A Sixteenth-Note Run of the Heart

Stingue

Rogue was out of the classroom and on his way to the band room before the bell stopped ringing. The halls of his high school were beyond crowded, which the teenager found to be more than a little bit uncomfortable. He awkwardly weaved around his peers, trying – and failing – not to run into anyone. After what seemed to be an eternity but was actually about thirty seconds of awkward dodging, Rogue stepped into the band room and felt a familiar calming sensation fall over him.

The band room was Rogue's happy place. The space was huge, the floors were tiled with grey-white tiles and blue accents, and along the white brick walls were sound absorbers. In the centre of the room in a half-circle around the podium were several rows of chairs and stands – the usual concert band setup. Several clusters of students spread across the large, open room. He spotted a few flute players, a couple clarinets, and the oboe player in one huddle. In another stood several trumpets (belch), a handful of low brass players, and some percussionists. The entire scene was so familiar that Rogue felt at home even though he was blood-related to exactly zero people in the room.

Although a few of his friends waved to him, the black-haired boy made his way into the music storage room, muttering "excuse me" every so often. He located his cubby that he shared with Yukino, one of his close friends, and extracted the small zippered case and a large blue folder before retracing his steps back out into the hallway. Rogue cautiously opened the door to practice room number seven and stepped inside.

Rogue sighed as he placed the folder on the creaky old stand in the centre of the miniature room. The square-shaped room was tiny – the walls were probably no more than two-and-a-half metres long – but the band nerd found it comforting to be alone in the small space. Sitting down in the black musician's chair, he unzipped the case, revealing the silver object inside.

The eleventh-grader took great pride in his instrument. It was brand-new as of the beginning of the school year, and it was the top intermediate model of a high-quality brand. It was this object that had aided in earning Rogue the first-chair spot.

He carefully removed the head joint and the two body pieces of the flute, assembling it with acquainted ease. As a test, he blew a Concert F to test how much he needed to tune his instrument. As he practiced nearly every day, he was fairly sure that he was close to in tune. Rogue ran up a Concert F scale in sixteenth notes, and it came out nearly flawlessly although he hadn't warmed up at all.

The flutist set down the metal object in favour of shuffling sheet music on the stand. The piece that sat in front of him was the literal embodiment of Satan, in Rogue's opinion, which was why he needed to practice it. Spaced across the sheet music were black notes on white, connected by slurs, and decorated by staccato and accent marks. Nearly the entire piece was written in the upper register, and the majority of the difficult part was sixteenth note phrases. The other reason why Rogue really needed to work on the selection was because the spring concert was in less than two weeks, and he did not have even a little bit of his extremely difficult solo perfected.

Taking a deep breath, the dark-haired male raised the flute to his lips and began moving his fingers as he blew air over the opening on the mouthpiece. His fingers moved faster and faster as he caught onto the way the piece flowed and as he gained confidence.

Well, until he skipped several notes in a row and suddenly he had sputtered to a stop. "Fuck," he swore, thoroughly disappointed that he couldn't even make it through a rough run of the solo.

After studying the black-and-white for another minute or so, Rogue once again resumed playing.

He hadn't even finished two bars when the practice room creaked open.

"Hey."

Leaning against the doorframe stood a tall, slim, and muscular blond teenager with an alto saxophone hanging around his neck. Although the gold-lacquered instrument hid most of the design on the boy's white t-shirt, Rogue knew that the article of clothing displayed a band logo accompanied by a popular lyric. He didn't recall which band was on the male's shirt today, but he knew that all of the saxophonist's shirts were generally of the same design.

"Can I help you?" Rogue asked impatiently, placing the flute in his lap.

"Actually, yes," the blond admitted, taking a step towards the flutist.

"Sting, I'm trying to practice," he complained.

Sting pouted, "But I wanna talk to ya, Rogue."

"Can it wait?" Rogue asked impatiently, lowering his stand by a few centimetres.

"Nah," Sting said. He slid the chair from the far side of the room next to Rogue and lowered himself into it. "What are ya working on?"

Rogue rolled his eyes in annoyance. "The solo. I'm sort of busy, so will you get to it?"

"Aw, am I not allowed to just wanna talk to my boyfriend?"

"No," the dark-haired boy snapped.

