Warning: Mild descriptions of cat dissection.
Word Count: 3,118
Annie closed her eyes and let herself go. Her fingers glided effortlessly over the eighty-eight keys, playing music that she never would have imagined even trying a few years ago.
Piano was her escape. Piano was her outlet. Its music lifted her spirits and satisfied her soul.
To think, a few years ago she struggled to practice without being told. Now, she sat down at a piano at every opportunity she got and let herself go.
The final note of the piece faded away and Annie slowly opened her eyes again. She was in a solo practice room at school, so the piano itself was rather old and worn and in need of a little tuning when it came to the high notes, but she didn't mind.
Lunch was almost over, so she gathered up her sheet music and carefully put it away in her folder while popping in her earbuds and resuming her music. Then she slung her backpack over her shoulder and quietly left the room.
The area outside the music building was rarely populated. Annie was grateful for that. She'd never been the most sociable of people.
She checked her watch: two minutes until the bell rang. She had physiology next and the science building was all the way across campus. It didn't really help that her school was one of the largest in the state, so with a sigh she began to walk.
It wasn't that she didn't like physiology. She'd had an incredible fascination with the human body and how it worked ever since she was young, but they were due to start dissecting cats pretty soon.
Annie didn't mind dissecting animals; she learned long ago that things were only as gross as you made them out to be. But her lab partner had always been another story.
Armin Arlert was his name, the brightest of their year. He had a love for all subjects except for PE, and took all the AP and honors classes he could cram into his schedule.
He was kind and sweet and empathetic and at some point during sophomore she fell for him.
Oh, she wouldn't call it love. Love is a very strong word, after all.
Just because her heart sometimes still skipped a beat when he laughed didn't mean she was in love.
Just because her stomach sometimes still tied itself in knots when they talked didn't mean she was in love.
Just because her brain sometimes still short-circuited when he looked her way didn't mean she was in love.
Nope, nope, nopity nope. It wasn't love; just an innocent schoolgirl crush.
Annie had this sudden urge to run back to the music building and return to the piano so she could pour her soul out onto the keys.
"Hey, Anniiie~"
Ah, shit.
Annie sighed. "Yes, Hitch?" she answered. She didn't even need to turn around to see who it was, nor did she stop and wait for her friend. "What do you want?"
"You have Ms. Zoё next, riiight?" Hitch purred when she caught up with Annie.
Annie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "You don't have her for physio, so what's the point of asking? You're not going to tell me anything useful," she grumbled.
"Ah," Hitch replied, her eyes practically sparkling. "There's a substitute today; all you're doing is watching a playlist compilation of all of AsapSCIENCE's YouTube videos."
"Uhuh. Sooo…?"
Hitch laughed. "You'll find out soon enough, I gotta go to class," she choked out, and before Annie could respond, she ran in the opposite direction.
Annie scoffed and checked the time. Knowing Hitch, she probably was just running to leave her on a cliffhanger and probably changed to a walk after two seconds. Besides, they were so close to the science building that Hitch hadn't a chance of getting to her class on the other side of campus on time anyway.
Annie walked into the dark science room and plonked down at her seat. As she took her notebook out of her backpack, she noticed a strangely familiar smell… of formaldehyde…
Ohhh dear.
Then again, what did she expect from Hitch? Maybe she was still telling a sliver of the truth, maybe Hitch's class was just starting their rat dissections and the sub or Ms. Zoё or whoever was just leaving the door open to let the smell out.
"Oh no, Christa was right; we are dissecting cats today!" a student groaned upon entering the classroom.
Ms. Zoё popped her head into the room. "That's right, we are! Grab a pair of gloves and an instruction packet then go sit with your lab partner. I'm kind of tied up right now trying to get these damn cats out of their packages, so I'll be out in a minute or two," she explained.
From her peripherals, Annie noticed her friend Mina giving her a weird look. When she raised an eyebrow in confusion, Mina mouthed:
"Ah, there's nothing more romantic than dissecting a pregnant cat together and removing its unborn kittens from its disemboweled corpse~"
Annie wanted to get a pillow and smother Mina to death, but Armin had already entered the classroom and sat down next to her. Annie shot Mina one last death glare as she slid her finger across her throat in an empty death threat.
"Finally dissecting cats today," Armin nonchalantly said as he took his own notebook out. "I'm not going to lie, I've been looking forward to this since we started high school."
"Oi, Annie, could you do me a favor and turn on the speakers and start playing the playlist I have on the computer? And can someone put on a pair of gloves and help me in here? These stiff, dead cats aren't exactly easy to take out of buckets of formaldehyde, you know," Ms. Zoё called from the back room.
Obediently, Annie went to the front and turned on Ms. Zoё's laptop speakers and started playing the assumed AsapSCIENCE playlist.
Piano music began to play, but the lyrics were something else.
"I'll be the spark, if you'll be the flame
"Start a reaction that can't be contained
"Balance your pH by sharing my base
"I'll be your star, if you'll be my space."
