Disclaimer: I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin or its characters
A/N: Who would have thought, an orchestra AU of all things. I guess I should blame the Mariinsky Concert Hall and Mr. Jean Sibelius for that, getting me that impressed and excited. But despite all the concerts I've been to throughout my short life and those hellish seven years of music school, I'm not a member of an orchestra, nor will I probably ever be, so I have no idea how it really works. The only sources are Wikipedia and my own imagination. Please forgive me, those who realise that I've made a huge mistake or ten somewhere there; my ignorance will drive me to my grave one of these days.
As for the spelling, can't help it - I was taught British English at school, and it got so deeply engraved in my brain, I start breathing steam when I see those "u"s missing. Sorry if it bothers you.
Also, Eren might be a bit OOC closer to the end... Oh, whom am I trying to fool, I probably messed up all over, but I figured that with titans nonexistent and parents alive, Eren at least would behave if only a bit differently... Oh well. Rant end. Hope you enjoy!
The many rows of worn, but soft, red, velvet-faced chairs filling the St. Maria Concert Hall had seen, heard, and, most prominently, felt a lot over the course of their existence. They'd bore the weight of overstuffed multimillionaires and their fancily decorated lovers, of politicians who firmly believed that the whole world rested on their shoulders and the hyper workers of the media trying to get a bite, middle-class businessmen hoping to make an impression of appreciation, and then those who sat on the very edge, fisted their hands and held back tears as music filled their systems. But that was in the evenings. During the day, the cushions enjoyed their deserved rest while the not so famous St. Maria Symphonic Orchestra did what it did most of the time - that is, rehearsed, even though there was not a day except the days of performing that every single member was present.
And rehearse they did: it started at about ten in the morning, usually at the expense of the brass, who thus didn't have the option of indulging in anything remotely brazen the night prior; a couple of hours later saw the strings slowly trickling in, beginning with the double-basses, then cellos, and then the violas and the violins, the latter two usually turning up at the same time - it was a quirk of many a violinist in their band to come earlier than scheduled and then grumble about it. It only lasted for the duration of the violas' temper, though came back with a vengeance during the breaks, but by the time everyone had been worked through and chewed out, they more agreed with the hysterical strings than not. There were also days, sometimes, that they would be joined by a harp or a piano, but those didn't stay in the same room for long: in a couple of hours, they'd be off to their own quarters where heavy instruments didn't have to be hauled around with the additional risk of damaging something or messing up the tuning, and the rest of the group would play well into the night. That was the norm, and then there was the dreaded day - the performance day.
That day started with strings coming in before the brass even woke and clamming into the entrance hall, leaving the stage be because the conductor himself hadn't woken yet and the grumpy key-lady wouldn't open it up for anybody else; when the winds finally arrived, even later than their usual 'late' because they had been practicing until 3 am at the very least the previous night, never mind the neighbours, they just ignored the mess of music sheets spread out on the couches and the floor and filed into their places in the performance hall - usually one or the other member had a knack for opening locked doors without even noticing, - yawning like mad and trying to keep their jaws in place. The conductor was usually hot on their heels, if not already there: he'd give a smack on the head for every time one fell asleep while playing, and Mr Smith was well-known for the heaviness of the hand that he distributed those smacks with, especially among those who got them often enough. That happened mostly with the sidelines, who were relatively far from the main clamour, but the leading strings sometimes got some too, and the brass would snicker quietly, hiding their faces behind their instruments, while the former sent them killer glares. They kept at it for the better part of the morning and then some more, before the band was dismissed for a couple of hours to get a breather or, much more popular, a nap or a meek dozen of cups of very strong coffee, and at a long last, when most of the kinks in the programme - St. Maria knows you can never be rid of all - had been worked through with a fine-toothed comb, the slightly more sprightly orchestra gathered once more for the final run-through. The violins, namely their one and only concertmaster, in charge of overseeing that everything ran smoothly right after the conductor, got even more neurotic, and the former's slight (far from that, as argued by many) case of obsessive-compulsive disorder made the last-minute preparations that much worse for the 'common folk', who tripped over their shoes trying to live up to his ludicrously high standards.
