Yes, I'm still alive and still in this fandom. Huzzah. This started because of a photo ( /zPFyPoE) going around on tumblr a while back and the classical music nerd in me could not let the plot bunny go. I have this up on Ao3 as well with pictures to boot because they allow that there, so uh yeah. Just wanted this up here for archival(?) purposes.
I have three chapters done, and will post them intermittently. Probably.
Quick head's up, there will be mentions of depression and suicide in this fic, so if that bothers/worries you, you should skip the fic or forge on because your mileage might vary. I will put warnings if a chapter contains such talk.
So. Yeah.
I
Liszt, Beethoven, and (unfortunately) Mozart
The note arrives on a dreary Wednesday afternoon.
Gokudera almost doesn't notice it, too engrossed in crescendos and half-notes and all too consumed with the burning feeling inside his chest he wants to believe is heartburn but is most likely a noxious mixture of anger, grief, and bitterness. His fingers stutter over the keys, cutting the etude short when he sees movement at the edge of his vision.
"Uri?" Gokudera calls out into the silence of his apartment, blinking away the cloud he always gets when he plays for too long. "Oi, Uri!" He calls out again, green eyes darting around the small living space, only to be rewarded with a decidedly belligerent meow from his roommate.
Said roommate was currently sprawled on her belly near the door, warily pawing at a piece of paper.
"What's that you got there, Uri?" He asks as he pads towards Uri. Uri, demonstrating that no, she has yet to evolve and speak, simply meows at him. "Yeah, that's what I thought so too." He mutters, bending to swipe at the paper before Uri decides to make confetti out of it.
There's something scrawled on the piece of loose-leaf, a noise complaint most likely. It won't be the first time some irate neighbor had a few things to say about his piano playing and he doubts it'll be the last. He flips the note, wondering what kind of creative expletives this one had in store for him. The last time someone complained about all the racket he was supposedly making–how Chopin's Nocturne counted as racket, Gokudera will never know—they had done so via several dictionaries' worth of curse words.
[A humble request to the pianist: Liebesträume no. 3 in A flat]
"Liebesträume," Gokudera echoes into the silence of his apartment, eyes tracing the words with something like bewilderment. Instead of a noise complaint, he gets a request? "What the actual fuck." He reads the note again, hoping to shed some light on things, but no, the message, written in chicken scratch remains the same.
One of his neighbors wants to hear him play Liebesträume no. 3 in A flat.
Huh.
Okay then.
Twisting his lips in contemplation, Gokudera turned to Uri. "What do you think, Uri? You up for some Liszt?"
Uri, in true Uri fashion affords him a bored meow which Gokudera takes as an affirmative. And if it wasn't, well, Uri could deal. He's been dealing with her howling at unholy hours of the night after all.
Tucking the note into his pocket, Gokudera ambles towards one of his many bookshelves, turning towards the one dedicated to sheet music. He knows the piece, of course, knows Liszt like an old friend, like a faint thrumming in his veins. But it's been a while since he's played this particular piece and for some reason Gokudera would chalk up to stubborn pride, he wants to make this good for his mysterious neighbor.
It's not every day he gets a request after all.
Sheet music in hand, he makes a detour to the French doors leading out into the balcony and pushes them open. It'd be useless if whoever requested the piece were unable to hear it. And so, with his doors open and the notes jumping out at him from yellowing sheets of paper, Gokudera sits down on the worn bench and begins to play.
The beginning is shaky, his fingers stumbling over the opening bars like a foal trying out its first steps. He can almost hear his sister's ribbing at his messy start, but still he forges on. His playing gets smoother when he reaches the first cadenza, years of training and innate talent guiding his fingers through every note with swift efficacy.
It doesn't take long, the piece is just the last part of a longer Nocturne, after all. For a moment, Gokudera feels woefully bereft. It's a familiar feeling. He always feels this way every single time he finishes playing, as if he's poured everything out for the whole world to see and now there's nothing left inside of him. It's one of the reasons why he'd stopped playing professionally; Gokudera's never figured out what to do about the emptiness.
He lets out a shaky exhale after a few seconds and suddenly, there's muffled applause coming from outside. Stumbling to his feet, Gokudera hurries out into the balcony, straining his ears for the clapping, and oh, there it is. He squints, leaning against the railing as he looks up, up, because somewhere up there, just a few floors above Gokudera, is the mysterious neighbor who requested Liebestraume, clapping.
Clapping, as if he's just heard Gokudera perform in a fucking concert hall.
.
.
.
"And?" Haru prompts excitedly and Gokudera momentarily regrets telling her of all people. But then who else is he supposed to tell? It's not as if he's drowning in people he begrudgingly considers friends. The handful of people he did who weren't Haru were all scattered around the globe. So it's either Haru or Uri and frankly, Gokudera's tired of soliloquizing to his cat.
Of course, Haru isn't much better.
"And nothing, that's it. I played the piece, whoever it is gave me a round of applause." He grouses, taking a bite of his sandwich. "End of story."
Haru makes an annoyed noise, dropping her sandwich on the plate. "You didn't even try and find out who it was?"
