Work Text:
Thomas has a mental ranking of every good study spot on campus. Such is the life of an engineering major, constantly behind in classes he forgot he was even enrolled in, and fucked beyond recognition in others that are demolishing his already fraught GPA and mental state. The library was impossible to find a free desk at and was, to put in mildly, way fucking louder than it ought to be. Even worse, the engineering program dedicated labs and study halls were a horrendous reminder that all the pejorative stereotypes concerning STEM students and hygiene were all, ruefully, steeped in some truth. His dorm wasn’t an option, either, because his roommate Pili (bless his heart) was far too fun and chatty to be around and any hopes of getting work done was shattered as soon as he and Pili started talking.
And so, he ran a finetoothed comb over every nook and cranny of his campus and searched for his Goldilocks study spot with the precision of an over-analytical engineering student doing everything he can to avoid studying for the damn degree he signed up for.
Today, Thomas has hit jackpot in the form of a storage supply room in the brownstone music building on the west wing of his campus.
The room itself was nondescript, a musical supply room tucked away in a hallway on the last floor, with a single, arched window partially covered with September foliage. He tugs on the pull switch, a lightbulb flickering several times before illumination. It’s clearly not an in-use class, with a decently sized desk and chair aligned right next to the upright piano pushed in front of the window. There’s a couple of other instruments, a dusty cello and euphonium pushed to a corner, but the piano is comparatively clean. He shudders - it’s a little creepy, and drafty, but beggars can’t be choosers - not when there’s a perfectly vacant room just begging for him to turn it into the most OSHA-unsafe welding lab ever.
Most importantly: there’s a working outlet right next to the desk. Thomas almost cries of relief, as he closes the door behind him and makes his way to the desk.
Any illusion of peace is shattered immediately when the door flies open and for a terrifying second, Thomas and the intruder both stare in reciprocated shock.
The boy, sweater vest clad and holding a file of sheet music with ‘Fluixon Aculon’ labeled across it, jumps back like he’d just seen a mouse in his pantry. Thomas feels a little self conscious - he’s wearing a ratty hoodie emblazoned with the name of their university’s engineering department and his unflattering but functional blue-light glasses. It doesn’t help that the stranger, in layman’s terms, is totally hot, maybe even more so with the gawking irritation carved on his deceptively pleasant features. The furrow in his brow says this is an expression he wears often. “You’re encroaching in my space. Leave.” Arms folded, tapping his foot testily. An order, not a request.
A truism about Thomas: he, maybe to his detriment, enjoys that engineering was a constant effort of pushing his luck in seeing just how much he could accomplish in as little time possible. Safe to say, he’s realising in real time just how much that extends to real life.
In defiance, he settles further into the plastic chair. “This is public property. I have every right to study here,” Thomas manages. Fuck, he totally should have heeded the obvious signs of use and left while he could. He’d failed to factor in the hit his ability to talk himself out of trouble would receive when faced with someone pretty, but Thomas is determined to secure a study space lest he become another engineering dropout statistic.
“T-this is the music building - you fucking engineering students literally have your own building!” He marches right up to Thomas, indignantly pointing a finger squarely into Thomas' chest. In any other situation, going toe to toe with a beautiful stranger would have been the highlight of his week, if it didn’t feel like one wrong move with this guy would get his head cut straight off.
“Well - well -” Thomas' brain scrambles for a response. “There’s literally several dedicated practice rooms! You could practice there!” He adds, pleading: “Look, the engineering building smells like crushed dreams and BO, my psyche can’t handle it. Please let me study here.”
The stranger’s expression ices over, polar vortex. Thomas gets the distinct feeling he’s hit a nerve he had no intention of hitting. “Not my problem,” he spits, woodboards creaking as he situates himself in front of the upright piano.
Another truism about Thomas: he’s not above bribery. He takes a deep breath and presses on, heart in his back pocket, foot in his mouth.
“Please. Let me study here. I’m literally begging. I’ll stay out of your hair and… and… Pay rent in the form of baked goods or whatever. Mutually beneficial for us both.” Thomas proffers his hand, smiles in a way he’s seen slimy business students like Schpood do. “I’m Thomas, by the way.”
The boy clicks his tongue, muttering ‘fucking engineering students, man’ just loud enough for Thomas to hear. The smile is starting to hurt Thomas’ face. “Fine,” he acquiesces, and they shake on it. The stranger’s grip, Thomas notes, is frigid and tight, all slender fingers and nails cut short. “Fluixon. Call me Flux.”
