, then you’d be able to take that train. Even though it would all be just empty words, just like his question. Something to fill the silence. But she says nothing.

“Are you okay?” she finally asks after three stops.

“What?”

“You know what.”

He sees worry muddying her eyes. Actual, genuine concern. No questions flimsily concealed as barbs, the way hers usually are.

“Nothing I can do about it,” he replies, and closes his eyes so he can retain even a semblance of control over his breathing.

Her fingers have moved, those little things—because everything to him is little—draping over his, her fingertips dipping into the gap between his middle and forefinger. Her breath hitches when he runs the pad of his thumb across her palm, tracing the lines again and again. Still unacknowledged. Too dangerous.

“If I don’t make it to the final round,” he says, looking her straight in the eye. “Do me a favor?”

“What do you need?” she whispers.

“Kick Dameron’s ass.”

She averts her eyes, giggling to herself.

It’s real.

Her first for him.

Ben adjusts his grip around the pole, certain that his knees are ready to give way. And all because of a giggle. A4, mezzo piano, completely inconsequential. He’ll embed it in his memories forever.

“I will,” she promises.

“The next station is Liverpool Street. Change for the Central, Hammersmith & City—”

Shit.

That he has to feel it right now, when he only has a minute or two left with her. There as he stands a scant few inches in front of her, close enough for her to see, he feels a stinging in his eyes.

Courage. Before it’s too late—

“If I could pick anyone to take my place,” he admits, “I’d choose you.”

She opens her mouth, though it forms no words. Perhaps her wide eyes are answer enough. And how she suddenly swallows, and how painful it looks. And how her nails begin to dig into his skin, and how it stings.

“If you win the chair again, then you won’t have to worry about any of us,” she replies at last, her words near-incoherent, spilling out like she just wants to be free of them.

“It was my job to. And I never did.”

She takes a quick glance over his shoulder at the ticker sign. “There’s always another chance to do better.”

I wish.

The train grinds to a halt.

“This is Liverpool Street—”

The moment passes as the doors open. She extracts her fingers from his grasp.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ben.”

Then she’s gone, the balm on his skin wiped clean, leaving his bare flesh and its gaping wounds exposed. He closes his eyes and lets his rage wash over him.

Now

Naturally, as these things go, the news spreads like wildfire. No one really sends him any messages, the ensemble either collectively deciding that they’d rather not reopen anything about the scandal in the first half of the season or otherwise just lacking any last shits to give when it comes to him. And honestly, why would they? He doesn’t blame them.

The only work e-mails he gets are from Mitaka—one with a copy of his new contract, the other an orchestra-wide memo on bank holidays—but apart from his subscriptions to online magazines and the occasional junk in his spam folder, there’s nothing else.

She texts him, though.

- Ben, just checking in. Are you okay?

And he swallows back his own self-pity because this moment is for her, the product of years of thankless hard work. She even texted him first when he ought to have sent his congratulations as soon as he received the e-mail that morning.

He types in his reply.

- I’m proud of you.

Deletes it because it sounds patronizing.

- Great job.

Sounds sarcastic.

- Congratulations.

Indifferent.

- Thank you, yes. Congratulations. Can I treat you to a Greggs sausage roll?

There. Jokes are always a good solution, second only to barbed remarks in this torment five years running. He hits Send.

She responds within seconds. Two emojis—a laughing face and a red heart. Then another text comes in before he can even fathom that that’s the first heart she’s ever sent him.

- Going out for drinks with the others later. Will you join us?

He’d really rather not, when he can just imbibe within the comfort of his own home, accompanied only by his misery and his Spotify app. Who knows what he’d say to her, what he’d do? When he’s just about ready to fall apart, when he knows that it’ll take all he has later that evening just to pretend she isn’t there on stage with him so he can pull himself together and be another stone-faced member of the ensemble.

She deserves it. Like hell.

He’s damn proud—truly proud—of what she’s achieved.

She even beat fucking Dameron like he asked her to. Not that it was hard.

Ha.

And in the process, she beat his pride to a pulp too. But only because he left it out in the open and placed it right where she could step on it.

At least he has his income. At least he has his music. At least he has that house, London Zone Fucking 2 and nearly paid off in full. And at least he has her, and those eight minutes from the hall to the station, and her lips and her shirt covered in puff pastry flakes, and her eyes that only ever glare or roll when he’s there. And her music. God. Her music.

It’s a privilege to hear.

Just like that giggle on the Circle Line a year ago, that A4 mezzo piano he rewinds again and again in his memories. Enough to get off to because it’s all he can take of her. Enough.

Because if there’s one thing she doesn’t deserve, it’s him. Benjamin Solo, washed-up musician with a career hanging on by a thread and his arrogance attempting a balancing act on top of it. And all around him, the messes that he’s stupid enough to make but not brave enough to clean up. She deserves better. So much better.

Swiping at his stupid, undeserved tears before they can even fall, he sends his reply.

- I’ll be there.

Two Years Ago

The strings peter out into silence as Snoke makes a dismissive wave with his baton, a vicious claw with neither a curve nor talons. The cellists in front of him are thankfully protected by that two-meter distance and his own music stand, even if he leans over it like a wizened hawk too used to diving in for the kill. With a shake of his head and the hint of a grimace, he says, “Mind that rhythm… Play again from 20.”

He’s been at it for about 45 minutes now, still picking on the strings, but mostly the violas as if he never got the memo that the viola jokes are just that. Another 15 minutes and the percussion section—along with the entirety of the winds—will have done nothing but sit at the back in utter silence for a whole hour. Not that that’s unusual. But it’s already the second day of rehearsals on the Berlioz and they’d just gotten to Part II - Roméo seul, when Ben’s whole section could finally be useful.

The strings start again from 20. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his section members passing something around. Wexley on bass to Tosin on cymbals. Then to the triangles—Thanisson first, Niima after. Rodinon and Muran on tambourine next… until at last Muran holds out the mysterious object in his direction, taking care not to touch the head of the timpani. Ben’s eyes fall on his colleague’s palm.

M&S mint drops.

He almost snorts—

“First violins, pull yourselves together. More articulation on the triplets. From 20…”

Great. Make that one hour.

He picks out a piece from the box then hands it over to Dameron sitting behind the other set of timpani.

It’s no lozenge that would sting on his tongue. But it’s enough to keep him from dozing off. Then again, that’s one of the most difficult things to do in Sir Clement Snoke’s presence. A second set of guts—or perhaps even a third—would be a prerequisite before any of them could be bold enough to make a show of being bored or pissed. Or really to defy him in any way.

Even Ben has never tried. But of the entire ensemble, he’d be the one to need a fourth. Maybe a fifth set, just for good measure.

Coward.

Not that he has a choice. He’d like to keep this chair, thank you. And so the mask stays on—that placid face, those lips forming a neutral line, those unreadable eyes—because he can’t let his mentor see. Even if a sea of strings and winds sits between Snoke’s podium and Ben’s place behind the timpani. Or perhaps especially because of that. Despite that distance, the percussions sit on a riser… and Ben is right in the maestro’s line of sight.

Only when the mint has already melted in his mouth does he feel a pair of eyes trained on him. There, from his left. He doesn’t need to glance in their direction to know that they’re hazel. Sometimes vivid green, if she wears that emerald-colored blouse she never wears often enough. But he supposes that it’s better that she doesn’t. That blouse has no sleeves and her arms are too much of a distraction.

He looks up from the mallets in his grasp, swivels his stool ever so slightly, and meets Rey’s eyes.

No smile. Not even the slightest shift in the set of her jaw or the curve of her brows. Just a glance bordering on wide-eyed and breathless that neither of them seems capable of breaking. So, not a glance after all. A gaze.

We good?

She nods.

Snoke sneers out another barb—“Listen to yourselves. Less disjointed quavers, gentlemen, ladies. Start again, trills just before 23.”—and Rey has already focused her attention back on the triangle in her hands before he realizes that she read his eyes. Though he ventures another glance or two at her, she never looks back again. Just as well. Sure he prefers her green, but even the hazel is distraction enough.

75 minutes into that Wednesday rehearsal, the maestro finally thinks to have the entire ensemble join in. But not a single one of those idle souls heaves a sigh of relief, only sits a little straighter and gets ready. Breathes. Focuses.

Driving out hazel and green—and, Jesus, every last color—from his mind, he stares at his mallets and wills himself to relax.

Allegro. Half note, 108. Common time.

The ensemble begins, the cellos and basses in charge of the melody as the other strings and the woodwinds build up the texture with rapid passages, higher and higher, louder and louder, until everyone downstage has made a wall of sound. But it isn’t quite complete yet, not with its sinews still missing. Just a few more measures until he joins the fray.

One two three four—

He brings down his mallet, letting the low G linger for only two beats before he delicately sets his fingertips atop the head to dampen the resonance.

And now, Rehearsal Mark 20.

Breathe.

With wrists completely at ease and grip around the sticks secure, neither too tight nor too loose, he plays a roll. Fortissimo, right from the point of attack. Both mallets strike the head so rapidly that they appear as a blur, as one. As the passage ends, he rests his fingers on the head, his touch featherlight.

26 measures of rest until his next passage. So far, so good.

Snoke still drones on and on above the orchestra—not enough of this, too much of that, nothing ever enough—but it’s just a day in the life of the Ilum Philharmonic’s 128-strong ensemble. Nothing they aren’t used to. At least he hasn’t barked at them to stop yet, even past 29. And to think it’s been, what? Seven minutes? That’s got to be an all-time rehearsal record—

“Stop!” the maestro snaps.

Fuck. He cursed it. He must have.

“The two young ones at the back of the class,” Snoke says in a silky, shiver-inducing voice as he jabs the baton in their direction. “Thomas and Frederica.”

The winds and the strings know better than to glance back at them, already familiar with how Snoke operates. Grilling entire sections, making them repeat passages over and over and over, until they’re thoroughly red-faced and humiliated. In this case, just two people. And some of the newest ones too—Niima, just tenured that season, and Thanisson, close to the end of his probationary period.

Of course he’d pick them. Easy targets.

Waving his baton almost lazily, Snoke turns the page of his score. “From the measure before 28. Triangles, oblige us if you please.”

Ben gazes at his two section members. So far, so good. Both of them are calm, certainly looking much calmer than he’s already beginning to feel. There’s no knowing with their music director, what could make him drop his ice-cold veneer and unleash a tirade they would never hear the end of.

Niima and Thanisson hold up their triangles, beaters at the ready.

Raising his baton, Snoke begins, “And—”

Their sound is resonant. Dynamic and shimmering, masters of an instrument the world is hell-bent on making a mockery out of. The mere thought makes Ben’s blood boil. It’s always the things that seem so simple to people who don’t and refuse to know any better. Triangles, recorders… Fuck, even Mozart’s music.

Snoke tut-tuts, swirls his baton in front of his face like he’s swatting away a dying fly. The triangles lift their beaters and wait for… Who knows what? Constructive comments? Insults? The baton hurled at them over the heads of the wind players?

“No distinct rhythm,” he says. “You sound like a telephone. You have heard one before, I presume? Then again, we mustn’t expect too much of the smartphone generation…”

Scattered laughter across the ensemble. Clearly forced, quickly silenced.

“Once more, from 29.”

Ben watches them carefully, beaters in their right hands tapping out the same rhythm again and again—triplet, quarter, triplet, quarter—as their left hands hold up the instrument and dampen the sound with each beat. A gentle tap of their fingertips against the metal so every note is articulated.

It isn’t easy at this tempo. But Snoke of all people ought to know better, a percussionist himself before he decided that life in front of the orchestra with its glamor and publicity and jaw-dropping paychecks was more his style. He ought to blame Berlioz, if he refuses to lay blame on anyone else.

“I hear no difference. Again.

“Articulate the triplets. Two, one, and—

“Is this really so difficult? Tarata-ta.

“No staccato. It’s tarata-ta, not ta-ta-ta-ta.

“Again.

“A clear rhythm is all I ask of you. Ta. Ra. Ta. Ta.

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying?

“And I’m to believe that you two are RAM alumni? Ag—!”

“Then you play it.”

The orchestra gasps. Wexley almost drops his mallet. Their concertmaster Calrissian looks like she’s been petrified. Snoke makes a guttural sound enough to send shivers crawling across Ben’s skin, a growl just before he attacks… And Ben? With zero warning, his heart shoots up his throat and lodges itself there, fully intent on murdering him. Because that wasn’t the maestro’s voice.

Rey.

“Don’t,” he says, the word only mouthed as he stares at her in astonishment.

“What did you say?” asks Snoke, rising from his stool and gripping the edges of his music stand.

With her jaw set and her eyes defiant, she holds out the triangle and the beater as if he could ever reach it or would even attempt to. Her nostrils flare and her shoulders heave, her entire body close to jittering like a time bomb Sir Clement Snoke never expected to set off and clearly has no clue how to defuse.

She repeats herself, her tone even more insolent. The boldest declaration of her motif. “You play it.”

He can’t remember when she has ever looked this beautiful before. If she even thought of wearing that emerald blouse, he’d be done for. Six grand for a coffin repatriated to the US of A. She could slice his face with the edge of a freshly unpacked cymbal. Poke his eye out with a plastic mallet. Chomp off his ear, and even then he’d thank her. They’ve always been too big anyway.