It was accompanied solely by the piano and there was something about the song that struck Annie. She sat back down at her seat and listened carefully to the song, a few ideas spawning in her mind.
"This is your science love song"
Armin really enjoyed science, right?
"A place to start our chemical bond"
And she could totally play piano like that.
"A research endeavor"
There was only one thing left: was Annie brave enough to do it?
Her train of thought was interrupted by Armin plopping a stiff, wet cat in the middle of their dissection tray and smiling at her. He motioned to the scalpel and scissors on their table along with the dissection diagrams.
"Let's hop to it then, Annie," he cheerfully said. "Have you got the pins?"
When Annie got home, the first thing she did was dump her backpack at the door and make a beeline for her laptop. She was home alone, but that was no surprise; her mother died when she was five and her dad was raising her on his own. He worked late hours as a concert pianist in a nearby city, so she didn't expect him to be back until at least midnight.
She went to YouTube first, to find the song that had played first during Ms. Zoё's class. She found it, not surprisingly, on the AsapSCIENCE page, which (surprisingly and luckily) had they lyrics in the description.
By yet another stroke of luck she found the accompanying sheet music on Musescore. And it was at a sight reading level.
She printed it out and was settling down at the piano when her phone vibrated.
It was a call from Hitch.
Annie sighed and picked up her phone to answer it. "Yes, Hitch?" she asked in a bored tone.
"Heyyy Anniiiiieee," Hitch drawled. "How was Zooooёёёё's?"
"Shut up, Hitch, you're high."
A scoff from the other side. "Am not!"
The blonde rolled her eyes and crossed her free arm. "Really now? Can you tell the time, then?" she challenged.
"It's half past four, shortie," Hitch snapped. "Anyway, how was Zoё's class? Did you like the videos?"
"We started our cat dissections today, Hitch," Annie flatly replied. "The videos were running in the background, but otherwise we were too focused on cutting apart a cat to pay attention to them."
"Nya, but did you like the first video that came up?"
Annie could practically hear the cat face Hitch was probably making at the moment. She twisted a bit of her bangs around her finger. "Yes, Hitch, I heard the song."
"Uhuh, aaand?"
"What do you want me to say? That it made me blush like an anime girl and go, 'A-armin senpai, I love you~' or something?" Annie retorted. "Because it didn't."
"Not exactly what I was looking for…"
"But it did give me inspiration for something…" Annie mumbled into the phone, twisting her fringe nervously.
"Ehhh? Tell me, tell me!" Hitch begged on the other side.
"Nope, too late. I have to practice piano now, so bye Hitch," Annie quickly replied and hung up before her friend could protest further.
She tossed her phone onto a nearby couch and shuffled her sheet music again. Reading a few measures ahead, she placed her fingers on the keys and began to sight read.
"If you're done with the main dissection, then you can try and get the brain out for extra credit."
It was the last day of cat dissection. Armin and Annie had gone above and beyond what Ms. Zoё had asked of them, from carefully uncoiling the small intestines and measuring them to cutting the heart in half and investigating the pulmonary veins and arteries. Coincidentally, Mina had also been right with her joke about the cat being pregnant at the start of the unit: three tiny, perfectly formed kittens, nearly full term, had been found in the uterus of her and Armin's cat.
They hadn't been the only team with kittens, there was another pair with kittens, but their queen* hadn't been nearly as far along as theirs had been.
"Ms. Zoё, what if we remove the brain of one of the kittens?" Armin asked as he and Annie piled the cat's organs back into the hollow abdominal cavity so that they could flip it over and get better access to the head.
"If you get the brain out of the mom first, then go for it Armin. If you get the kitten's brain out without smooshing it then you can have extra-extra credit," Ms. Zoё answered.
"All right," Armin cheered in a hushed voice. He turned to Annie, his eyes shining with excitement. "Do you want to cut the skin off the head, or remove the top of the skull?"
Annie would have preferred to do neither, thank you very much, since she didn't feel comfortable with seeing the creature's eyes. Its glazed, dead eyes…
"It doesn't matter to me. If you want me to be perfectly honest, I'd prefer to not remove the brain. The eyes scare me," she admitted.
"Aw, c'mon Annie, extra credit," Armin begged.
Annie mentally sighed. The things I do for this nerd, she mused. "You can remove the brain if you like, I'll get started on the questions.
"Oh yeah, those. Don't we have a powerpoint presentation to put together for the dissection too?"
Annie nodded. "Mhm…"
"My house or yours?" Armin asked as he started cutting the skin on top of the cat's head.
Annie's heart skipped a beat and her stomach did a flip. "What?"
"For the presentation. Do you want to meet at my house, or yours?"
"The way you worded it made it sound like we were going to do the nasty or something," Annie muttered. Her eyes widened in surprise at what she had just said and she almost clamped a gloved hand to her mouth but stopped herself just in time. It had dissection fluid all over it, and as embarrassed as she was, Annie didn't want to get cancer.