Thomas isn’t depressed, despite what Snowbird says. Not like before at least. He still wakes up in the morning, still attends his classes, still keeps up his grades, and fills every free second he can with studying or extracurriculars. These are all markers of the distinctly not depressed. The label was reserved for something closer to days-in-bed-rotting-and-staring-at-the-cieling he used to experience, and not the anhedonia he’s now more familiar with.
It didn’t matter then, he reminds himself, and it doesn’t matter now, the way he finds himself carried through life like dandelion fluff on spring breeze. He’s made peace with letting it pass him by. Passion is exhausting in heavy doses anyway.
But, deep in his heart of hearts, Thomas is glad for the modicum of a win that is a consistent place to work, if only to assuage his guilt at Snowbird having to beat the motivation to study into Thomas until he inevitably finishes his assignments in a 3AM fugue state - retaining nothing, regretting everything. He buys a celebratory vanilla latte (extra foamy, extra shots of espresso) and two pastries from the campus cafe named something unpronounceable but vaguely French sounding; his breath smokes in October frost as he makes his way past the centre quad to the ivy-covered music building.
Thomas hears the piano solo when he rounds the corner hallway, and for the first time in his 22 years of living, his heart genuinely, genuinely, seizes at the sound of it.
His hand stops half way to the door knob, and he stands outside the hallway, enraptured. It's strangely intimate, being the sole audience member as the song uncurls heavy and viscous through his thoracic cavity and into his stomach, leaves him fluttering like flimsy butterfly wings. Something akin to that time during freshman year when he had one too many Jagerbombs on an empty stomach and it seared like heat death all the way down.
Hand resting on the doorknob, he counts ten seconds after the song ends before he dares enter. The piece hangs like honeysuckle in the summer, and Thomas hunts for remnants in the dusty, stagnant air. Thomas waves. Flux doesn’t.
“That… was really pretty,” Thomas offers, settling in the corner desk, his home for the next several hours or until he finishes this damn lab report. Heat rises to his cheeks; pretty is a disservice to a full-body emergence he’d experienced, and he doesn’t know how else to say it without sounding like a freak to someone he’s essentially just met. Was Flux the sort of person who relished in this, or could he peg insincerity from a mile away? The latter seems more likely.
A glimmer of a smile rests on Flux’s lips, but his tone is terse when he responds, “Literally everyone in my family plays an instrument - it better be pretty.” The metronome ticks. “This is basically a private concert. And I need ticket fare,” he holds his hand out, palm facing up, “Sugar rush, please.”
Thomas holds up spoils from his earlier cafe run, still buttery and warm. “Does the chocolate glazed donut or the cinnamon roll cover the fee, o great concertmaster?” Thomas cajoles.
Flux’s gaze darts between the two grease stained bags, clearly taking this extremely seriously. “Cinnamon roll and you’ve got yourself a semester of private concerts. Consider yourself blessed.”
“How generous of you.”
Flux flips through a booklet of sheet music, eventually settling on Mazurka No. 4 in E-Flat Minor. He takes a deep breath, hands settling on the keys, concentration renewed. “I’m known to be.”
In the tender hours between midnight and sunrise, Thomas finds himself jarringly awake. It’s strange, how every time he tries to force sleep, he sees a flickering burn-in of Flux and those damn black and white keys behind his eyes. Dimly, he thinks he’d like to see Flux right now. Or, at least, hear him play. Surely, it’s the latter.
It suddenly strikes him how little he knows about Flux. It starts to gnaw at the back of his head, and when the boredom feeding into his stupidly encompassing curiosity becomes overwhelming, he pulls out his phone.
A ribbon of guilt unfurls in his gut when he searches ‘Fluixon Aculon’, like he’s breaching an unspoken expectation to the commensalism of their… Arrangement. Was anonymity expected without being expressly said? He’d remembered that Flux had said he came from a family of musicians, but he had sorely downplayed just how renowned the Aculon name was, if the fucking Wikipedia page was anything to go by. Dozens of videos appear - recitals, performances, interviews spanning an illustrious 20 year long career by one Elanuelo, who according to a 2007 interview, enjoyed spending time with his three children Ender, Cynnika, and Fluixon.
Scanning Elanuelo’s Wikipedia article, he and Flux don’t look particularly alike, save for the same intensity in their resting expressions. He’d seen Flux wear the exact same look; narrowed eyes, knit eyebrows, mouth set in a straight line.