Over the sound of his pounding—swelling, close to bursting—heart, he hears a buzzing noise sweep through the orchestra. Amidst the din, he imagines that he can make out a handful of words. “Niima” and “Jesus Christ” and “Holy Mary,” and damn if this doesn’t turn her into a saint at this point. She’d make a believer out of him.

He digs his nails into his jeans when he feels the slightest twitch under the crotch seam.

Not. Now.

If only to distract himself, he whips his head back to face Snoke. Even this far away, Ben can see his wrinkled, white-knuckled hold around the shaking metal of the music stand.

“You,” Snoke hisses. “You are asking me to demonstrate a simple passage you’re incapable of doing?”

“I’m incapable of doing it the way you want,” replies Rey coolly, her voice resonating in the now deathly silent hall. Thrusting the instruments out to him, she says, “Show us how you want it done. Maestro.”

The air has grown too still, too suffocating. Ben swears he can even hear the dust particles in that void—

“Benjamin Solo,” says Snoke, spitting out his name but never tearing his eyes spitting out its own venom away from Rey.

Ben freezes, just about manages to refit his implacable mask, finds his voice enough again to croak out one word.

“Sir?” he asks.

The maestro slumps back onto his stool, a trembling hand reaching back to clutch at the handrail behind him. “Demonstrate so we can put this drivel behind us.”

Shuffling, the uncomfortable scuffling of feet, a hundred chairs groaning, scores of mouths whispering, as both he and Rey rise from their chairs. She reaches over the two tambourines and hands him her instrument. In that split-second when they graze each other’s fingers, he almost starts at her cold, damp skin.

It’ll be okay.

But she doesn’t nod this time, only stares at him with her mouth clamped shut and her eyes now incapable of concealing those well-guarded flickers of fear.

He secures his hold around the triangle’s clip and takes care not to touch the metal. And all the while, he feels countless pairs of eyes staring up at him expectantly. But he only concerns himself with two—ice-cold blue 30 feet ahead, hazel-slash-green and everything he can never have two feet to his left.

Focus. Breathe.

“I…” he begins, hopes against hope that his turtleneck hides how he swallows. “I don’t know how you want it played… Sir.”

BAM.

Snoke slams his fist against the music stand.

“As it is written!”

Just to get it over with, he plays the rhythm without any thought. Tarata-ta.

The baton clatters onto the smooth wooden floor, rolling towards the violas’ feet.

“This is the percussion section I am burdened with,” Snoke murmurs, the glower now a permanent fixture on his features.

Taking a deep breath, Ben plucks up what little courage he has to defend himself against a mentor who has only ever praised him in the tiniest slivers of space between a dearth of decade-old insults. It must be from her touch, clammy as it was just then. The passing of boldness from one filled to the brim to another almost completely bereft of it.

“To articulate this rhythm, you’ll need to dampen it after every note.” The words tumble out of him. “But at this tempo—”

“Not another word from you, Solo.”

“You won’t even hear what he has to say?” Rey asks, indignation dripping from her mouth.

Enough, Rey.

But…

It bursts, that fragile shell still holding his heart in place. Molten gold—or it might be green… or hazel—spreads liquid warmth across the expanse of his chest.

She isn’t done yet. “These passages aren’t idiomatic for the tri—”

“You question Berlioz?” Snoke cuts in viciously. “Challenge his intentions? Tenured for a day and you think that—”

“No one is exempt from criticism.”

Snoke’s fingernails rake across the music stand as he grabs his score, the scratching enough to make the strings around him wince. With furious and all too audible whispers of “insolent” and “never” and “my life,” the maestro storms off the stage.

The excruciating silence stretches on. And on. And on. So loud in its nothing that it rivals a child hacking at their first violin after Lesson #1. Complete torture. But at last, Calrissian rises to her feet.

After all, the show must go on.

Placing the violin on her shoulder, Calrissian gives a sympathetic glance at their row in the back—the stragglers of the classroom, the endless troublemakers, the brats. “Does… anyone else have issues with articulation? Speak now or forever hold your peace, gang.”

Ben finally lets himself breathe, the rest of the orchestra letting themselves laugh in turn. But not too loudly, not too much. Just a secret moment of levity, one they ought to treasure for how rarely these come and how briskly they go. Just another day in the life of the Ilum Phil.

“Why do you let him do that to you?” Rey asks hours later on their usual walk to the Tube station.

He glances at her. “Who’s this ‘him?’”

Her response is automatic. A shake of the head, an eyeroll, a groan. Sometimes he asks himself if she really means any of it. Right now, though? Without a doubt.

“He underestimates you,” she declares. Her voice has taken on that tone again, the same one from earlier in the hall when she unleashed that ticking time bomb. When the bomb that exploded wasn’t even her or anything she aimed at Snoke, but that flimsy protection around his heart. God, if she only knew what target she hit.

To be fair, he was a lost cause ever since. Percussion Rehearsal Room K-8. Half past 2 in the afternoon. The 10th of April. Knitted sweater, faded jeans, worn loafers. Bare face, band of freckles, brown eyes in that fluorescent light. How wrong he was about that last one. But he was right about one thing—when he heard Audition Finalist #7 play behind that thick black curtain during the final round an hour later and something in his very core told him that he’d just listened to someone truly special. A singular gift. A privilege to witness. It was only a bonus when he realized the next season that #7 and Knitted Sweater Girl turned out to be one and the same. And not once has he regretted championing her for the vacancy in the percussion section.

Not once.

Even if a fucking Knight Commander of the Something-Something of the British Empire himself insists that she can’t play the triangle. For the record, she can. It’s Berlioz’s fault.

As they stand shoulder-to-shoulder and wait for the pedestrian light to turn green, he whispers, “You okay?”

“Are you?”

He shrugs. The light shifts from red to green.

“Hey, you didn’t answer my question,” he says when they reach the other side.

“You didn’t answer mine either.”

“I shrugged.”

“That’s a non-answer.”

“It’s a loaded answer.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Well, Frederica? Are you okay?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

Oh, shut up.

She doesn’t say it. She does, however, stop him beside a toppled sign (“Do Not Overtake Cyclists”) that nobody’s attempted to fix. Her touch—as light as it is as she clutches the sleeve of his sweater—could burn a hole through the polyester. He wishes it would.

“What is it?” he asks.

And because the courage she passed on to him still lingers inside in tiny droplets, he catches her wrist before she lets him go. She doesn’t stop him, but neither does she clutch his own. Only lets herself be used as an anchor.

“Look at me,” she says in earnest, “and tell me what you see.”

He blinks. Blinks away the downpour of fantasies flashing before his eyes that now see only the outline of her face. And in that outline—Well, there’s not much that’s different. The same routine, the same route home. Still that walk along the Strand, past Somerset House, maybe a stop at Greggs so she can stuff herself with that garbage. Only…

Their hands are entwined, his engulfing hers. She leans too close and yet not close enough, and he needs to close the distance between them so he can brush his lips against her forehead. They get handsy on the Tube, under the cover of their mallet bags. And then they head home and step inside and follow the motions of their routine after work. Lunch, his cooking. An hour of practice on the timpani for him, maybe on the snare or the marimba for her. Another hour of practice—or two—on the bed. Or the sofa. Even the stairs if they can’t help it. Some gig at a jazz club or a class at a conservatoire. A tangle of big limbs and lean limbs, black hair and brown hair, moles and freckles, under the blankets. Their snoring, a welcome duet. Just another day in the life—

Fantasies.

“You,” he replies. “Just… you.”

She sighs heavily and murmurs, “I’m a woman.”

At that, he can’t help chuckling. “I can see that.”

“No, you can’t.”

The last traces of her shared bravery evaporate. They walk to Temple Station more uncomfortable with each other than any other instance that he can recall. And before they head for two separate staircases, he calls after her. She turns back, her foot hovering above the step.

“What, Ben?”

“Don’t make him mad tomorrow?” He doesn’t mean it to come out as a question, yet it does.

“I make no promises,” she replies, giving him a little wave before disappearing down the stairs.

It takes him too long to go down his own stairs, but he gets there just in time for a nearly deserted train. Two stops in, he feels his phone buzzing in his pocket. He adjusts his grip on the handrail, even lets himself take a dry gulp, before opening the new e-mail.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)

You’ve grown soft. I knew a woman in the section wouldn’t do the IP any good, and least of all you. I should hope that the little bitch learns her place and that you, if I might be so lewd, grow a new pair of balls. I can tell that you sorely need it.

Now

It was Rey who suggested it first. Not too long after what the orchestra now half-jokes about as the “triangle incident” two years back. But it was on one of those innocuous, meaningless walks to the station when she mentioned how the other sections were doing nights out on the regular after concerts—“You know, drinks or… I don’t know, a movie? Anything. I mean, the horns are so close. Like real friends. Could be fun!”—so why not them?

He came up with excuse after excuse—“They have families. Wives, husbands, kids… Responsibilities… Hobbies…Mortgages, fuck…”—before that face finally did him in. A new excuse, then, just to be able to spend another hour in her presence.

It was never a regular thing, not when the section never even met that often during rehearsals. He’s pretty sure that they never really became friends either. Just colleagues banding together for lack of other options and out of a shared interest. A shared spite too, regrettably. But it was enough to satisfy her.

Ben was the one who decided on that bar right across the road from St Clement Danes, just a little further down the Strand. And since then, the section’s nights out in that bubblegum neon-lit den turned into an expected—if not always constant—part of their lives.

Of course things changed at the beginning of the season. When he fucked up.

Once, Dameron and Wexley dragged him to the bar after a concert out of obvious pity so he wouldn’t feel left out. But the conversation had already grown painfully awkward. Even talking to Siri or a wall seemed like a better option. Another time, Muran invited him and they drank more than they talked. At least the alcohol was good. Then they had their section’s little Christmas party, which was really the last time the band of eight were all together for reasons other than work. For Rey’s benefit, he put on a face and played nice.

But for all intents and purposes, her dream of a true friend group and not just a bevy of coworkers remains to this day a dream. Another thing he needs to ask forgiveness for. He’s already lost count how many apologies he should be making to how many people.

Which is why he doesn’t really know what the hell he’s doing here, with an anime soundtrack booming from the speakers, a still untouched pint of Guinness in front of him, and his skin turned hot pink from the lights.

Maybe because he has now well and truly lost his bid to reclaim that chair. Just another member of the percussion section. No longer in charge of their performance schedules or what instruments they need to play. No longer responsible for maintaining the semblance of a social life between them.

Just… Ben.

He feels a hand on his back and looks over his shoulder.

Rey smiles at him before draping her black concert dress inside its dust cover over his own tuxedo’s on the next chair over. With careful hands, she places her mallet bag beside his too. Only then does she take a seat next to him, her short denim skirt hiking up her thighs, her bare knee grazing his jeans. Her lipstick needs retouching, the pink tint undoubtedly staining the rim of a water bottle earlier in the hall when it should have been staining his mouth instead.

Fu—

He grabs the stout and takes a swig, too fast that dark droplets spill onto the tabletop.

“Moscow mule, thanks,” she tells the server.

“Where are the guys?” he asks, coughing a little just as she turns back to face him.

“Oh, um, they’re on the way.”

And finally—because he never said it in person in the hall earlier, because he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her or to anyone at all—he says, “Congratulations, Chief.”

She smacks her fist harmlessly against his shoulder. He almost wishes she’d made it hurt. When he nudges his pint in her direction, she takes a sip without hesitation. He pays special attention to the side of the rim where she left the faded imprint of pink lipstick and asks himself if he’s always been this pathetic.

“I could use some help,” she murmurs.

“What, with the organizational side of things?”

She hums. “Like the spreadsheets you use? On Google Sheets?”

“So you’re telling me you don’t know how to click Fill Color on Google Sheets—Ow.” He rubs the spot where she whacked his knee under the table, feeling his head spin as her breath quickens at the accidental caress of his fingertips against her thigh. Yet she never moves her leg, never swats away his hand so he can’t touch her.

“I just need to understand how you decide which of us plays which instrument.”

His fingers drape over hers for a moment as he gently pulls the beer glass from her grasp. She lets him, for another moment more. Just like she let him touch her thigh, even if it was only by accident. And he feels long past drunk, though the Guinness is still more than half full. Drunk on this beauty who inhabits both his dreams and his nightmares, and her skin that he still hasn’t touched enough of, and the way her breath hitches when he does, and the way that makes him feel a pitiful spit of hope.

C5. Piano. Her tiny gasp.

He thinks he could get that to C6, the ambitious fucker that he is.

“You always put yourself first,” he explains. “Sounds selfish, maybe, but you’ll get used to it. As long as it’s the most challenging, it’s yours… So if we’re doing Boléro, you get the first snare. Then divide the other instruments between the rest of us. Now let’s say we played Brahms 4 the previous concert and Dameron got the timpani then. For Boléro, you’d give him the tam-tam. Maybe the celesta too if there’s nobody else.”

“So do a rotation according to their workload throughout the season?”

Nodding, he takes another sip of beer. “What would you do if Rodinon got the triangle on the Brahms?”

“Give him the second snare.”

“But what if Wexley never even got to play on the Brahms?”

“Oh. Then… Snap gets the second snare, Ricky gets the bass drum.”

That’s my girl.