"Get your mind out of the gutter. You're too nice to be saying dirty things like that," Armin laughed, poking her shoulder.
He called me nice oh my gosh he called me nice oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh.
"Anyway, my house or yours for the project?" he asked with a smile, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Annie thought back to her plan. The cat dissection had taken all week; this was the last day. She'd begun practicing on Tuesday. Assuming he came over on Saturday… would that have been enough time?
Ah, fuck it. Tomorrow or she'd never get the chance again. Or at least for a long time. "My house," she said, sounding more far confident than she actually felt. "Do you want my address now or after class?"
"I'm kind of tied up trying to get at a cat's brain right now, so after class should be fine," he replied, prying at the top of the cat's skull before it suddenly gave in and, after flying through the air for a few brief seconds, fell to the floor, taking a good bit of the surrounding membrane with it.
"Whoo whee looks like we found our first winner of extra credit!" Ms. Zoё cheered, darting over to Armin and Annie's lab table and prodding at the cat's brain with a single gloved finger, looking extremely pleased. "Five points extra credit to you both," she bubbled, "and Annie?"
Annie flinched, but looked at her teacher.
"Good luck," Ms. Zoё said, shooting a not-so-subtle wink at her before returning to her desk.
Baffled, Annie looked at Armin, who shrugged innocently.
Whatever. She had other things to be focusing on.
Annie checked her watch, butterflies squirming in her stomach. Quarter to twelve. Her stomach twisted more at the realization that Armin would be arriving at her house in just a few minutes. She needed something to calm her down, pronto.
Piano. There we go, piano should be able to calm me down, she thought. She went downstairs and down at the piano and began to warm up. Simple stuff, scales and arpeggios whatnot, but it did wonders for her nerves.
Annie took a deep breath and let her hands work their magic on the keyboard. Closing her eyes, she let herself go, allowing herself to be enveloped by the music.
Ding-dong~
Annie flinched, and the butterflies returned. He'd come early.
Nervously, she went to the front door and opened it. Before Armin could even say anything, she seized his arm.
"Ihavesomethingtoshowyou," she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth faster than even she herself could process it. She shoved a somewhat bewildered Armin onto the couch next to the piano and sat down at the bench.
She took a deep breath. Her hands were trembling, her stomach felt lighter than air, and a million thoughts were whizzing through her mind all at once, turning it into a flat buzz. Panicking, she realized she couldn't quite recall the lyrics to the song anymore, but it was too late, her fingers had already begun to play andㅡ
Calm. Her fingers knew what to do and when. She was in control. She could do this.
She took another deep breath and began.
"I'll be the spark, if you'll be the flame
"Start a reaction that can't be contained
"Balance your pH by sharing my base;
"I'll be your star, if you'll be my space…"
She paused briefly to catch herself from the panic that was now overwhelming her. Then she continued, her voice quiet and shaky, but there.
"'Cause there is no distance that I wouldn't go,
"Through space, time, and wormholes, my matter would flow
"To the edge, of the universe."
And so she continued. As she sang, she began to feel so… so… fragile. Exposed. Naked, almost. It was as though she were a doll made of glass: a fragile, transparent human being incapable of controlling her own actions.
She continued to pour her heart outㅡ through her words and the piano keysㅡ until she softly hit the last note and raised the damper pedal. Taking a shaky breath and opening her eyes she glanced at Armin, who looked like he was trying to hide an amused expression.
"I love you, nerd," she choked out, her voice cracking with emotion.
Armin's cheeks were tinged pink, but other than that, he looked nonplussed. "I knew Hitch was up to something when she said to make sure we worked on the powerpoint in the same room," he softly said.
Annie's heart began beating faster. Hitch was in on this? Why, that little…
"What did Hitch say? Did she tell you? Even I didn't tell her about this. Did she tell you?" Annie demanded, anger swelling inside of her. Then suddenly, she remembered Ms. Zoё and her wink. "Was Ms. Zoё in on this, too?"
Armin scratched his head. "I think she figured it out on her own. You know Ms. Zoё, sharp as a needle but scatterbrained as hell. She probably forgot that you didn't know she knew."
Annie shifted uneasily on the piano bench. "Now that that's over… do you want to forget all that happened just now and work on the powerpoint? Because if you do, I completely understand."
"Annie, we're doing our powerpoint on Google Docs, we don't even have to be in the same room to work on it. I came over to see you. And work on the project too, don't get me wrong, grades over everything, but I came to see you."
Annie felt her own face flush. Then something occurred to her:
"Isn't this how, like, two-thirds of all porn videos start?"
Armin made a face at her. "Get your mind out of the gutter, we're not doing that. But, um, Annie?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you too, nerd."
Author's Note: Ah, yes. There's nothing more romantic than taking apart a pregnant cat piece by piece~ It's been a while since I've written some Aruani, so I hope you enjoyed it and that it wasn't grossly OOC. Anyway, if you liked it, leave a fave or something! Leave your thoughts in the reviews below (if that's what you're into), and as always, have a greaaaat daaaay~~~