He taps a video at random, titled ‘Elanuelo Aculon - 2014 - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2,’ making sure his earbuds are properly plugged in before playing. In it, Elanuelo’s wearing a dark silk suit, and he postures himself with an ego as big as the monstrous shadow he casts as he walks up the stage.
When Elanuelo’s hands come down to the piano, it’s earthshattering.
Where Flux cuts and carves, precise and surgical, Elanuelo ushers in natural disasters - sky cleaving, acrid taste in Thomas’ mouth, like he’s caught in the eye of a hurricane watching the world spin like a centrifuge around him. He’s sitting upright, transfixed and wide eyed and more awake than ever for the entire forty minute long performance.
Right before the video ends, as Elanuelo walks off stage to a thunderous encore, there’s the tiniest sliver of a dark-haired boy with violet eyes, no older than 11, smiling brightly as he reaches for Elanuelo’s hands.
Where reticence takes precedent, black and white keys become a perfect mirror reflection for Flux's mood. Today, Flux had arrived at the supply room later than usual, boots stomping heavily as he made a beeline straight for the piano, in near tremors. His hands drop to the keys like a guillotine, expression twisting further, and the song that emerges eviscerates Thomas in Flux’s stratosphere. It leaves Thomas’ hands shaking a little as he wires tiny resistors through a breadboard, and he loves every fucking second of it. Outside, it’s November and rainy, his favourite sort of weather. The rain betrays just how bad this supply room’s soundproofing is, but Thomas doesn’t mind - the noise layers nicely with the unusual cruelty of Flux’s playing currently.
He can finally see the family resemblance, in a way, and as awe curdles into unease, Thomas decides he doesn’t enjoy it anymore.
“Are you… ok over there?” Thomas squeezes out.
The pencil lead snaps under Flux’s grip as he’s jotting down notes on sheet music. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You just - I guess you’re playing a little different from usual,” Thomas falters. It’s hard to take the vitriol in stride, and he speaks with the lightness that hopefully defuses rather than aggravates.
It doesn’t land. Flux, eyes sharp and expectant, demands, “And that is?”
“You’re usually not so heavy handed. More,” Thomas gestures vaguely. “Like floaty and erratic but not this, I don’t know, aggressive?” Thomas shrinks in mortification at how thoroughly unimpressed Flux looks. “Oh my god - don’t look at me like that! I literally don’t do music at all!”
It’s enough to melt the ice around Flux, if only marginally, when he rubs his forehead and shakes his head. It almost makes how stupid he feels worth it. “Remind me to teach you some basic music terminology, because it’s genuinely painful to hear you say that after you’ve been listening to me play daily for nearly two months.” Quieter, he adds: “It’s… My father’s score, actually.”
Thomas pretends to reorganize his resistors by ohm rating, feigns indifference when he adds a non-committal ‘hm.’ Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to prod at whatever bruise Flux is nursing in his own way, muscle memory guiding Flux hands as he plays different segments in Elanuelo's composition.
Eager to change the subject, Thomas adds, “Teach me all you want but my course load's making me too braindead for anything beyond electrical circuits and robot mechanics.”
Flux snorts. “I’m offering to extend my musical knowledge and I’m shunned? I should charge your freeloading ass rent, after all.”
Thomas raises his eyebrows, mouth hanging open in mock surprise. “The sweets and coffee I buy you don’t cover that?”
Flux looks over at him with a wan smile. “‘Fraid not.”
Several hours pass like this, with the piano stentorian against the campus ambience as it tapers to buzzing streetlights and the occasional Friday-night typical punch of drunken laughter. As the two shoulder their backpacks, Flux grabs Thomas by the forearm, and Thomas looks back, suddenly breathless.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
Thomas can’t help the undoubtedly goofy smile stretching his face. “Yeah. For sure.”
Flux relays the story with a clinical detachment, that his father is a pianist and his siblings are violinists and the expectation that he would pursue music in the same capacity was all but branded onto him since he was tall enough to peer over piano keys. And so, he did, if only by an absence of choice. He played ardently and seriously up until he was 13, until it ate him inside out, and he had a panic attack on stage so severe he had quit playing for 2 years (“I was playing Paganini’s La Campanella,” he clarifies, wrinkling his nose. “Cliche, I know. I still can’t stand that fucking song,”), until he realised that as much as he has grown to detest it, the piano was as much of a part of his body as the bones and muscle that kept him upright. And he kept playing, early November light spilling like watercolour onto his hands.