Too fast. His delusions are too fucking fast—

He wants to throw something. Or maybe stomp on those damn speakers because he can’t take that tinny voice and its fucking E5s and F#5s any longer.

A better solution would be to kiss her and let her balm wash over his mouth. He settles on the rim of his glass where the memory of her lipstick still lingers instead.

“I think I always took it for granted before all this,” Rey admits. “Dopheld says you start planning it all out years ahead?”

“Well, not years, exactly. As long as you get most of it done in the previous season, you’re all good. Leaves more time to prepare for the next one. Then the next, and the next, and so on… Maybe it seems like a lot now. But it won’t always be.”

Her cocktail arrives and she mutters her thanks before sighing into the copper mug.

“Did you like it?” she asks suddenly.

“What?”

“Being the principal.”

The things that came with it, sure. The better paycheck. The prettier title on his resumé. The privilege to show off playing all the hardest things in their repertoire. The near constant strokes on his ego. The illusion of respect. Of being valued. Of being special.

“I did,” he says.

“Wasn’t easy, though. Was it?”

“Honestly? It’s probably as heavy a workload as Jannah’s.”

“But for less pay,” she murmurs as she runs the pad of her finger along the rim of her cup.

“Yup. Still, it’s better than being a regular.”

“I’m sorry I beat you.” And she sounds like she means it.

He laughs from deep in his belly. A true laugh so rare that it aches. And he takes another swig, an even larger gulp, so he can get that ringing in his ears going and feel a little less and laugh a little more and forget. But it’s only been a pint. He’d need a couple more that he really can’t afford, not with the matinee tomorrow and the potential nuisance of nursing a hangover.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Rey whispers, still not looking him in the eye.

“Anything.”

She lets out a quivering breath. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” he asks.

Though she lowers her head to hide her neck as she swallows, he doesn’t miss it. For one long unbroken moment while only that annoying soundtrack and the clinking of glasses and the din of inaudible chatter slice through the chasm of silence between them, she does nothing but sit still. He does nothing but wait.

Finally, she speaks.

“I’ve tried not to think about it,” she says. “Because focusing on that during the audition wouldn’t have helped me. But now that it’s over and I’ve got the job… It’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

Curse him.

He gently sets his hand atop her own. And even more gently still, he fits his fingers in the gaps between hers. She gives him a squeeze and smiles into her drink. And damn it, curse him. It’s all he can do not to grab her face and take what he wants to take but can’t—her lips, her breath, her deepest fears. He wants to make them his, devour them for himself, absorb them for her.

“That you got it?” he asks.

“I’ve been having back-and-forths with HR since this morning. They think it’s a good idea to have interviews. Say, with the Guardian. Though they said their goal is ultimately the Sunday Times. And I… I like to pretend that nothing affects me but…” She laughs at herself, a bitter flavor from her words landing on his tongue and planting a tender ache that blooms in his chest. “I still dwell on that stupid ‘triangle incident,’ even now. I can still remember every word he said. I’ve spent hours on the practice pad just thinking about it. And when I won that chair, I didn’t even believe that I got it on my own merits—”

“That’s not true!” he cuts in maybe a little too sharply.

“Would you just listen?” she snaps, shooting him a glare. “A part of me can’t help but doubt, you know? That irrational side of me keeps saying, ‘They only gave it to you for brownie points. Finally, a woman leading the back row. Look, a female music director! A female concertmaster! A female principal percussionist! How progressive!’ So the orchestra would look good in the papers. And after Snoke, who could blame them? And all right, maybe things will finally change. But what if they don’t? What if they still carry on the way they always do when there are no cameras around? And the worst part is that… I don’t even care that they’re using me. Only that I’m scared to death that I’ll disappoint them.”

She practically spits out a sigh before downing her mule, groaning as she sets down the cup now filled with only garnish and crushed ice. But as he opens his mouth to speak, to regurgitate whatever useless pep talk he can wring out of himself, just to say something, she raises her hand.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she says. “I don’t want your pity because I don’t need it. And I’m damn lucky. So much more than so many others, people who have music degrees that they can’t put to good use, people who never made it past auditions and probations… I could keep whingeing, but what for? About a ruddy promotion? About a salary increase that I’ve always wanted? Fuck no. I just… I just needed to say that.”

After a moment, she adds, “God, I shouldn’t have downed that in one go.”

“Yeah, should’ve savored it,” he adds, laughing softly before bringing up the glass to his lips again.

With a long, droning hum, she rests her forearms on the table and uses them as a cushion for her head. She drums her fingertips against the glazed wood, second to fourth fingers tapping out a simple quarter-note rhythm in 4/4, knuckles gliding across the tabletop in pretend glisses. He stares, wondering if she can feel his gaze pinned to the back of her head, but mostly wondering if his silence is enough. His eyes wander down the length of her spine—visible bumps and lines under the thin sweater, an inch of exposed skin at the very base where she didn’t tuck it into her skirt properly—then he clears his throat as if that could rid him of his guilt.

He takes a quick glance at the door. “What’s taking them so long?”

She responds, but the sweater sleeve muffles her mouth. He hears only mumbling.

“What?” he asks.

Lifting her head, she says in a feeble tone, “They’re not coming.”

“What.”

“The boys aren’t coming, Ben.” Another deep breath before she sits upright again. “I didn’t invite them. I lied.”

He’s not angry. Not really. In fact, not at all. But…

“You texted me that this was—”

“It was the only way to convince you,” she replies, a crease between her brows, her teeth chewing furiously on her bottom lip. “When was the last time we went out? Christmas? I keep asking you after work, with Tommy or Poe or whomever else. But you keep saying no.”

“I’m sure you know why.”

“Yes!” she exclaims, with a huff to punctuate her sentence. “I do! I know things are still awkward with the others, and if you don’t budge, there’s really nothing I can do. I understand that. But I just thought… You know, if it’s my victory party, then you’d at least be nice for my sake and say yes. Even if it was a victory against… well, you.”

He runs his hand through his hair, grips it a little too tightly as he does. “Okay, then. I’m here.”

“You are.” She averts her eyes and goes back to her lip-chewing.

His eyes softening as a sudden realization comes to him, he asks, “Was it just for that? To tell me your secret?”

“Don’t. Tell. Anyone.”

“As if I could,” he replies, grateful that the music is too loud for her to hear the hammering in his chest, hopeful that his face isn’t forming a grimace as his damn heart shoves and pushes against his ribcage.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She seems to steel herself for a moment before she meets his eyes at last. “And… I mean, I hate to bring this up again. It’s in the past and I promise that, after tonight, I will never mention it to you again. Ever.”

“Okay…?”

But she doesn’t elaborate. Only takes stuttering breaths and frowns at her empty cup. And because it’s clear that this is an ordeal for her—whatever the hell this is—he drapes his arm across the back of her chair. She regains her composure, even nestles against the curtain he’s made around her. The first time that he is her balm. Barely able to register that this is even happening, he almost doesn’t catch her next words.

“—shouldn’t be looking into it anymore. And maybe you’d ask why I’m talking about it now, after everything. But it never seemed like the right time to mention it to you, when I could see how you were trying to forget about it. But it’s behind us now and maybe… Maybe the wounds are patching up.”

“Is this about Snoke? The investigation?”

“Yes,” she replies, lines showing on her neck as she swallows. “Ben… I know you cropped out my messages from the screenshots, the ones you sent of the section’s group chat. I’m the only one who barely shows up there. And how many did you put in that ZIP file? Almost three, four dozen? Don’t bother arguing with me, I have my own copy of that thread on my phone. All eight of us do.”

He nods. Only nods, though his ears are ringing with screams echoing in his head and he can barely breathe himself, though he needs her balm now, only it doesn’t fucking work.

“Well?” she asks. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you crop them out?”

Turning his eyes away from her, he shifts in his seat and takes another swig, one too big that he hisses. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

She doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know. He could live without her knowing. Even if it makes him want to punch a wall or yank his heart out and rip it to shreds then eat it as punishment, he could.

“Ben,” she whispers. “Just tell me, please.”

“And what good will it do now?” he asks, alarmed by how much his voice trembles. “It’s over.”

“Was it to protect me?” she demands.

This is not how he thought this day was going to end. The very catalyst of his fall from grace trying to unearth herself from his pile of buried secrets.

Fuck—

“I already know what you’re going to say,” he tries to deflect. “That you don’t need protection—”

“And I don’t! But I need to know! Do you understand that I had to lie about my side of things after I saw what you put in that e-mail?”

Another fault, in his bottomless pit of them. One that weighs heavier than the rest hurled into that abyss.

“If I’d told them the truth,” she goes on, “they’d have dismissed everything you sent as a fabrication. When we could already sense that we were this close to having him sacked—”

“Which we did. It’s over, Rey. All right? It’s over. I’m sorry that you had to lie, that you were forced into things against your principles… But now, he can’t touch you. He can’t hurt you. And if he even tries, I’m going to k—That’s enough. That’s more than enough. Are you satisfied?” He snatches his glass from the table and downs the rest of that god-awful stout that’s as bitter as his own bile, his own thoughts, his own failures. “Jesus Christ.”

Her eyes are still wide. But the fire isn’t there anymore. None of that fury he wants to drown in, just a muddied gaze of utter confusion.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she murmurs.

“Nothing you need to know.”

“It’s about me.”

“So what?”

“I think I deserve the truth.”

But what would he be giving up for it?

For one thing, he might never get this night again. This night when she should be celebrating a well-deserved promotion but instead chose to be miserable with him out of her own free will. This night when he could hold her hand and brush his fingertips against her thigh and pretend that it’s nothing. This night when she asked him to shut up and let her bare the things that scared her to death. This night when she wanted only him.

And if he told her the truth, then what?

She’d run away. Because they always do. Because no matter how extraordinary she is, why would she be any different? Because he’s always been the problem. Last autumn was proof enough.

I did it because I love you.

And I’ve never loved anyone or anything more than you. Not even music.

It’s why I did it.

I was willing to give up my music. For you.

A single tear trickles down his cheek. She reaches up and brushes it away with her thumb, probably says his name from the way he sees it form on her lips, probably says even more though no sound reaches his ears.

It’s over. He’s gone.

And he tells her.

Half A Year Ago

Ben Solo: Came down with something and it’s not looking good. I’ll need a replacement for this week. Some of you are doing double/triple duty. (ICYMI: Mussorgsky Pictures + Scheherazade; Bruckner 7 + Mendelssohn VC)

Tommy Thanisson: Yay for triple duty! Hope you feel better, Ben.

Poe Dameron: It’s okay, bro. You can say it’s diarrhea.

Ben Solo: Sorry to disappoint you. It’s just the flu. And thanks, Tom.

Snap Wexley: Get well!

Bastian Tosin: Hoping for a speedy recovery!

Ben Solo: Thanks. Bastian, giving you the timps on the Bruckner etc. Snap et al., give me a sec. Will message when the sheet’s been updated.

Bastian Tosin: Noted. Thanks, bruv.

Ben Solo: And Rey, you’re on snare on Scheherazade.

Of course she messages him in private almost as soon as he sends that last one.

- Scheherazade? Me?

He turns over under the comforter that still doesn’t feel warm enough and types in his reply with clumsy thumbs.

- Did you really expect me to let Dameron get another opportunity to show off?

She doesn’t reply anymore. And by the time he’s looked over his own private Google Sheet a dozen times and thinks it’s adequate enough to transfer to the one viewable to the rest of the section, the meds are already beginning to set in. He places his phone beside the box of tissues on the nightstand with a loud yawn, fully intent on ignoring it for the rest of the afternoon while he bears with these damn chills and his runny nose. But he sees her name pop up in his notifications.

- Thank you. Rest up.

He misses the first night when she covers for him on Scheherazade and Pictures at an Exhibition. But in spite of the irritating remnants of a dry cough and the skin peeling on his septum, he’s pretty much okay by Saturday night.

Just to be sure, he checks the Ilum Phil’s website, even though he already knows what he’ll see there—the concert is already sold out. The quickest and easiest solution to his problem would be to watch the livestream. But having already been stung one too many times by the camera barely ever panning over to their section, he’d rather take his chances and wait for cancellations at the box office.

He has to see her. He has to listen and watch her up on that stage, on the chair where he should be sitting, playing the snare drum passages from hell that he should be playing.

Because where and when and how else could he ever get the opportunity? It’s only thanks to this flu.

“Benjamin?” asks the seller Nastia when it’s his turn to peer at her through the box office’s glass partition. “Member of the audience tonight, are we?”

“You got any no-shows? Please tell me it’s my lucky night.” Under the counter, she can’t see how his hands are clasped tight, cold and trembling both out of dread that it’ll be all for nothing and out of sheer thrill because what if?

“No cancellations yet and we’ve already sold out on same-day discounts,” she replies, giving him a sympathetic look. “But you can stay put here and wait until 10 before seven o’clock. No promises, though.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

“Good luck.”

Please don’t jinx me.

She doesn’t. And less than five minutes before the concert, Ben is rushing up to the balcony, distractedly wiping away tears from the corners of his eyes as he coughs his way up the stairs. It’s a shitty seat—L4, in a cramped corner near the emergency exit and almost at the very top. The orchestra would look like ants from where he’s sitting. But still, it’s better than nothing. Besides, from that vantage point, the percussions on the risers would still be in clear view. Visible ants is all. And no offense to the guys… but there’s only one ant he’s here for tonight.