September 21st was, expectedly, not much different.
On the agenda was Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 for the first part and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 for the second, piano solo by Annie Leonhardt, who was nowhere to be found at an hour and a half before starting; she was the point of least concern for the concertmaster at the moment, though, as he had an assortment of various other problems to attend to, such as making rounds across the stage and ensuring that no violins were wracked on any heads and no coffee was spilled onto the scores; his assistant, a golden-haired young woman, was just as busy flitting among the strings, mostly checking up on people's dubious good health and dishing out coffee to be spilled later to her vertically challenged superior's horror: there was a scarf to be removed from one of the basses' necks, because it was bound to get unbearably hot after half an hour of playing non-stop, and gods forbid a musician from fainting during a performance as big as the one they were giving, not to mention there were only two basses present for the day as most of the orchestra was down with flu. There was also the gluttonous young cello that seemed hell-bent on devouring a potato 'while she could' and consequently getting grease and crumbs all over her instrument, and not even St. Maria could save her from a long and cruel death after the night ended if the concertmaster noticed; the viola sitting nearby, a veteran of the band, just wouldn't shut up about all the mind-boggling ways of torture she'd heard or seen him apply to unlucky newbies, and it was most certainly imperative that the woman stopped unintentionally urging the people around her to vomit, the potato-loving girl a fascinating exception. The principal trumpet had bitten his tongue, again, probably in the process of scaring the shit out of the youngsters, but there was little anyone could do for him now that the concertmaster, the name Levi, caught sight of him bleeding all over his trumpet, not that Petra, the assistant concertmaster, was intent on lifting a finger to shield him from the wrath of her closest superior: that was what you got for treating your underlings with glaring disrespect, in her book.
"Mikasa, are you rea- ah!"
A sharp metallic pang, followed by a low-tuned hum, brought Petra's attention back to the basses, and her mind tinged with curious suspicion that turned to uneasy apprehensiveness once her eyes glimpsed the swirling curls of a snapped string dangling stiffly from the neck of a double-bass; the potato girl, who was, fortunately, refraining from touching the scarf-clad obsidian-haired bass' instrument, looked rather terrified, while the bass herself seemed decidedly unperturbed, even with a thin trickle of red trailing down her right hand. The handkerchief offered by the only other bass, Ian, helped to stopper the flow, but while the stain spreading across the pristine white was small, the wound probably nothing more than a tiny shallow scratch that would close on its own in minutes and the string easily replaceable, the thing worrying the assistant concertmaster and the musicians loitering near the area was the very fact of a string snapping shortly before a performance.
"Are you all right?" Approaching the girl, Petra tentatively reached out for the injured appendage and was presented with a scrape that, even with a lot of exaggeration, couldn't be called a wound, and a monotone "I'm fine". "I'll bring some disinfectant and a band aid, just in case. Do you have spare strings?"
She almost went off after receiving a nod from the girl - almost, because there was painful uncertainty painted all over the surrounding faces, and that was not a state for an orchestra to play in. "It's just a superstition, guys, don't worry," she eased the tension to the best of her ability, beaming a smile that was supposed to reassure - Levi had called it magical once, - but was met with the same twisted expressions.
"But... But what if..."
"If anything happens, I'll deal with it, that's all there is to it." Surprisingly, the voice that addressed the taut audience was Mikasa's, and while it didn't help in alleviating the cloud of gloom that was attempting to settle over the cellos, at the very least it pushed them back to their seats, allowing Petra to map a beeline to the backstage through the bustling brass settling into their places.
Eren clutched his horn against his chest and stomach as he engaged in a tricky sport of weaving between chairs, music-stands and people without knocking anything over, cups of coffee and bottles of water also participating in the game; the woodwinds were already there, setting up their scores and cluttering the ever-narrow space, and he slunk past, almost brushing by them in the process. Armin shot him a smile before returning to checking the clasps on his oboe, and Bertholdt was so immersed in his sheets, stewing over them with a pencil held in his mouth, that he wasn't aware of the bassoon slowly inclining towards the floor where it was propped against his chair; they'd all seen each other plenty throughout the day. Christa was another story, though.