“I wouldn’t say I like it. More like I accept it,” Flux clarifies, licking coffee foam from chapped lips as he makes quick work of the mocha Thomas had bought him.
“That’s a bit depressing.”
Flux shrugs. “I like how I play more than I’d care to be a replica of Elanuelo. Very few people are lucky enough to live and love what they do in any capacity.”
Thomas’ mouth is running before he realises it, “I think you can live and love at the same time. A little. It doesn’t have to be all at once, but nothing is so mutually exclusive.” A beat. “You don’t think so?”
“I think your brain is full of pudding. You're head over heels for engineering?”
Immediately, he retorts defensively, “I like engineering,” because it’s not a lie at all. He does like engineering. He likes the perpetual challenge of it, the uphill climb, the extracurriculars and people he’s engaged with, the euphoric satisfaction that every all-nighter, metal breakdown, or some combination thereof always yielded a shiny ‘A’ on his Canvas grade list, and even if it didn’t, he’d ride the grading curve to one. And maybe that’s where it stops, because with every positive he thinks, there’s how much the soul-sucking dedication comes at the cost of his health, that it touched every corner of his life without him wanting it to, how much he’d rather just get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep and no longer have to pretend everything wasn’t gently tugging him apart at the seams.
(Guiltily: how much his friends worry for him).
He doesn’t say as much, but he gets the impression that Flux understands this without him having to. It’s a shared sentiment, of taking careers too far, of emotional hairline fractures, of an early twenties marked with chasing an ever-moving goalpost. For several long moments, they’re locked in stalemate - Thomas mute, and Flux busying himself with stretching his hands out. And then, Flux smiles, clearly pleased with himself. “Ever the romantic, Thomas.”
Thomas - a romantic? It makes him laugh a little bitter, but Thomas feels pink and warm when he hears it from Flux. Maybe he’s changed, maybe this was in him all along; he’ll mull it over a thousand times in the new future but chooses to revel in this shiny, new piece of his soul. “I have my moments,” Thomas half-jokes, nails tapping against the breadboard on the desk. “Most wouldn’t call me a… romantic.”
“And what do they call you, Thomas?”
“Overly analytical and slightly depressive.” At least, that seems accurate to Snowbirds’ sentiment about him.
It’s not often that Flux has trouble figuring out how he’d like to play a particular song purely by ear, but on the rare occasion he was stuck, Thomas had seen him go quiet for several long minutes, unwaveringly transfixed on the black and white keys under his fingertips. And he’d stare, and play, fingers glancing off of chords and keys, evaluating each part like a puzzle only he had the picture to, until he managed to jigsaw everything into the cohesive melody he had envisioned himself playing.
Thomas feels like a puzzle being put together under Flux’s intensity, like a song waiting to be played. And finally, Flux concludes, “I think people like you more than you want credit for.” Matter-of-factly, he adds: “I’d stopped playing in front of people outside of classes. Completely. But I wouldn’t have kept playing if I didn’t enjoy playing for - some people.”
Flux, he realizes, is deliberately avoiding eye contact, and it doesn’t even matter, because the implication is enough to make Thomas feel like he’s freefalling: Everyone except you. Shooting stars fly across the back of his eyelids, breath squeezing out of lungs, dizzyingly overjoyed, deep bass running down his spine. It’s glorious, the way Flux coaxes life out of him.
“Well,” Thomas says as calmly as he can, choking down his heart in his throat, “they’re missing out.”
Flux is halfway through Liszt’s Consolation 3, and Thomas is halfway through abandoning all hope in making it through finals without jumping out the arched window. He’s spent 7 hours on a four question practice exam, and has made it through half of the problem set and done… Everything wrong. It’s spelling trouble for his future career, or at least indicates that he’s finally fried his brain beyond repair. So he gives up, if only momentarily, and lets his eyes settle on the snow falling outside, to the way the December dusk illuminates Flux like a spotlight as he draws a long, languishing song from white and black keys. There, there, Liszt seems to say. You’ll understand fluid mechanics one day, Thomas.
“You’re staring,” Flux says; his eyes are still trained on the sheet music in front of him, right hand occasionally flitting to flip to the next page as the melody ebbs and flows. “Just can’t get enough of me, huh?”