With a booking for a week-long engagement at a festival in Switzerland, Snoke isn’t around for these changes in the percussion section’s roster. But all the better. His section members deserve this rare dose of quiet. If their messages in the group chat are anything to go by, they really like the guest Maestro Threnalli. But they should know better than to get too attached.

The section doesn’t have much to do when it comes to Pictures. He mostly blames the orchestrators. Mussorgsky too, if he's being sacrilegious. Secretly, Snoke for picking the wrong member of the Five in this all-Russian program. He should’ve gone for Borodin.

But if he wants a say in what his section—and the entire ensemble—plays, he’d need to become music director. And that’s about as likely as his hazel- or emerald-colored dreams.

Damn, this seat sucks ass. She’s wearing a sleeveless dress tonight and he’s nowhere near enough to see the spray of freckles on her arms, or the firm indentations on her biceps, or how she’ll work the muscles on her forearms when she finally gets to her part in the last two movements. If he’d planned this flu months ago, he’d get a seat down in the stalls.

He doesn’t know if it’s just his imagination… but he could swear that the orchestra sounds better with this guest conductor around. Maybe because this week, they aren’t operating on the dread of being shouted at. Less tension, less fear. Just the music singing and crying and shouting and laughing from a body made of 128 parts and one.

But no time to dwell on that now… It’s her turn.

Amidst the sea of strings and winds and their rich, warm textures, Rey slices through with something altogether different. Small yet resonant, almost unseen yet stamping an indelible mark. Softly, delicately, fully in control, she plays roll after roll on the snare. Like the sticks are a part of her, no longer just implements beating against the head of a drum, but an extension of her body. And in that short span of time as she stands at the very back of the ensemble, a mere ant from where he sits, a forgotten and ignored musician with an instrument hidden behind the prettier strings and winds, she is perfect.

Not that she isn’t always, faults and short temper and all.

Good Lord, he’s a goner. Not that he doesn’t already know that.

He only wishes he could see her arms.

Ben walks to Green Park Station in a daze on that cool Saturday night, ignoring his tiny coughs because all he can hear is her. Pochissimo più mosso. He’ll hear that snare drum even in his dreams tonight.

Seated on the Night Tube, he sends her a message.

- Superb rolls.

She answers almost at once.

- You watched the livestream?

He can’t lie to her. But what could he say?

I hung around the box office looking like a lost, overgrown puppy until Nastia finally got me a ticket five minutes before 7PM. Because I had to hear you in the same space, even if I could barely see you.

He settles on…

- I was at the hall. Balcony.

… and bears the shame of being so shameless.

But he should have expected her reaction.

- So you were out on a busy Saturday night just after recovering from a bout of flu? No, actually, have you even fully recovered? You know what, don’t answer that. Go home. Go to bed. Don’t reply.

He’s a fucking goner. He can’t even wipe the loopy smile off his face.

About a half-hour later, just before he tucks himself in as instructed, his phone rattles against the nightstand. He snatches it, thrilled at the unbelievable prospect of another message from her—because that’s got to be a new record—but it’s not Rey.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)

Still ill? I hope you’ve found enough in you to get out of bed and watch the livestream tonight at the very least. If you’ve not, I can send you the recording.

I should be quite worried if I were in your place. It appears that an overzealous little chit has her eyes set on your chair. Do not take this lightly. I know ambition when I see it.

Expect my call tomorrow at 9AM GMT. We must do something about this.

Remember that I only have your best interests at heart.

He doesn’t sleep that night. But how can he? And now that his cough’s become even worse, Rey’s going to kill him. He rises abominably early after that sleepless night, thoroughly sluggish but with only himself to blame, and sets about cooking and cleaning even while it’s still dark out.

By nine o’clock, he’s had breakfast, some physical exercise, and an hour of Stick Control on his practice pad. And still restless, his body still trembling and decidedly not from chills he’s already long recovered from, he brings out his vibraphone and starts cleaning the bars.

He sits cross-legged on his kitchen floor with the vibes’ bars scattered around him, a headband wrapped securely around his hair, his hands smelling like soap but covered in grime. And then, just when he’s nearly forgotten about it, his phone vibrates on the counter.

Shit.

He rises to his feet. Reaches over and swipes up the screen. Sets it to Loudspeaker because he’d rather avoid getting his sweat on the LCD. Paces. Paces.

“Benjamin?”

“Sir,” he replies, wringing his hands. “Good morning.”

“And good morning to you. You sound terrible.”

He coughs. “I’m getting better.”

“You ought to, and fast. I would much prefer you at the timpani by the time I return on Tuesday. Dameron is too… Dameron. And don’t even get me started on Wexley.”

“I’ll be there,” he promises and desperately begs himself to swallow down his panic.

“Good.” His mentor’s voice sounds even worse on speakerphone. A disembodied voice in some dystopia that speaks at the slightest suspicion. Only now, it’s his reality.

“On the subject of Miss Niima…” Snoke begins.

“What about her? Sir.”

“You watched the livestream, did you not? I expect you did.”

“I did,” he says at once.

“Your hearing is your best quality, unlike your grip. You must remember all the years it took for you to unlearn all that tension and tightness in your wrists. It is lucky that I gave you some much-needed guidance, or you wouldn’t even be here. Would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

That’s all there is to it. Say yes—or no—exactly how he wants. And the conversation will pass more quickly than it feels, a century of dread that refuses to let him age.

“Now tell me. What did you hear in Frederica Niima’s playing last night?”

He hesitates—He shouldn’t.

“Benjamin?”

“She’s better than she gives herself credit for.”

Wrong answer.

Shit.

“Oh?” says Snoke, his voice still level though Ben can hear the ice even underneath the crackling noise. “And do you believe her playing superior to yours?”

Yes.

“She doesn’t have my experience,” he replies.

“And your talent?”

“All the members of the Ilum Philharmonic are top-tier musicians.”

There. He swallows hard, his throat itching painfully as a cough tears through his chest. Snoke tut-tuts, and Ben’s sure that it’s a trademark at this point.

“You need to be back on your feet by the next rehearsal. The longer you’re away from your section, the more you lose control over them. These witless troublemakers have already had their fill of the limelight, more than enough for the nameless rank-and-file that they will always be. Now, listen very carefully…”

He knows what Snoke will ask of him. The maestro already recognizes her as a threat. And he can’t let that happen. Anyone—even him—but not her.

Never her.

Ben hears her in the recesses of his mind where he’s made sure that her passages from Scheherazade will live on forever—the perfectly balanced drum rolls, Rey at her very zenith. He sees her face on their meaningless eight-minute walks to Temple Station—the way she rolls her eyes, the way she groans, the way she shakes her head, the way she teases him to conceal her truths, the way she asks him frank questions so he can’t conceal his. Her texts bossing him around to go to bed. Her old shoes. Her freckles, on her arms, on her nose. Freckles hidden in the folds for a second or two when she scrunches it. The muscles on her forearms, well-honed, disciplined. The flakes of fucking Greggs sausage rolls clinging to her sweater, because she lacks discipline in other areas of her life. Because even then, she’s perfect that way. The woman who thrust that triangle at their conductor. The woman who told Sir Clement Snoke that he should play it. The woman who defended him.

Rey.

And he decides right there and then.

I know what I have to do.

He hits the Record button.

“—let this go on for far too long. Anyone at all in your path, anything at all in your way… You crush it. Do you understand, Benjamin?”

“Yes, sir.”

He always was a piss-poor planner. And it’s really no different now. At least he has enough common sense to google if this will land him in jail.

It won’t. But it could land him on the curb outside of the concert hall, the employees’ entrance at the back now barred. And no matter how hard he looks, how long it takes, he can never find the key to open it again. That door will be sealed shut forever. And not just that one door, but every single door into every concert hall of every orchestra on the goddamn planet.

Snoke would have him blacklisted. He’s powerful enough to pull those strings. Never should’ve underestimated a Knight Commander of the Something-Something with decades of clout to back him up.

But it is how it is.

As Ben saves PDFs of e-mail after e-mail between kyloren0535 and supreme.ldrxgl, as he screenshots countless messages in the percussion section’s group chat, he weeps. Laughs too because maybe now he’s gone mad. But it was only a matter of time. Something was bound to be the last straw.

Snap Wexley: And we are at it again with the ‘Are you unintelligent’ spiel from the esteemed Sir Clement…

Greg Muran: Rey, you were in the loo a while with the winds. How was Jessika?

Rey Niima: Not good.

Tommy Thanisson: They have to know this is happening. We can’t be the only ones?

Greg Muran: Oh yeah. You think the IPO’s unusual? It’s shite, this idea that ‘times have changed.’ I’m as old as your parents, I’d know.

Poe Dameron: That’s just how it is with these people. They abuse you, they harass you, and the damn board will do nothing. And you know why? Because they sell. How easily do people turn a blind eye as long as you're a superstar who rakes in all those subscriber numbers and walk-in tickets and keeps the sponsors’ pockets full? This easily. We’re living proof.

Rick Rodinon: Look, I’m just here for the name. Besides, the ancient one has to croak any day now. But who can say if the replacement will be any different, really. Not like we have a say in all this.

Snap Wexley: Fuck this damn orchestra. Fuck the Ilum Phil. Fuck Canady. Fuck Hux. They don’t give a damn about their musicians, never have.

Bastian Tosin: I just want to pay off my loan on the car. Would I rather not get a baton thrown at my head or maybe not get shouted at for a day? As hell. But I need to settle that loan.

Tommy Thanisson: My mates back at uni can’t even find vacancies. I guess I’m still lucky. We are.

Poe Dameron : Sure, but at what cost?

It’s over. For Sir Clement Snoke, with too much evidence piled up against him. For Benjamin Solo too, for breaking the trust of people he no longer has it in him to count.

A little after sunset, when the shadows are already long on his walls that now feel both too narrow and too wide and every which way suffocating, she texts him.

- Hate to admit it, but we’re starting to miss you. Are you feeling better? Going out with the others. Same place. Come join us? We’ll wait for you here.

Well. If this is the last time, then…

- I’ll be there.

Maybe they spend an hour or two at most in that bar, three if they’re really pushing it. But to him, it’s an eternity. Maybe they are friends, whatever the hell friends are supposed to be. Maybe in any other circumstance, they still could be.

He listens to Thanisson talk about his fiancée, to Muran about his kids, to Wexley about his students at Guildhall, to mundane stories about a sale at H&M or this new restaurant around the corner from the Royal Naval College or the quality of a brand-new pair of soft mallets or the trouble dealing with wonky tuning pedals on old timps. And across that tiny table where all eight of them barely fit, he steals glances at her. At that smile that he refuses to let Snoke wipe away. At that face he will probably never see again.

The two of them are the last to leave, as usual. He volunteers to carry her mallet bag and her dress in its dust cover, which then makes her roll her eyes. As usual. While the others are already off, rushing to make it to the bus stop or hurrying to another gig at a jazz club, they wait out on the curb in front of the gray-white brick walls of St Clement Danes.

“Are you coming back on Tuesday?” she asks.

He resorts to… “Business as usual.”

She won’t be there, anyway. That week, she, Rodinon, and Tosin are the unlucky ones. The repertoire only needs timps and occasionally the triangle and cymbals.

Her eyes search his face. “Are you okay?”

Could she tell? Could she see how any second now, with the tiniest prick of an invisible needle, he’d break down and explode into millions of particles of powder? Into nothing?

“Always,” he replies. “You did well this week.”

“Oh, don’t patronize me, Solo.”

He’ll miss her. He’ll miss this.

He raises his hand as a taxi approaches.

“Harold Wood, Tindall Close?” she tells the cabbie through the window.

“Get in, love.”

Ben opens the door for her—almost forgetting to hand over her things, almost wishing he didn’t have to—and watches until the taxi is already too far away to make out in that ocean of red lights and black sky.

By Monday morning, his cough is mostly gone. He keeps his phone beside his bowl of cereal, his Gmail app open right on the e-mail with an attached ZIP file full of dozens of screenshots. He stares at it, and at the short message asking to download the attachment, and at the hundreds of recipients whose addresses he got from the orchestra’s database. And he forgets to eat his cereal, until he’s left with only soggy crumbs.

His finger hovers over the little arrow on the top corner.

Ben takes a deep breath.

I love you.

Maybe… In another life—

He hits Send.

Now

He skips over the insignificant parts. For instance, like how much he loves her. But the story is more or less truthful. Only the motivations are kept vague, but she asks nothing more about them.

When it’s over, she stares at him, but he can’t tell what lies on her face. His vision is a blur of fresh, unshed tears. Gasping, he lets them fall and hopes that his hands are fast enough to wipe them away before hers are. But he’s wrong. After all, the smaller, the faster. She keeps her hands right there, cupping his damp cheeks.

“Do you…” she begins and quickly falters, taking a deep breath to pile up new courage in her lungs. “Do you regret it?”

“Hell no. I’d do it again, if I had to.”

He means it down to the very dregs of his soul.

“Then why do you look so miserable?” she whispers.

It probably takes him minutes to answer, until he finally decides what to settle on. “Because my mallet got stuck between the vibes’ bars. And that’s how you beat me at the audition—”

He first notices that his breath—already as shallow as it is, with his nose stuffed with snot—has been stolen from his lungs. Next, that what’s in front of him is a blur, except no tears are there to blur it for him. And finally, why both of these things are so.