"Hello, Eren!" the girl chirped, setting down her flute and giving him one of her small, kind smiles.
"Hey, Christa, why so late? Did you keep chickening out until the last minute?" he teased, feeling immune to the neurotic hustle boiling all around: he had something big to look forward to after the concert, and it set his nerves to mild excited tingling.
"Family business," she retorted modestly and in a somewhat reserved manner, looking sort of guilty for having skipped almost all of the performance day rehearsals. "And yes, I am... a little scared, but it's all right. Ymir's right behind me, after all."
"What is it I'm hearing? Are you finally falling for me?" The tall brunette's sultry voice drifted from the seat behind the blonde and a pair of long arms coiled around her shoulders from behind, a narrow chin finding its way onto the smaller girl's shoulder with ease; Christa went pink in the face with a barely contained blush and the smile was off before one could say 'tease', replaced by a visage of mixed surprise and indignation.
"I take my words back, you're the worst sedative ever," she chided in a curt tone and glared at the offender out of the corner of her eye - as much of a glare as the soft Christa could put up, - and Eren hurried to leave, as, one, they didn't seem to mind him anymore, and two, he didn't want to see any more of their weird interaction that didn't fit into any sensible relationship frame known to him.
As little as half a minute was wasted for him to finally reach his appointed seat, if you excluded the one time Reiner accidentally pulled a full-power low C with his tuba right into his ear after getting an unexpected slap on the back, successfully setting Eren to tumbling down in shock and bringing a number of items with him: the burly blond tuba, being the helpful bear that he had always been in the eyes of their small group of music arts seniors, tried to lend a hand, but only got as far as dragging Eren up to his feet before knocking down several more music-stands with his broad shoulders and being deemed a bull in a china shop; the horn player was moderately stressed by the time he planked himself into his chair, glad to, if one could call it that, escape the hustling commotion that was the pre-rehearsal orchestra. The curly-haired trumpet in the row before him turned around and asked his name in a voice dripping with irked malice that reeked of false and artificiality, but Eren felt his guts clench anyways, the sensation doing decidedly no good to his already threadbare nerves: his worries revolved around the fact that it was going to be his very first official performance outside the university walls, the same notion pretty much applicable to his year-mates, all of them there under the conditions of the semester-long orchestra practice mandatory for the graduating class. He did realise, if only with his mind alone, that it would be little different from what they did every other month at the university for various occasions, but his thoughts kept coming back to the depressing gravity of the situation, as compared to the play-and-have-fun-along-the-way policy their dean instilled, not to forget that they would be graded this time around.
"Hey, brat," the trumpet from before snarled with a sneer, "don't get too cocky just because you've managed to get here. You could get kicked out at an- owww!"
Eren watched with wary astonishment as the man nursed his bitten tongue while trying to hold back bitter tears of pain: it looked pretty unpleasant, and the boy found it easy enough to voice an uncertain inquiry, which only earned him a hateful glare and the beginnings of a scathing retort that was cut short out of the blue. When he turned his head to whatever the trumpet was staring at, now pale and displaying a wide range of emotions all connected with fear, his eyes were met with the most fearsome expression he'd seen in his lifetime, one full of truest malice and genuine killing intent coming from a man a head shorter than Eren himself at the very least, whom he vaguely recognized as one of the first violins.
"Auruo," he started, and Eren would bet his full scholarship it was much more of a growl than the blond's earlier attempt, though there was little difference from a normal low voice, "get that filth cleaned this instant," he ordered while gesturing to the blood dripping down on the golden brass of the instrument lying on the blond's lap, and the trumpet nearly stood to attention, barking a terrified "Yessir!" and fumbling frantically through his pockets in search of a hanky or a tissue, paying no more attention to the inky-haired man leaving the vicinity.
"Yo, punk." A body topped by a crudely cropped mop of ashy blond toppled down onto a nearby seat and made itself comfortable by slinging an arm over the back of the chair and carelessly dropping the trombone it had been carrying onto the soft case; a smug sneer snailed onto the body's face and made it all the more disgusting for Eren to look at. "Feel like shitting bricks yet?"