Gokudera shrugs. "It's too much trouble."
"It's too much—oh my god," Haru splutters, grabbing at his face suddenly because Haru was insane, and holy fuck, she still has mayonnaise on her hands, "something straight out of a novel jumps out at you and you take the boring route and ignore the whole thing? The hell, 'Dera?"
He lets out a loud groan, reaching up to peel Haru's hands away from his face. "Okay, one, my life is not actually a Danielle Steel novel, two, I refuse to have you live vicariously through me, and three, you had mayonnaise on your hands, moron!" He grabs at Haru's handkerchief, ignoring her affronted gasp, and wipes his cheeks with it.
"I thought we've agreed when we started the descent to the hell that is the combined Masters-Doctorate program that we would live vicariously through each other if ever one of us had the slightest bit of chance at romance." Haru says, picking up her sandwich, this time with a paper napkin.
Gokudera prudently chokes on a chunk of ham. "When the hell did I agree to that?!"
"It was an unspoken agreement in our friendship," Haru sniffs imperiously before letting out a long, drawn-out sigh. "Ah well, it was stupid to expect that you'd do anything like ask about who your mysterious neighbor is."
"Damn right."
Letting out a long, drawn-out sigh, Haru turns to him with bright eyes and a look on her face that makes him a bit nervous about what she's going to say next. "How are you, though? Does playing still—" She trails off, biting her lower lip, at a loss as to how to say does playing the piano still make your chest constrict painfully it feels like your heart is going to burst and your lungs feel like they'll collapse and make you feel like ending your life again without sounding like a terrible human being.
In another time, in another place, and if Haru wasn't Haru, Gokudera would have snarled and thrown expletives and every hateful word he has burning on his tongue. But Haru is Haru and she's his best friend and she's pulled him out of almost every hole he'd dug himself in each and every time by virtue of being her annoying and perceptive self, so Gokudera musters up a smile that looks like a grimace and says, as honestly as he possibly can, "it's not great, but it's—it's okay."
Playing for his faceless neighbor had felt better than when he was playing for an equally faceless crowd in a concert hall.
Haru smiles, brittle and oh, how he hates making her smile like that. "I'm glad." She whispers, almost inaudible in the din of their lab's shitty AC. "Anyway," Haru begins, a forceful segue because she knows him too well and knows when he wants to talk and when he doesn't, "you'll tell me if you get another request, right? At least let me fantasize a Danielle Steele ending for you, yeah?"
Gokudera snorts, takes Haru's unoccupied hand and squeezes tight.
Haru squeezes back even tighter.
"Fuck no."
.
.
.
It's another week before he gets another request, not that Gokudera's been counting the days because that would be ridiculous and he is a busy, busy man with far better things to do. Honest. And it's entirely stupid to even hope that this, whatever this is, wasn't just a one-time thing sort of deal, so he definitely does not wait for any more notes slipped under his door.
And if he happens to sprint towards the foyer the next Wednesday when he glimpses a piece of paper stuck beneath the welcome mat, then that's totally between him and Uri.
[If it isn't any trouble, Sonata Pathetique 2nd mvmt.]
It's the same handwriting as the first note Gokudera had placed on the fridge—held up by one of the souvenir shop refrigerator magnets Bianchi always sends him whenever she goes on tour—but instead of loose-leaf, this one is written on the back of an old receipt for a bottle of Pocari and, huh, shaving cream.
Looks like his faceless neighbor is a guy.
Or at least, someone who uses shaving cream.
Gokudera lets out a small hum before taking another magnet—one that says Warsaw in a cutesy font—to hold the new note in place. He takes one last look at the new request, eyes tracing the words before heading towards the French doors and pushing them open. Not bothering with sheet music this time around—it's his sister's favorite piece and he's known it by heart before he even turned ten—he makes a detour towards the piano, sits down on the bench, and begins to play.
.
.
.
"Oooh, Pathetique! I'm starting to like your mystery neighbor." Haru croons when he (begrudgingly and inevitably) tells her. "Or at least, their taste in music at the very least." She adds thoughtfully, "wanna bet on which composer your next request's gonna be?"
Gokudera rolls his eyes, pushing Haru's chair away and ignoring her subsequent shriek as she rolls towards the autoclave. "You're an idiot." He says, trying and ultimately failing to keep the fondness off his voice. "Next week's lunch on Chopin."
Haru crows triumphantly, spinning on her chair like the five-year-old she truly is. "Lunch and dinner on Bach."
.
.
.
"You're on."
Neither of them win.
The asshole asks for Mozart and it's a good thing the piece asks for vehemence because Gokudera wanted to win, damnit.
Songs in this chapter:
1. Liebestraume by Liszt; which is a v pretty piece and if you haven't heard it yet, you should go and have a listen.
2. Pathetique 2nd mvmt by Beethoven, which is that piece that you've probably heard from Nodame Cantabile, but if you haven't, please listen to it too.
3. A vehement Mozart piece of your choice :D
Gokudera and Haru are my BrOTP so watch out for more of them, I guess?