Rey’s mouth is on his.

Her lips are soft and hot, laced with traces of vodka and ginger ale, peppered with the salt of his tears. And sweet. As sweet as the little whimper she makes when he deepens their kiss.

He groans into her mouth and feels his jeans getting tighter, even as the corners of his eyes begin to sting again and he has to come up for air as he stifles a sob. But she’s determined to keep her mouth close by and covers his tear tracks with kisses.

She throws her arm over his shoulders and pulls him closer, until he nestles his face in the crook of her neck. Her other arm stays put, having no other choice but to stay glued to her side because he refuses to let her hand go. He keeps his lips pressed to her knuckles, glad that she doesn’t mind how he’s soaking her skin in tears and snot and saliva.

“You know,” she says softly. “I realized something just now—” Her words are broken by a tinkling laugh that thrums from her chest and reaches the skin on his face pressed close to it. “You’ve always been my hero.”

As he combats another sob, his face scrunches up in that secret shadow on her shoulder.

“Before I auditioned for the Ilum Phil,” she goes on, “I watched everything on this Youtube channel to prepare myself. Solo Percussion, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”

He lets out a stuffy-nosed chuckle.

“He was really helpful. Not too bad-looking either.”

“Until you saw him in person, I bet,” he says into her sweater.

“Oh yes, he’s… quite a presence. But more than that, I was obsessed. I memorized all his tips and tricks. See, he’s the principal percussionist at the Ilum Phil.”

“Was.”

“Still is, until August… So I followed his advice obsessively, yeah? ‘Never underestimate Stick Control.’ ‘Don’t overexert yourself with Pratt’s 14 Modern Contest Solos… but master Drum Corps on Parade that you can play it even asleep.’ ‘Practice the audition excerpts, but focus on the foundation. Because how can you perform well if you can’t even play well?’ ‘They’re not mallets or drum sticks. They’re an extension of your body. You are in complete control.’ ‘Don’t forget to breathe.’ And guess what, it worked. I got in.”

“Into the Ilum Phil?” he croaks out through his tears.

“That’s right. I met him too.”

“And realized he was a piece of work.”

She sighs. “Look at me.”

He does, sniffling and whimpering and being a big crybaby. But she never teases him. Only brushes away his tears.

“You big, heroic idiot.”

He has nothing to say to that. Some of the words are true. Big and idiot, certainly. But heroic? TBD.

“I was serious about that,” she says. “The Youtube videos—Ah!”

F5, her gasp as he dives in for another kiss. They’re getting there, closer and closer to that C6. Just for a quick taste, he dips his tongue into her open mouth and runs it across the tips of her incisors. She shudders under him, over him, around him.

Anytime now. He’ll wake up with a start and back in his life away from this dream of a dream—

“Come home with me, Ben.”

Maybe he won’t wake up just yet.

It’s an odd thing, how easily some pieces just fit together.

Like how perfectly their fingers intertwine atop his thigh in the dark of the taxi, already stuck in an eastbound standstill a half-hour into their ride. Or how her head just slots itself so snugly right there under his chin, her hair tickling a spot on his neck and her breath warming his chest through that well-worn and over-loved sweater that has now grown too hot. It could be the Guinness, for all he knows. But mostly it must be her.

And this has to be a dream.

Don’t wake up.

He sniffles, the last remnants of his not entirely good cry back in the haze of the bar only a little while ago. But the corners of his eyes no longer sting. Just swollen eyelids and the cracked remains of dried-up tears left unwiped on his cheeks—those spots that she missed—the evidence of some emotional ordeal than no longer matters quite as much now. With her hand in his and their ankles all tangled up and her ear pressed to his chest, close enough to hear the battered organ beneath his ribcage… Nothing matters except this.

It thrills and frightens him, this thing that not even an hour ago resided firmly outside the realm of his reality.

The vomit-inducing, hopelessly romantic sap buried deep inside of him plays it all out as a night like any other.

A decent Saturday evening concert. Sold-out, as usual. Unorthodox repertoire choices, thanks to Holdo—Rautavaara instead of Sibelius, Poulenc instead of literally any other big name in French music. A late dinner out, rushed because all the restaurants are about to close, but that’s just how it is when you work exactly when everybody else is already winding down. Maybe a drink or two just before they head home. Then a black cab to Harold Wood, and of course it’s stuck on the A13. A metal barrier along the highway and some construction scaffolding in the near distance, the view outside the glass. And inside, a masterpiece of tangled brown hair and freckle-dusted skin.

Her.

He can see little in their dim backseat. Too far away from the faint glow of the dashboard on the other side of the glass partition—one of the best things about this city, how the taxis seem made for his overlong legs—and not near enough to any of the street lights and their yellow glow, the closest already separated from them by an unmoving sea of harsh red. In this darkness, he can just about make out their massive two-sided fist, her far smaller fingertips jutting out in the gaps between his ungainly fingers. He feels more than sees her thumb retracing one line over and over across the back of his hand.

Tomorrow, he’d be on his own taxi home. Same time after a concert, a solitary dinner, and maybe an equally solitary beer as a treat he’d regret by Monday morning. But hopefully not the same god-awful traffic. His fist would be a little smaller. None of her fingers peeking through the gaps. No more repetitive comfort from her thumb’s not so insignificant drawings either.

Because he’d already be awake by then.

So he has to make it count.

Is is possible to hear pain the same way a person could feel it? Could she hear it, then, in the way his heart beats right next to her ear?

If she does, she only sighs. Only nuzzles his sweater and squeezes his hand and makes sure that her ankle is thoroughly entangled with his that they would topple out of the taxi by the time they reached her front door. He buries his nose in her hair, just to make sure, just to test—Is this all right? Is this good?

All he knows is that he wants this. Whether he deserves it or not is another matter entirely. And it’s late on that Saturday night full of one-year overdue tears and five-year overdue kisses. If he deserves anything, it’s a goddamn break. Surely he could have this, even just for tonight.

“Traffic always this bad on the way to Essex?” he says under his breath, as though the cabbie could even hear them without the help of the intercom.

A shake of her head. Blessed, tender friction against his chest.

“Saturdays are the worst of the lot,” she murmurs. “But it usually clears up again this late in the evening. Should we ask the driver what—”

“No.”

She hums. “Fine… And for the record, it’s still London.”

“Oh, is it?” he teases.

“Yes, Mr. Hammersmith.” Even when he can’t see her eyes, he knows what she’s doing with them. “It is Hammersmith, yeah?”

“Yup.”

“Please don’t tell me you picked that place just because of the Holst piece.”

Chuckling, he nestles even closer to her. “If I were a true die-hard, I would be selling limbs and nonexistent children for his actual house.”

“Can you even buy it?”

“Grade II listed terraced house, about three mil. Unfortunately not in Hammersmith. It’s in Barnes.”

“You actually checked.”

“Of course I did.”

“Fanboy,” she grumbles.

So it goes as the taxi moves at a snail’s pace, then at a turtle’s, then at a human’s and finally a car’s, until the congestion clears up enough that they no longer need to halt every five minutes. The same relentless teasing, the usual jibes, as though they were still on that meaningless eight-minute walk. But everything has changed all the same. A variation on an already familiar theme, a dream close enough to reality.

It isn’t quite some alcohol-muddied cloud hanging over them and rendering every once sharp edge into a brand-new, softer curve. Neither of them is close to drunk, anyway. It’s just them in the warm haze of each other. Palms pressed so tightly together that they might as well exchange imprints, bodies so flush that she’d probably need a few washings to fully remove his perfume’s dry down passed over to her sweater.

The taxi takes the leftmost lane, bringing them away from stretches of red tail lights and smooth dark asphalt on the A13, until it makes a sharp turn on a roundabout with a stretch of wild grass instead. He points at a car dealership to their left, gates closed and huge signboards all in bright yellow.

“Look,” he whispers against her scalp. “‘Essex Car Company.’ I told you it’s Es—”

She slaps her palm over his mouth.

Sniggering, he nips on her skin. His teeth catch on her creases and her breath catches in her throat to match. For the first time in an hour, she looks up and meets his eyes. Breathless bliss swirls in one pair, a frightening warmth he isn’t accustomed to drowning in the other.

Before she can lift her hand from his mouth, he presses his lips to her wrist. And before he can lean away, she catches his lips with hers—not quite a perfect landing, half of her mouth crushing his chin instead—but she finds her way soon enough, until his bottom lip seats itself perfectly between her teeth.

She tugs and pulls and pours a shuddering sigh into his open mouth. As she makes that noise that is steadily growing familiar to him—half a pitiful whimper, half a painful hitch, F5 and A5 and so close to C6—he finds himself reeling, the darkness and the bumps on the road transformed into a whirring blur.

He’s caught at the crossroads between the fog of ignorance and the awareness of every single thing that she does. Barely registers and yet memorizes every microsecond of how she extracts her foot from under his leg and slowly—inch by excruciating inch—drapes her thigh over his knee, until her worn loafer is jutting out into the air. Robbed completely of his breath, he gazes at the mile of bare leg laid out in front of him like a meal. He would do anything to dig the pads of his fingers into that flesh. To leave marks in the shape of his mouth on the softest gaps. To lick its open planes and kiss its hidden crevices.

The mere thought sends blood rushing both upwards and downwards. To his head that refuses to stop spinning. Then to the painfully hard, pulsating hill he’s made under his heavyweight denim jeans.

As she reaches for a dust cover hanging from a hook on the window, her knee grazes his crotch.

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses, grabbing the dust cover for her with an unsteady hand.

She gasps and hurriedly drapes it over their legs. “Sorry—”

“Don’t apologize,” he says through gritted teeth.

But one more accidental touch and he’d be done for. Pathetic, making a mess of himself even before he could slide into her, long before she would clench around him and milk him dry—Fucking fuck, even just one more thought and it’s over for him.

She extracts her fingers from his grasp, the first time since they got into the taxi that the two-sided fist is regrettably broken apart. But her hand never strays too far, just nestles atop the back of his as she fits her fingers in his gaps again. She clutches tightly then pulls, further down and further down, until his palm rests atop her ankle. Eyes glassy and chest heaving, he stares at her in stunned silence as she cradles his cheek with her free hand.

And in the stretch of a minute in the real world but a handful of eternities in theirs, she guides his hand up her calf. Across smooth skin, the delicate lines of relaxed muscles, patches of hair where she missed shaving. Past her knee, and how she stills and refuses to breathe as his fingers dip into the bend, as though this torture were inflicted as much on her as on him.

“Ben…” she whimpers, leading his hand up her thigh.

The fringes of her skirt snag on his fingernails. He starts playing with the frayed ends, memorizing how her nostrils flare and how her lips are swollen pink and how she refuses to blink. This version of her face that he would never see again once this dream would finally fade.

But he refuses to move any further up, no matter how much she tugs on his fingers. Only clutches desperately onto her skirt, the last flimsy barrier before he would end up losing all his self-control.

She groans. “Don’t stop.”

“We’re in public,” he replies breathlessly, humiliating hitches in his voice with every word, eyes darting from her pleading face to what little he can make out of the cabbie’s head through headrests, wires, and information cards for tourists.

“It’s dark enough.”

His cheeks burn at her recklessness. His damn cock throbs, so much that he digs his fingers into her thigh. His tongue is robbed of words and his lungs of air, yet he just about manages to rasp out two words. “They’ll see.”

“They won’t see us through all their gubbins.”

“Their what?”

“The shit they have all over the… You know, cables and stuff—How do you not know that word?” It’s soft, so soft, but the sound she lets out from deep in her throat could pass for a growl. Like she’s ready to pounce.

Bite me. Make me bleed.

FUCK—

There’s nothing else left in the world except her. And his hardness begging for her fingers or her mouth or her cunt or all of her, please… Then she leans over—her face sinking onto his shoulder, her mouth pressed against the hollow of his throat—and all is lost.

Her lips paint damp, soundless words on his skin—Touch me. Please.

This is a terrible idea. No matter how much he wants to rip apart that skirt with his bare hands and rip off her panties with his bare teeth. Then again, when was the last time he ever made a wise decision?

More strokes of her mouth-shaped paintbrush against his Adam’s apple—Trust me.

Fuck it.

Yes.

She heaves a sigh as he slides his hand up her skirt, fingertips hitting the hot, thoroughly soaked apex of her thighs.

“Rey. Fuck.”

With a muffled moan, she throws her arms over his shoulders and yanks on a mouthful of his sweater. Too bad her teeth miss his chest underneath. And too bad this taxi is taking so damn long to get to her house. See, he knew that place would be in Essex, no matter how much she denies it. When and if they finally get there, he’d have her against the front door or maybe even on the front steps, right there and then—

She mumbles into his sweater.

“More?” he breathes, his fingers tracing the outline of her folds along the damp film of her underwear.

Another mumble, half-dead.

Roughly shoving aside the fabric, his fingers dip and search. He quickly finds what he’s looking for, her clit already swollen. Letting her wetness coat his fingers, he draws circles as she bites into his sweater again—There. Good. This time, she digs in deep enough to reach his skin. Expanses of flesh she means to take a chunk out of, possibly never to return.