"Ask yourself that first," he gibed back, not bothering to face the other, but was quite baffled when nothing came to bite him in the ass within the next couple of moments, which prompted him to take an actual look at the foul-mouthed bastard: the latter had adopted a look of conflicted shame and insubstantial fear, and, well, Eren just couldn't pass up the opportunity. "What, you've already asked?"
"Shut up, you wanker!" Jean literally exploded in a burst of embarrassment and fury, landing a few droplets of spit on Eren's face in the process, which he wiped in repugnance.
"Don't spit on me, horseface! You want a fight or what?!"
"I say why not?!"
"Shut up, you shitty noobs, we're starting!" the man called Auruo, alarmed at the commotion and looking thoroughly pissed, barked at them - he seemed to be doing that often; there still was a slight lisping quality to his pronunciation.
"Cells off!" the concertmaster's voice boomed over the stage, and the beginning of hell was officially declared.
Two and a half hours later saw the worn-out musicians in the middle of the intermission, chugging down water like nomads of the desert and desperately trying to get a respite in the ten minutes that they were provided; the backstage was unfairly cramped and it was a feat to secure a full-on seat for oneself, even with a certain part of the orchestra smoking their break away, but at the very least the air conditioning was working properly and kept the room from going stale within minutes. Mikasa wasn't feeling particularly exhausted, though, thanks to the physique she'd developed over the years of playing an instrument as tall as her own body, but the lack of sleep and coffee overdose was slowly but surely catching up to her, gluing tens of pounds' worth of fatigue to her eyelids that were quite serious in their threats to close for the rest of the night in the middle of the second part. Leaning against the wall, near where the cellos were seated, and sipping her water, she was desperately trying to ward off sleep and listening in on the mindless chatter, following the topic fitfully and stealing occasional glances at Eren to make sure he was doing fine and not getting into another fight. She would have approached him, had she not been reprimanded, countless times at that, for bothering him for nothing, and own experience is the best teacher; a lot of time had passed since he last got mad at her for it, though, but she still held back, more for feeling sort of out of place in the company of brass, of all things. Sasha asked for her confirmation of something then, and she absently nodded, neither looking nor really listening to what they were gossiping about, but a collective gasp and a single small 'wow' in a somewhat familiar voice sharply pulled her out of her world.
"Seriously? That guy?"
"That's... Well, unexpected."
"Aren't you too good for someone like him? You're, what, the prodigy of this year..."
For the few moments while Mikasa's brain was returning to function, the emotion that reined on her face was stupefaction, but once the wits were back, the potato girl got a withering and accusing glare, as well as a seemingly innocent inquiry that was spoken in a tone that could only be labelled as threatening.
"What did you just say, Sasha?"
The bronze-haired cello all but wilted in her seat as her 'innocuous' remark from a few moments prior turned out to have been a big mistake, and the rest of the strings laughed their heads off at her expense, though it was somewhat unclear which of the girls they were laughing at. At last, when someone had giggled their fill, they provided:
"Oh, it was nothing; just, something like you're dating that Jaeger kid, but figures it was a leg-pull," they said, wiping tiny droplets from the corners of their eyes.
The only gesture the dumbstruck Mikasa could manage was a distracted shake of head, and she didn't quite trust her mouth at that moment to deny it vocally: what composure she'd managed to keep was barely enough to hold up the indifferent facade she employed most of the time. She was much thankful for the group dropping the topic with a nonchalant 'thought so', but the mask, her priceless mask of impassivity was helplessly, inevitably slipping off and she had to get away, and fast, because-
The sound which literally ripped the atmosphere apart, which set many jaws to going slack and Sasha's eyes to widen almost comically, had the situation not been so desperate, which, by the worst of luck, brought the attention of the better part of the orchestra to the strings and the girl frozen in place near them in the process of leaving, the girl whose beautiful long skirt had just got stuck on a sharp steel bar that nobody had any idea of how it had gotten there and what it was doing in a concert hall, was the sound of tearing fabric.
For Mikasa, that was far too much stupefaction in the span of ten minutes - the second time, seriously.