Thomas smiles, chin resting on his fist as he closes his eyes, listens. “Sorry,” he says, not apologetic at all. “I could never play like that. It’s nice watching you do it, instead.” Overcaffeinated and overwrought, Thomas is significantly less filtered; he enjoys the lightness of dipping into that unearned bravado a bit more today.
The melody stutters, finger slipping flat, and Flux replays the same stave several times until he’s satisfied. The song continues. “Anyone can play. With enough practice.”
Flux scoots over, and for the first time in the four months they’ve known each other, Flux motions with one hand, and Thomas dimly realises that he’s asking Thomas to join him at the piano. “Come here. I’ll prove it to you.”
When he sits next to Flux, halfway hanging off the bench, it feels like trespassing. Or walking into a movie theatre and staring up at an employee in the projection booth. Like he’s encroaching on hallowed ground by purposefully peeling away intended layers of mystique, but Flux’s expectant eyes confirms he has a place here, too.
Something grounds him, in the way he feels Flux’s shoulder pressed against his, smell the vetiver of his cologne. The full moon reflects in the piano’s glossy varnish. Stupidly, Thomas' thoughts wander to how pretty Flux is, and it's rendered anew by how wonderfully close they are right now. He can see just how long Flux’s lashes are, map the blush tinting across his cheeks, the barely-there scrunch of his nose.
The campus feels extraordinarily quiet. It’s just Thomas and Flux, on a stage of their own.
“Okay,” Flux says, tone hushed. Thomas has to lean in a little to hear him, and he vaguely wonders how pathetic death via proximity to a cute guy would sound. “Play this.”
Flux settles his left hand on the bass end of the piano, and plays a three note chord - pinky, middle finger, thumb. When Thomas tries and fails to replicate it, Flux reaches over, palm warm against the back of Thomas’ hand and manually rearranges his fingers to the correct keys. It leaves him tingling like a livewire, and Thomas silently hopes the sensation is mutual. He offers a subpar imitation of Flux’s lyrical playstyle, earning him an approving nod.
“You’re not half bad,” Flux observes, nodding with eyebrows raised.
“You’re lying. This isn’t even a hard chord and I’m butchering it.”
“Ok, I am. It’s positive reinforcement, Thomas.” They go back and forth like this several times, with Flux demonstrating and Thomas several paces behind as he stumbles through his first official music lesson, courtesy of Flux. Shockingly, he’s not great, and he probably would’ve felt worse about it if the obvious kick Flux was getting out of his misery wasn’t becoming his sole motivation to keep trying. Well, that and he likes the way Flux is pressed against him. Either way, he comes out of it learning a 4-chord accompaniment, a win in itself for the first instrument he’s touched in his life.
“Ok. Now keep playing those chords,” Flux instructs. Thomas nods, unsure. “Just those four, in that order, in that tempo.” He sets the metronome and smiles, pearly and coy, as his right hand flexes and settles on the treble end of the piano. “Don’t fuck it up, Thomas.”
And with that, Flux plays.
The song is lyrical and soaring, something like moonlight on December snow and Christmas lights, like mending hearts, like birthday candle wishes and buttercream frosting, like French pastries. Like falling in love with someone with dark hair and violet eyes. Thomas’ hands slip a fair few times, discordant notes marring the melodic landscape, but Flux presses on, completely unfazed, determined to see his composition to fruition. Thomas glances towards the plane of Flux’s face, parted lips in concentration, and he suddenly really, really would like to know how it would feel to kiss Flux.
And when the song quiets, he finds his hand settled against Flux’s, and he does the unthinkable by hooking his thumb with Flux’s. Flux doesn’t recoil. The air in his lungs still as Thomas, heart rabbiting, threads his thumb and forefinger around Flux’s wrist, palm flat against his skin, and weaves their hands together. Flux watches, trembling slightly, pupils blown when he finally faces Thomas.
“Kiss me,” Flux whispers, and who is Thomas to deny him that?
It’s immediate - the inclination of Flux’s jaw, the way their mouths slot together, the off-kilter notes echoing as Flux scrambles for purchase against the piano keys when Thomas threads a hand around his waist, the way Flux tastes like mint gum and the glimmering hope that Thomas will make it through the next two years. Snow falls outside, quiet and soft as the kiss they share.
Thomas can’t hide the smile on this face when they pull away for breath. “We should play again sometime.”
Flux smiles, pink cheeked and starry eyed. “Maybe we should.”