He’d let her take the whole if she wanted to. Though it wouldn’t be an especially good bargain. Though he’d be ripping her off. Though it wouldn’t even be a whole to begin with.

He groans her name into her hair and nearly forgets that he’s standing guard for both of them, making sure the cabbie can’t see them through their gubbins. But they remain oblivious, not even sparing so much as a glance through the rear-view mirror.

The dust cover rustles over their filthy secret as she grinds against his hand. And though their sounds remain muted behind the glass partition, he could lose himself as she loses herself, never noticing that the cover has already fallen to expose their one-way ticket to jail. So he wraps a firm hand around her ass, even though she whines about it with a stab of her fingers into his shoulder blades.

So impatient. Not that he’s faring much better.

With a press of his thumb on her clit, she squirms—jittering thighs and trembling arms and a sharp kick on his shin. He’d nurse that one later, but first… He drags a finger down her sopping wet lines until he reaches her entrance.

She lifts her head. “Ben—”

He shoves in two digits without warning, knuckles brushing past endless ridges that cling to him and crush him. She squeezes her eyes shut and bites hard on her lip as a tiny, almost imperceptible squeak reaches his ears.

C6.

Finally.

With every tender pull and every sudden thrust, she shudders and readjusts the vise that are her arms around his neck. He doesn’t know what she sees as her unblinking eyes dart across his face, only that she does. Sees. What he’d give for her to keep on looking. Just like this, her near limp body anchored by his two fingers, her wetness—so much of it—rolling hot along the lines on his palm and down to his wrist.

“B-B…”

She can’t even manage the last two letters of his pathetically short name. Insufferable pride sweeps through him and settles squarely on his leaking cock. No doubt there’d already be a humiliating round patch right on the very seam.

“Say my name, sweetheart,” he croaks out, his eyes stinging at how easily the endearment bursts out of his mouth.

“B—”

“Which d’you prefer? Take a left on Rosslyn Avenue after Squirrel’s Heath or move along until Gubbins Lane?”

He sees his life flash before his eyes as the cabbie speaks to them over the intercom. Swiftly pulls out his fingers. Slams his hand over her mouth before she can let out an obscene gasp. Buries his face on her shoulder as if the darkness can’t already hide his beet-red cheeks. Yanks on her own sweater with his teeth because damn, he gets why she does it now.

Rey reaches for the switch on the side panel, taking deep breaths before she presses it. “Rosslyn Avenue. Please.”

The cabbie asks a few more questions, but he hardly makes out a single word. He looks up at her face, transfixed on the clumps of white clinging to her cheeks, smearing the tip of her nose.

“—right, thanks,” she says as her breathing begins to even. She switches off the intercom.

When their eyes meet again, he surges forward and licks her arousal off the tip of her nose. Salty and sweet and sticky like candy. He feels almost like a kid again, one with a streak or two of gray already making a home on his temples. She giggles as he nips lightly on the tiny spot he just licked.

“Gubbins Lane?” he murmurs.

“Yeah, around the corner from my place.”

“You’re shitting me.”

She answers that with a kiss. A perfect landing. He lets a sigh of utter relief trickle from his mouth into hers.

They emerge out of the taxi onto a dimly lit corner, the two of them even more breathless and tangled up together than they were 10 minutes ago, when his fingers were buried up to his knuckles inside of her. She gestures absently at the house behind them—small and narrow, concealed by overgrown bushes and clearly long past better days, some ways off from the other houses around it, its driveway empty except for a trash bin next to the neighboring wall.

But he has no time to admire anything else, when she tugs insistently on his hand and drags him up the front steps. She hisses at herself for having trouble with the rusty deadbolt. But once she finally wrenches it open, she pushes him inside with a sudden squeeze of his ass that sends his stomach into a tailspin. And for the briefest moment, he’s that gangly boy again, sure that he would die peeing his pants on a coaster at Six Flags Great America.

Maybe he would tonight too, but not the peeing part. Just his rock-hard cock buried to the hilt inside of her, fully sated in this fulfillment of half a decade’s worth of pitiful fantasies.

“Sorry about the mess,” she murmurs after switching on the lights to reveal a narrow corridor and even narrower stairs, empty wicker baskets stacked high in a corner, a vase of wilted flowers atop a sideboard, countless little trinkets—or really, junk—scattered across every flat surface.

He’d clean it all up if she asked. No question.

Not right now, though. As it is, he doesn’t even know how much longer he can stand on two feet. He could try. But he’d need her cunt wrapped tightly around him as an anchor.

And Ben has waited long enough.

She’s barely even shut the door when he turns on his heel and grabs her, swallowing her gasp as he crushes her lips, fingers tangling in her hair and digging into her waist. He shoves her back against the door, dozens of mallets and sticks jostling inside her bag as it collides with the wood.

“Careful,” she sighs, chewing on his bottom lip.

With a huff, he breaks apart from her and strips them of their most annoying layers. Mallet bags, set hastily on a nearby chair. Dust covers, dropped carelessly onto the carpet.

He pins her against the door—knee pushing up right between her thighs—and gets back to work on her lips. A dip of his tongue into her mouth and she throws her head back against the glass panel, the blow barely softened by a thin lace curtain. She traps his tongue inside her, teeth like gates bearing down hard and barring his exit. Growling at the sudden sting, he slams his body flush against hers. And unconsciously—or otherwise, and either way his total agony—she squeezes his leg between her thighs and soaks the dark denim in her arousal, ruining it with trails of white.

Uneasy rattling, the door on its hinges. One hard object hitting another, her head as it falls back against the glass. His name, rasped out when she finally thinks to free his tongue. And everything in this private soundscape, pounding and percussive and inescapably alive.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots the knob and the deadbolt still unlocked, the chain still hanging loose.

“Lock the door,” he whispers.

He waits until her shaking fingers reach the knob before he pulls down her collar and dives for the crook of her neck, biting just on the edge of hurting. Moaning, only squeezing her thighs even tighter, she whacks his shoulder in time with the click of the lock. He chuckles darkly against her skin and runs his tongue flat across the indentations.

“All the locks,” he says.

“Fuck… you.”

“That’s the idea.”

Another click—more forceful—as she sees to the deadbolt. And the furious slide of metal against metal while she shoves the chain down its track.

“Happy now—?” Her last syllable tapers off into a squeak when he forms a trail of kisses from collarbone to earlobe. But just as he’s about to suck on her flesh, she murmurs, “No marks. Not where they can see.”

“Then let me leave one where they won’t.”

In silence broken only by her stuttering breaths, she peels off her sweater and lets it pool at her feet.

Fuck.

His gaze first trails down to the plane of her stomach—hard lines and soft skin and one, two, three, four moles… and he’s already decided that the one just beside her belly button is his favorite. Further up, an expanse of freckles under the tender swell of her breasts, along her sternum, at the base of her throat. He’d stay up all night just to count them all and lather each patch with a kiss. Or maybe two. Or twenty.

Just his utter luck—and exactly why this is all just a blissful and merciless dream—her bra locks on the front. He licks his lips and swallows, already reaching with the intention of snapping its buttons with a single furious pull. But she takes his hand and splays it across one breast instead.

“Let me,” she says softly.

Keeping his palm secure, she unbuttons the bra one-handed and slides the fabric from under his hand. Nothing left between his skin and hers. At the brush of her erect nipple against his palm, he shudders and presses his mouth to her forehead. Just for something to cling to.

It’s not a bad anchor at all, this stretch of skin most suited to meaningless kisses and inconsequential nuzzles just within reach of his lips and his nose.

He quashes his overactive fantasies and hones in on the one he floats in now.

She sighs, breath warming his throat, as he brings up both hands to squeeze, to knead, to pinch. Hulking things over tiny things, pieces slotting together just right. He leans close and darts out his tongue, taking his time to paint the shell of her ear, finally stopping because she begs him to. And here she is on the tip of his tongue, on the palm of his hand, a panting and squirming mess.

She pushes his head down, his mouth colliding with her breast. There he moves on to his new project, a more tangible one right over her heart. To the sound of her breath hitching higher and higher and the frantic beat of her heart, he makes a bruising mark with his lips.

“Are you happy?” she asks once he’s done, her fingers running through his hair.

He cups her cheek. Pecks the tip of her nose so he could relish how she scrunches it. Rests his forehead against hers. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to.”

“Want to what?”

She swallows. “To make you happy. Well… Are you?”

Is he?

Once the high of this haze comes crashing down and the reality of his failures start catching up… And he finally accepts—even with that all too familiar pang in his chest—that Rey is Rey and he is only himself, only a jumped-up then a washed-up fuck-up of a human who would only burden her, who would only bring her down when she should be rising up and up and up and beyond him… Well, then.

No.

“As hell,” he says at last. Only she reaches up to wipe away a fresh tear to prove that he lies like a rug.

I love you.

Just say it. Just tell her.

He doesn’t.

Instead he sinks to his knees and unbuttons her skirt. Sniffling, getting increasingly annoyed because there are too many damn buttons, he jerks it down her legs without bothering with the last few at the bottom.

Her panties are still shoved to the side, exposing how she leaks and makes a mess of her curls.

“Ben…”

He plunges his face right between her thighs without bothering to check what lands where. Not that it matters anyway. He’d use his whole damn face if it meant making her happy first. Because this is her night. He’s just a gatecrasher and her sole guest rolled into one.

But he’d really like a souvenir. So he crushes her underwear tightly in his grip and rips it off of her with a satisfying snap.

“I hope that wasn’t your favorite,” he murmurs right into her opening, blindly stuffing it into his back pocket.

She only squirms and squeezes his shoulders as he runs his cheeks up and down her folds, coating his lashes and the length of his nose in her sticky, tangy wetness. Only when it’s already concealed his stupid tears does he bear down on her with his mouth.

Her wail is a jagged melody, her back slamming against the wood its accompaniment. And he can’t tell exactly how it starts or what makes it—this exquisite salty-sweet that he wants to taste forever, or her delirious outbursts of Ben Ben Ben, or how it is bliss enough just to taste and hear her even when his member is growing numb with pain—but he begins at last to forget.

He throws her thighs over his shoulders to angle himself better before thrusting up three fingers in a punishing rhythm. She makes it all so easy for him. Squelching and dripping and shamelessly overflowing, and he wants to swallow every last drop. He can pretend that it’s all for him.

She hooks her ankles behind his head, squeezes and crushes his ears. One hand rakes short yet painful fingernails along his scalp, the other grabbing at whatever she can find to keep herself steady—the coat rack, the wall trim, the curtain rod above her head. She chases after his mouth and his fingers, with every roll of her hips a thud against the door. If she’d let him, he could nurse that reddened backside too.

And she sings. Badly, perfectly. Roars at the ceiling, her face upturned and her eyes rolling back that now all he can see is white under her lids.

One desperate yank of her fingers and the curtain rod falls off its hinges, just narrowly missing him and landing on the carpet. The rod-less curtain drapes over her head, over her mouth and its wide-open obscenities. She laughs—near hysterical—but never makes to lift it off herself, not when she’s too busy clutching onto his head.

“I’m…” she whimpers. “I’m g-going to…”

He drives the tip of his tongue against her clit, feels it swelling as her walls throb around his fingers. Everything aches along that line between agony and rapture, that sliver of oblivion where all there is left is her.

“Ben.” Merely a breath, the last one she takes.

He almost misses catching her as she loses all control and nearly topples over him. Together they collapse onto the carpet, only the security of his arms breaking her fall.

She wraps her arms around his head and sighs deeply into his hair. “I said make you happy.”

“You have.”

He means it, now. They could be lying in heaven, the kind that smells vaguely of leather shoes and dirt. He laughs quietly into the gap between her breasts.

“That was my favorite,” she goes on. “It was seamless. Fit me just right.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ll buy you new ones. My present for you at the end-of-season party next month.”

Maybe he deserves that slap on his shoulder. But she does plant a soft kiss on the back of his ear as a consolation.

“You next,” she whispers, breath tickling his ear.

He glances up at her. “Do you have condoms?”

“No, but I have this.” She holds out her arm and reaches the other over his head, crushing his face against her tits as she feels for something on her inner arm. And finding it, she pinches the skin between two fingers until he can see the outline of her implant.

He cradles her arm and kisses the skin right above the almost invisible stick.

“I’m clean,” she adds, giggling when he starts trailing his kisses closer to her armpit.

“So am I.” He takes a long, loud sniff, refusing to stop until she laughs a little louder. “Would you give me a house tour?”

“Before or after I have my way with you?”

With a groan, he latches onto a nipple and sucks, harder and harder because her grip around his hair keeps growing tighter and tighter. He lets go with a loud, satisfied smack and whispers, “Why not both at the same time?”

So she does. Leads him from one cramped corridor to the next, into one room then out again then into another. Always with their fingers intertwined and her bare backside grinding against his hardness, as if that could possibly offer him any relief. Their sounds echo in the hollow from room to room. His groans, her laughter, their hums. The soft smack that comes with every stolen kiss.

This wicked, silly spitfire of a woman is determined to succeed at her mission tonight. To make him happy.

Every room they visit, she sheds more and more of his layers. One shoe in the room with her unpitched instruments—snare, bass, cymbals, tam-tams. A sock in the next room over with her pitched ones—xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba. His belt in a room behind the stairs reserved just for the timpani. His jeans on a kitchen counter, right on top of a half-eaten bag of Walkers Marmite. And his sweater draped over the first sofa he ever encounters in the house, a lumpy thing in the sunroom he assumes would be bursting with color from the garden by tomorrow morning.