"That's too bad; because you're gonna have to deal with it." Sting grinned, and then he booped the impatient band nerd's nose. "No, I just wanted to ask you if you're free on Friday. I wanna go out with ya."

Rogue hung his head in false irritation. Truth was, he didn't mind Sting interrupting his practice session since he didn't want to rehearse anyways. And anything with Sting is a good thing, the romantic part of his mind reminded him. Letting out a breath, he replied, "Sure. Where are we going?"

"You'll just have to see, won't you?"

"Come on, Sting. You don't have to be such a tease," he groaned. Then, he realised for the first time that Sting usually put his instrument away as soon as he was finished playing in third block and didn't take it back out until the next day. However, today he had it assembled – reed and all – after school, after when he usually needed it. "Why do you have your saxophone out?"

Sting perked up at that. "Oh, yeah, that was the other reason I wanted to see you. I have a thing I've been working on," he announced, pulling a piece of music out of his own folder that Rogue hadn't noticed him bring in with him and placing it on Rogue's stand.

Sting pulled his saxophone in between his legs and brought the mouthpiece to his mouth. Then, he began playing.

Rogue was surprised. If he was being honest, Sting wasn't the best alto saxophone in the band – he was actually like fourth chair out of six altos. But the piece that he was playing sounded fabulous. It was written in the upper register for an alto; Rogue could tell that much by looking at the sheet music and having known Sting and his instrument – named Pete – for a long time.

Usually, for someone who wasn't the best player in the first place, playing a piece like this would be difficult. A fair bit of the time, there were issues like tone quality and intonation, but the sound waves emitting from the instrument were very pleasing to the ear.

He must've worked really hard on this, Rogue thought to himself.

Sting's sound was really clear, and it sounded downright beautiful as Rogue's boyfriend ran through the several passages of eighth note patterns sprinkled with sixteenth note additions.

The piece was slow and meaningful – which were pretty much nothing like Sting's everyday personality. However, Rogue knew better than to think that just because Sting was a jokester who can't take anything seriously normally that he can't be sentimental and romantic when he wants to be. In fact, on their first date – which actually happened to be at a marching band competition during tenth grade – Sting was cheesy and romantic and super sweet.

The blond was really into the music. It flowed smoothly, and none of the notes were too rushed, and nothing stopped too abruptly. It was the most wonderful song that Rogue had ever heard on an alto saxophone. To be fair, it was possible that Rogue was biased due to the fact that his boyfriend had obviously put in a lot of time and effort in order for this to sound good, but he honestly thought that it was the most amazing thing he had heard in such a long time.

The song came to a close with Sting holding out a long note. The blond released a breath, and then took in a deep one as he turned his head to look at the flutist. "Are you okay? Did you like it?"

Apparently Rogue hadn't realised just how moved by the music he was, because a few tears danced in his eyes. "I loved it. It was beautiful, Sting. I'm really proud of you. It sounded so good." He smiled lovingly towards the saxophonist, who now had a light dusting of blush on his cheeks.

Sting grinned. "We've been together for eighteen months as of tomorrow. I felt like it was an important mark to celebrate, and I really couldn't think of anything more us than a song that I had a hand in composing dedicated to you."

Rogue's eyes widened even more. "You helped compose it? It's so beautiful, and it sounded amazing, babe. I love you so much," he admitted, looking into his date's dark blue eyes.

"And I love you more," Sting replied, leaning forward, closing the gap between their lips.

A moment later – a moment too soon, in Rogue's opinion – they broke apart. They didn't speak, didn't move. The couple just stayed in that position, lips just centimetres apart but not touching, looking into each other's eyes.

"Happy year-and-a-half anniversary," Sting said with a cheesy grin, tilting his head forward just the slightest bit so that it was touching Rogue's forehead.

A/N: Alright. I really wanted to write a band AU for these two. I feel like it isn't as good as it could be, but for an 11 o'clock at night thing, I think that it turned out pretty okay. I don't think that either is too out-of-character. I mean, Sting could be a bit too serious, but let me know if you think they're too OOC. I thought it was sort of cute - the idea of Sting helping write a song for Rogue and then it sounding so amazing. And then, I'm a band kid, so this was just adorable and fluffy and perfect. (Fun fact: I play alto sax, and my best friend - no, we're not dating, I wish - plays flute) Have a nice day, all of you lovely people! -Stephanie