He can barely hear her words at times, when she points at this trinket or that souvenir. Often he can barely even see the back of her head, his eyes too clouded. Fucking tear ducts that refuse to dry up. He tries and fails to conceal them because she always hears, because her hands are always faster than his.

And not once does she ever laugh. Only murmurs “Hey” against his cheek and “I’m here” into his mouth.

By the time he’s down to only his boxer briefs, they’ve already made a full tour of the ground floor. But she doesn’t lead him up the stairs just yet, just pushes him gently against the sideboard in the corridor and wraps her arms around his waist.

With lazy, languid movements, she nestles her face against his chest and takes a nipple between her teeth. She keeps it in her mouth, swiping her tongue around the sensitive nub, sucking gently at first then not at all. As though she enjoys hearing his voice go up to pitches he would never let anyone hear outside the confines of this dream.

He hisses, struggling to breathe through his stuffy nose, knuckles bursting as he grabs onto the sideboard. And when she presses her mound against his hardness, it’s all he can do not to cry out and keel over.

“Rey,” he gasps. “Please.”

Relieved if only for a moment, he leans back against the wall as she pulls down his boxers and finally—fucking finally—releases his hungry, dripping cock. He sighs, eyes fluttering closed.

“Fucking hell, Solo.”

He grunts out a sound that could probably pass for a laugh. It rapidly turns into a groan when she runs her palm over his tip and drags the pads of her fingers down his length.

“W-what?” he manages to ask as he cracks an eye open.

“You’re putting this in me.”

He gazes at her through his blurred vision, sure that his mouth is halfway between a ridiculous smirk and a shit-eating grin. Hers has fallen open, an almost disbelieving laugh suddenly bursting out of it.

Her hand wraps around his cock, fingers just a little too thin and too short for the ends to meet. She sniggers with her lips clamped shut, a quick “Oh my god” muttered under her breath before she meets his eyes again.

And how she wipes away his smile in an instant and turns it into what could only be a hideous O-shape as she squeezes gently then suddenly pumps. Once. Then twice.

Shit—

He’s going to come in seconds, after waiting too long.

“Suck me off,” he blurts out in one shuddering breath.

“What’s the tempo, boss?” she teases. Not the worst attempt at that Midwestern accent he still can’t shake. But dammit, he’s about to burst—

“Now.”

“All right, Christ—” She falls to her knees.

“No, no, wait! Larghissimo.”

She raises her brows. “Are you serious?”

“Gently,” he pleads, running a trembling finger down her nose, the tip of it his new anchor just before she’d render him completely senseless. “Please.”

“Look at me.”

With a dry swallow that makes him cough, he focuses his gaze on her. She never breaks it as she rests her hands on his hips and leans in to kiss just the very tip. His hips jerk at her face, against his better judgment. Hell, even his worse one.

“Rey…”

“Don’t move,” she whispers, bending a little to plant another kiss on the underside.

He lets out an obscene yelp. Reaches for her head, sinks his fingers into her disheveled bun.

“Don’t move,” she repeats before giving him one more kiss, this time not even on his cock. Just on the trail of hair ending at the base. She buries her nose amidst the curls and inhales, her eyes still trained on him.

Jesus. He’s going to come.

His knees quaking and his teeth grinding, he lifts her up by the armpits. She yelps in surprise, arms flung around his neck as he sets her atop the sideboard. Almost feverish, he shoves her thighs apart and positions his tip, relieved that she’s still so desperately wet.

“But I thought…” she says, wide-eyed and breathless and immediately hooking her legs around him.

“I need y—”

He thrusts into her with a gasp of her name, fully disappearing into the warm relief of her tight, slick cunt. She cries out—C#-fucking-6—and grabs him for a sloppy kiss.

He pulls out only by a precious few inches and feels himself already throbbing when he pushes back in. And when she digs her heels into his ass, his mortifying performance is all but over. He moans into her neck as his hot spend gushes onto her walls.

So much for that.

“I am so sorry,” he says feebly.

“Oh, Ben…” A pause. “I edged you too much.”

“Maybe you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

She breaks out into a laugh, even snorts, her core shaking his softening cock. He looks on—thoroughly flushed, completely deflated—at this wild beauty, certain that if he had a tail, it would be right between his legs by now.

“I promise you,” he says with whatever speck of dignity he still has left, “I’m usually not this bad a lay.”

Could anyone blame him after half a decade of blue balls? He inwardly groans.

“Well.” She wipes away a stray tear or two, still giggling. “Let’s wait a half-hour. Or an hour, no pressure. Then an encore. How does that sound?”

He stares at her and wonders if she can hear exactly what her words are capable of inflicting on his fragile heart. “You’re… not making me lea—I mean, it’s getting late. I’m sure I can book an Uber—”

“Stay,” she replies, her face now dead serious. “Stay for me, Ben?”

There is no way he deserves her.

“Okay.”

Their kiss is unhurried and fleeting—a mere brush of his lips against hers. But he can feel her corners turning upwards. A smile, despite yet another failure.

There isn’t much left to tour upstairs. Just a spare bedroom without a bed where she keeps the curious combination of a drum kit and an elliptical machine. Then the bathroom—and he’s quick to note that there is only one toothbrush in the cup, not that that’s his business.

And finally her bedroom, and she scurries in past him to hide a few things before he can join her inside. But they’re too big to hide completely in her hands—the largest rabbit vibrator he’s ever seen, still attached to its charging cable, and an ancient and well-loved Cabbage Patch Kids doll with red yarn for hair and a dress that was probably once bright blue.

He thinks nothing of the vibrator—doesn’t everyone have a toy, anyway?—but almost grimaces at an unexpected twinge in his chest when he catches sight of the doll. She’s revealed little to him within the last five years. He’s never pressed her.

Whatever glimpses she’s ever shown, he’s always taken care to cherish.

System kid. Estate kid. Watched Evelyn Glennie live at the Barbican when she was seven. Decided that was it. Tried her luck at BBC Young Musician of the Year and lost. Got an ABRSM scholarship to the RAM. Won her spot in the Ilum Phil. And now? Principal Fucking Percussionist of the best orchestra in Britain. So suck on that, Young Musician.

Tonight is a gift, her insecurities laid bare before him at the bar. But touching her and tasting her and coming within 20 seconds inside of her? Great bonuses—embarrassing too—that he never expected and barely deserves.

They don’t need to fuck anymore. If she decided to tell him all about that doll and why she still chooses to keep it, he’d listen. And he’d be satisfied. And he’d hold her, if she had need of his arms.

But she’s already stuffed her secrets into the cabinet.

“Aren’t you coming in, Solo?” she asks, hand held out, batting her eyelashes exaggeratedly at him before laughing at herself.

Breaking out into a grin—finding that it no longer aches quite as much, that it comes more and more easily to him, the louder she laughs, the wider she smiles, the longer he lingers in her presence—he takes her hand and lets her lead him to the bed. It groans under their weight, her favorite side obvious from how sunken it is compared to the rest of the mattress. But they fit just fine.

The tour of the house is over, so they tour each other’s bodies instead. She makes him lie back with the pillows propped up and delicately taps every mole she can find. When she’s had her fill of the sea of them on his face, she slowly starts to work her way down. Even he learns about the ones he never knew were there all along, the ones he could never find even with a mirror—at the base of his spine, behind his left earlobe… “Look, twin constellations,” she says… To which he adds, “Right on my ball sack.” And after which, her deep-bellied laugh isn’t too far behind.

It hurts.

Yet he does the same for her freckles because it’s a give-and-take, only he counts them with his lips and his tongue instead. His is a far more difficult task. And so he makes up for it by making sure the kisses are especially good. Her feet kicking against the mattress, her fists bunching up the sheets, her nipples pebbling, her thighs squeezing, her entire body writhing good.

She spreads her legs wide, pulls on his hair, and shoves his face up her pussy when she can’t take it anymore. He takes his time with her, fingers sliding in and out without any rush, his tongue only dipping out for a quick taste of her before he decides to ask her some questions instead. Just innocuous ones like…

“What are the wicker baskets downstairs for?”

“Fuck!” she whines, digging her fingers into his shoulders.

In and out, in and out, knuckles grinding against her ridges… “Answer the question, Niima.”

“They’re f-for… Ben, please—No, don’t pull out!”

“Answer the question.” A long, slow drag of his tongue up her folds.

She keens. “Pick-Your-Own. They’re for a… Pick-Your-Own farm.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It is—Don’t fucking stop.”

Extracting his fingers, laughing at how she growls about it, he pushes in his tongue in their place and takes a whiff of her arousal-stained hair.

“Ben!”

He lifts his face from its new home between her legs. “Where is this farm?”

“Fuck you!”

“It’s in Fuck You?”

Snarling, she shoves him with enough force to send him falling back on the mattress. She straddles him, sitting right atop his raging erection, and practically slams her face against his. Foreheads crashing, noses getting crushed, while she gets a taste of herself on his lips.

“This is cruel,” she mumbles against his mouth.

“Just taking the mickey out of you… Did I use that right?”

“You did. But never say that again, it sounds awful with your accent.”

“Hey, you mimicked mine earlier.”

“Don’t you dare mimic mine.”

His laugh quickly shifts to a winded groan as she impales herself on his cock with no effort at all, the friction heavenly now that he’s no longer quite so panicked. He’d make this count. This time, he really would. If he could only get this one last chance…

“Do you w-want to play a game?” she asks, the question punctuated by tiny gasps in quick succession as she bounces on him.

Sweet fucking Christ—

He’s already bound to lose.

“Sure,” he grunts, gripping her ass. He watches how his fingers sink into those soft-hard swells of flesh, how he disappears into her only to emerge again more coated in her wetness every time. But he can’t watch how she clenches. How tightly that perfect cunt embraces him, then lets him go and clings even more firmly whenever he sinks back in. It’s a dying shame and he’s a dying man, this abominably close to believing in the divine.

She hums in satisfaction. “Guess the rhythm.”

“And? Fuck, what’s th-the prize?”

“Winner gets to have their way with the loser.”

“And I’m clearly losing here.”

“Shut up,” she snaps, slowing down until she completely stills. There’s a look in her eyes that he’s never seen before, never like this. A color she’s never shown him this much until now either. Blown-out black pupils, and in them a burning desire to devour.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yes.”

He moans loudly into the sheets as she sets an excruciating rhythm. 120bpm. Quarter, triplet, quarter, triplet, quarter, quarter… Repeated with a flurry of triplets in the next phrase, their thighs slapping violently against each other, her cunt intent on destroying him.

And he already knows what it is and he can barely take it any longer. But he lets her repeat it if only to bask in this hellishly heavenly torture.

“Ben, give me—Oh, fuck! An answer!”

Suddenly rising off the bed, he wraps his arms around her and throws them both down again, their positions reversed. She shrieks as her head collapses back against the pillows.

“Boléro,” he growls halfway into a searing, open-mouthed kiss.

Out of breath and sweaty, she sniggers and reaches up to trace the shells of his ears. The brush of her fingers sends gooseflesh by the millions shooting up across his skin.

“Good,” she pants.

“Me next?”

“Level up, Solo.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Come on!”

He braces himself, exhales, focuses…

“There he is,” she sighs, smiling widely. “Solo Percussion man.”

Laughing softly, shaking his head, at her and at himself and at that fucking smirk that he can no longer wipe off his face, he whispers, “Fuck you, Niima.”

“Please do.”

He does. And she screams in his face and clamps down hard on his cock—like his lifeline being strangled by the softest silk—after those thrusts exhausting enough to send sweat rolling down his spine. Her contorted features slowly straighten out and turn from agony to ecstasy, heavy-lidded eyes gazing up at him with something too close to true affection.

Fuck it all, he’ll let himself believe for once. Let himself be fooled by his own delusions. Let himself—pretend to—be loved.

Rey drapes her arms around his neck and makes him sink down, their lips pressed against each other but never kissing. Merely a shared anchor.

“Mars,” she moans, prolonging that one syllable.

He chuckles just as that stinging returns to his eyes. And even while he keeps on at this relentless rhythm, he hopes that she can feel the outline of his smile. So rare a creature it is.

“Damn right,” he says.

“Try Porgy and Bess nex—” The last letter goes missing at a particularly rough thrust, coming from deep in her throat as a sound exactly the same shape as her mouth.

“I’m not that ambitious.”

“Pl-please…”

Grabbing her by the wrists, he slams her hands over her head and traps them under his grip. Enough with this game. Enough with all these distractions. Finally, now, it’s just them. Just the dissonance of his muffled cries and her shameless wails. And underneath it all, the slap of flesh against flesh and her poor old mattress creaking and groaning and ready to give way.

“Who…” she breathes. “Who won?”

He brushes a kiss over her damp forehead, a gentleness that clashes with how he rams into her and how it moves her several inches up the bed.

“It was a tie.”

Her shriek nearly drowns out his reply.

There’s nothing else left outside that sticky, sweaty pocket of existence that they’ve built together. Just their bodies that are no longer bodies because now they’re just one. Her slippery walls are already as much a part of him as his mouth is a part of her. It never strays too far away, always hovering over her swollen lips and her fluttering eyelids, over the bobbing hollow of her throat, over the peninsula of a thousand freckles across her cheeks and her nose.

And somewhere in between—exactly when he can’t tell—his skin no longer smacks against hers. The bed no longer creaks. She no longer screams. He no longer groans. They only move against and with and into each other in lazy, boneless caresses. A ball of tangled, sweaty limbs impossible to unravel.

“In the black cab…” she says softly, brushing his locks out of his eyes. “You called me…”

He only gazes down at her but never speaks. She, the outward manifestation of his heart.

“You called me ‘sweetheart.’”

When she swallows hard, he leans even closer and licks a trail of sweat from her neck.

Only their quiet breaths and the rustle of sheets surround their little pocket. Silent enough and close enough that he can hear the beat of her heart. Perhaps she could hear his too. But then again of course she would, now that she’s its keeper.

“Say it again,” she whispers.

“Sweetheart.”

“Again.”

“Sweetheart.”

Exquisite friction burns between them, though neither he nor she builds up their rhythm. Just her clenching him tighter, just him asking to be held.

“Again.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Yes…”

“Sweetheart.”

“Be loud about it.”

He throws his head back and lets himself moan with wild abandon, eyes rolling and sweat trickling into his open mouth.

“Ben,” she whispers in the smallest voice. “Look at me.”

The moment he does, she comes for him without a single sound. Only holds fast and drowns him in her deep black pupils. Not long after, he follows. Because she asks him to, by how eagerly she squeezes and throbs and refuses to let him go. Heat shoots up from the base of his spine as he spills himself inside of her, splintering every single bone and turning it into powder. He collapses on top of her, wholly consumed and utterly useless.

The ball does unravel, unfortunately. Too easily, in fact.

Once the sweat on their skin has mostly dried, she hauls herself off the bed and drags him into the bathroom, insisting that they brush their teeth. When he comes to, he insists on a shower instead. Under the spray of warm water, enveloped by steam and the scent of her peony shampoo, she asks him to sit on the edge of the tub. She straddles him—still insatiable—and makes a mess of the tile floor.

She has no extra toothbrushes, so he uses his finger instead. And side-by-side, they stand in front of the bathroom mirror, barely able to see their faces because it needs a good wiping. He does wipe it clean. Then he makes her look at her spotless reflection while he pries her open with his tongue, his fingertips adding to her already sizable collection of bruises, his knees digging into the cold tile and collecting bruises of his own.

The bedsheets and pillows are musky with sweat; though she does agree to change them, her face colors when she pulls out the replacements—a faded, polka-dotted set with the 101 Dalmatians. While they make sure it all fits nice and snug, she reveals another secret to him. She ruined her VHS tape from watching it too often.

They tumble back into bed, sniffing the sheets that smell like detergent, sniffing each other’s skin that smells like shampoo and soap and sex.

One more just one more please, she pleads just as he’s beginning to doze off. Of course he’s all too willing to oblige—but only because it’s her—and makes her sit on his face and ride it. She insists on keeping their hands clasped tight as she draws circles on his mouth and yells his name at the headboard and crushes his ears with her thighs.

“We good?” he asks, laughing quietly into her hair when she finally calms down enough so they can make another ball of intertwined limbs.

Her voice is feeble, blushing. And he wonders when he learned the ability to recognize the exact timbre of her emotions.

“Am I too much?” she whispers.

“Fucking ravenous. I like it, though.”

I love it.

You.

She presses a fist to his chest, but never smacks it. “I can make full English tomorrow. It’s Sunday, we deserve something good.”

“I’ll help you. That’s a lot of work.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I’ve not got much. No black pudding, tomatoes, or mushrooms. But I do have beans. And eggs too. Maybe one sausage, I’d need to check.”

“You said ‘full English.’”

Ever so slightly, the fist pushes in deeper. It only makes him laugh even more.

“It’s half-American,” she mumbles. “For your benefit.”

He cocoons her even more snugly and whispers his thanks. To that, she wishes him a good night, the words painted against his neck again. Once he tells her the same, they finally fall silent. He only realizes later—while he can already hear her snoring into his collarbone—that he called her “sweetheart” too.

But it isn’t dawn yet. He can still pretend.

They can still pretend.

Big limbs and lean limbs. Black hair and brown hair. Moles and freckles. A tangle of it all under the blankets. Just this once. Just until the morning. A day in the life.

Ben imagines being rained on, a shower of kisses all over his face. Especially there on his forehead and on the tip of his nose. He imagines the wind rushing through his hair, fingers stroking it and playing with the ends.

When he stirs—the dull white of Sunday morning falling on his face through the window—he hears a sudden cacophony of muted sounds. The bed groaning as it dips down, someone beside him hurriedly crawling off the mattress. Some more rustling, like clothes being ripped off. Or maybe pulled on. A near-silent desperation in a voice that keeps muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.” Another creak of the mattress as someone joins him on the bed again.

And as he opens his eyes and takes in his surroundings, the dream dissipates. Reality calls.

He sees Rey sitting up beside him, still stark naked.

“Hi,” she says.

Groaning, he rubs his eyes. “Good morning.”

“I made breakfast. Want to join me downstairs?”

“You made breakfast in your birthday suit?”

“Don’t judge me.”

He lifts up his hands in mock surrender, casting her a bleary smile. For a moment, she only shakes her head at him before rising and padding over to the cabinet. She hurriedly grabs whatever she’s looking for—letting him see its contents for only a second or two—and slams the door shut. With her back to him, she puts on an old T-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts, regrettably hiding away his view of her ass.

“Have any of those I can borrow?” he teases.

She smirks at him, then gestures at the foot of the bed. “Your jumper’s right there. I’ll be in the sunroom.”

He nods at her already receding form and listens as her footsteps fade down the stairs. Brow furrowing at his sweater lying atop the bed, not entirely sure how it got there when he was pretty certain she’d stripped him of it before they headed upstairs last night, he shakes his head and pulls it on. He picks up more and more of his things as he makes his way down the corridor, tugging on his boxer briefs before heading into the sunroom.

It’s vivid green, just as he knew it would be, enormous windows letting in a view of her garden. As cluttered as the house with too many bushes he thinks could do with some pruning, but maybe she likes it this way. Wild and untamed, little hints of beauty in the few flowers that bloom on the edges.

He joins her at the table, where his own plate is already waiting for him. A cup of black coffee too.

“I only have instant coffee, sorry,” she says before popping the last bite of her toast into her mouth.

“It’s no problem.” He reaches into the basket at the center of the table, spotting a jar marked Sugar.

“Oh, I already put sugar in. One teaspoon of that, no creamer or milk… Yes?”

He gazes at her for maybe a few seconds longer than she’d like, averting her eyes and keeping them on her plate.

“Yeah, that’s exactly how I like it,” he replies, taking a sip. It should taste like shit, because instant coffee usually does. But not this time.

It falls over them again, that old friend called awkward silence. As if it had been especially gracious last night and refused to turn up for their sake, only to decide to join them at breakfast. Because who ever heard of nice things, really? Only the crackle of toast being bitten, and the unpleasant slide of a fork against a plate, and the occasional sips of coffee or tea ever break that silence.

But he decides to get over himself. “What a… What a night, huh?”

He flashes her a grin and she returns it, warmly too, perhaps too much. Maybe she realizes because her face falls and she picks up her cup of tea again.

“You ever shagged anyone in a taxi before last night?” she asks suddenly.

He laughs. “No, but now that’s one more thing checked off the bucket list.”

That makes her laugh too. It sounds real enough. But he counts too many seconds that never end with her response. So he goes on, “Do you think they could tell?”

“What, the driver?”

“Yeah?”

Smirking into her cup, she murmurs, “Well, I’ve never met one that talkative before. Maybe they had a bad feeling about it.”

“Just didn’t want cum stains all over that leather, maybe.”

“Yeah. And who wouldn’t?”

Their friend takes over the conversation again, sending everything into an uncomfortable lull that almost itches and burns for how unpleasant it is. But that fucker is a crowd when he thought their company already had a good thing going.

A new attempt—

“If you’ve run out of vegetables,” he says, “then you’d need to go to that PYO again soon.”

“Oh, um… Yeah, I will tomorrow.”

“Where is that farm? Don’t say ‘fuck you.’”

She gives his arm a languid shove. Good enough.

“Galleywood, in Chelmsford,” she replies.

“Which is definitely in…”

“Essex,” they say at the same time and giggle quietly about it.

Then she talks over their stupid friend too. And already one word in, he wishes that she never did. That she would’ve just let that god-awful silence win. But one positive does come of it—Her voice drowns out the cleaving sound of his already shattered heart.

“Listen, Ben… I, uh… This won’t make things awkward, will it? At work? It won’t change anything? I mean, it’s just… If, say, it happens to me too—I mean, that I’d be in a bad way or just out of sorts, please just… Please don’t think you’re obligated to do the same for me. I wanted to be there for you because that’s… Isn’t that what friends do? And we are friends and I know you’d say ‘So why can’t I do it for you in return?’ Well, I just don’t want you to feel like you’re bound to do it. We don’t have a contract or… Or, you know, promises? Anyway, yeah. Just… Yeah. I felt that needed to be said.”

Fuck that stupid flicker of hope.

Didn’t he already tell himself a hundred times over last night that it would all just be a dream of a dream anyway? A child’s fantasies. That gangly boy’s delusions.

Fuck him.

He could declutter the place, ask her which trinkets she really wants to keep and which ones she wouldn’t mind keeping in storage. Or hell, even throwing away. He could go with her to Galleywood and pick out fresh vegetables. He could whip up an actual full English breakfast with a complete set of ingredients and keep her stuffed and satisfied. He could help out with that garden, even though he only has two little succulents and little experience with anything else. He could pick out a new mattress for her. They could still use the 101 Dalmatians bedsheets if she wanted. The only problem is they’d have two sets of every single instrument, if he decided never to leave…

“Ben?”

He wolfs down the rest of his food. Downs it with coffee. “Thanks for all this, Rey. But I think I should be on my way. Still got some houseplants I need to water… But I can do the dishes before I go—”

“No, it’s fine!” she exclaims, already standing up and gathering their empty plates before setting everything back down again. “Shall I see you out?”

“Sure.”

He hunts for all his other missing clothes, glancing over his shoulder to see if she’s close behind. And she is. Lingering by the doorway, she watches him in the kitchen as he puts on his jeans again. Their arms brush against each other, eyes meeting for a split-second when he passes her on his way out. She’s there too, when he grabs his wristwatch from atop the washing machine.

“A little late for Easter,” he quips as he picks up his belt hanging precariously on the stool behind the timpani.

She obliges him with a quiet laugh. Now, that one. That one was fake.

He plants himself on the bottommost step of the stairs, putting on his socks and shoes. Even then, she’s close by with her arms already laden with his mallet bag and his dust cover.

“I can use an Oyster on the Elizabeth, right?” he asks, tying up his laces.

“On this line, you can.”

“Great.”

His laces secure, he stands to his full height and takes his things from her. For one last time, he slices through their fucking best friend’s noiseless noise.

“Rey, look…” he begins, then falters for a moment. Nothing a quick, painful swallow can’t fix. “I know you’ll do great. Those things I told you before, about you being the one I’d choose to take the chair… I meant every word.”

“I know,” she says almost under her breath, her eyes wide and expectant and… He thinks that might be sadness in that pale hazel. Right now, with the light of the colorless morning sky peeking in through the lace curtain that she already refitted back on its rod, they’ve lost their green.

“But if you need any h—That’s to say, if you have any questions about principal stuff… I’d be happy to help.”

“I know,” she repeats, offering him a smile that—no matter how tiny—already reforms all her features into something brighter than the gray world that awaits him outside. “Thank you.”

“Sorry, can I just—”

He drops the dust cover from his grip and takes her in his arms, getting a taste of her lips for the very last time. Their kiss tastes like breakfast and the beginning of a new mountain of bittersweet regrets. But he deepens it just as she does, when she clutches onto his sweater and makes him lean even closer. They keep their lips pressed together—just one more caress of that anchor they would never be able to touch again—while a wall clock keeps ticking in a nearby room, quietly reminding them that everything is over before it ever even began.

“Ben…”

His thumb hovers over her lips as he memorizes their shape under his touch. The little chapped patches, the many lines, the parts that he would have chosen as his favorite spots to bite on.

I love you.

Maybe. In another life.

“You did make me happy, Chief,” he whispers. “Congratulations again… I’ll see you later.”

The station, by a stroke of irony, is on Gubbins Lane just two corners away. She sees him out the door, even waves at him when he looks back from the curb, grins so that he’d get a dose of sunlight in this already dreary morning. The walk to the first corner is long, his footsteps dragging. But he never looks back.

A coward too afraid to see if she’d still be standing there on her doorstep watching him leave.

She probably isn’t.

He’s the sole passenger in his car on the Elizabeth Line, most likely because it’s an early Sunday morning. As he sighs into his collar, he catches a distinct scent and brings the fabric up to his nose.

Cooking oil.

He doesn’t know what to make of it.

Ben leans his head back against the glass as the train hurtles along the tracks. It’s going to be a long day—cleaning, practice, matinee concert at 3PM—and he already feels the traces of a migraine building up in his temple.

Commissioned art by PandaCapuccino (Twitter / Instagram)