The horror on Sasha's face was satisfactory as much as genuine, because her chair had successfully played its part in getting the hem of the dress impaled on that stick and because there was now, a meager couple of minutes away from the first bell, a foot-long rent running along Mikasa's leg, shaggy at the edges and looking decidedly nasty. The backstage was quiet like a crypt, the implications of an outfit ruined slowly being processed, and it wasn't until a chair scraped across the wood of the floor as Sasha sprang up in panic that the tension splintered apart with an almost audible dingle. There was a load of confusion afterwards, with the potato girl spewing apologies at the speed of light and nearly wailing, the conductor coming out in a haste to find out the reason for the disquieting commotion and Petra fumbling around in search of a sewing kit; Mikasa, together with her dress, were yielded to her hands and then everybody except the victim of the woman's needlework was rapidly ushered out and onto the stage at the reasoning of the first bell echoing loud and clear through the rooms, signalling the beginning of the end.
It was pitch dark by the time Eren and Mikasa - Armin had ditched them and forgone the celebrational get-together at a cafe in favour of a book he was dying to read - got out of the subway and onto a train connecting Trost to Shiganshina, the clouded sky robbing even more of their sight outside the range of late evening station lamp posts; one couldn't see zilch from the windows aside from the narrow strip of yellow grass catching light from within the car and the few raindrops slowly trailing down the outer side of the glass, giving the occasional flash of reflection. The car wasn't packed, in all seriousness, but still retained an unusual concentration of people, the leftovers from the rush hour that usually they came in smaller numbers; they made it quite impossible to secure the two sets of seats the musicians would need to put down their cumbersome instruments without the danger of having them follow the train's inertia, and so the pair was resigned to standing the half an hour ride, with Eren's plastic gig bag on the floor beside his legs and Mikasa's fabric one leaning on the back of the last one of the seats that were arranged perpendicularly to the aisle, thus trapping the two in the space between the bass and the end of the corridor. The girl mimicked her instrument by leaning against the window, the chill of its surface not in the least bit threatening to her woolen coat, but Eren circled his arms around her waist anyways, preferring to be safe than sorry and earning a sort of satisfaction in shielding her from the so-called entrance to their corner at the hand of some protective instinct. She, in turn, hooked her own arms beneath his and behind his back, her palms coming to rest on his shoulder blades just as the station outside jerked and floated away; the fatigue that had been subdued for a couple of minutes by the cool autumn air came back with a vengeance, prompting her to lean forward instead and press her cheek to the boy's chest just below the collarbone, the part of it not covered by the jacket, which had been left unfastened, the soft, determined heartbeat perfectly audible through the layers of wool and cotton. She could feel his calm breath shuffle the onyx strands on the back of her head when he exhaled, the presence of his hands on her waist and the firmness beneath her head and the overwhelming warmth giving her a distinct sense of safety as she indulged in the much-needed comfort, and the waves of his voice reverberating through her body served well to pull her even closer to sleep; he was asking a question, though, and she couldn't just disregard it like that.
"So what happened at the break?" he asked quietly, exchanging the placements of his hands as he unwrapped his arms, the palms settling on the curve right under her waist, and she bewailed the loss of that securing pressure.
"My dress ripped," she answered simply and felt him take a slightly deeper intake of air. "It's fine, Ms. Ral fixed it up for me, though I don't think there's any future for that dress now."
"Oh..." he paused then for a few seconds, stiffening as the train rolled into a station. "Well, that's Ms. Petra for you. At least nobody noticed," he smirked into her hair, eyes skidding around absentmindedly even as she hummed her consent, the sound sending ripples through his windpipe and downwards from there to flit between his ribs, and a sudden notion flicked to life in his head once his sight landed on the bass bag."You know what's good about that oversized violin of yours?"
"Hm?" She tilted her head in mild curiosity, the fabric of his shirt twisting under her ear, and he pulled away somewhat to reach her other ear, his voice a sweet and a little mischievous whisper hot against her skin.
"It makes a great screen."
It is only when his lips, warm and chapped and loving, find hers that the momentary separation is forgotten and the careless and nosy train lighting seems comfy and tepid, the rattle of wheels becoming a barely discernible springy lullaby somewhere in the background, along with the hum of the fixtures and the rhythmic swishing of lamp posts rushing past as they leave another stop on their way home, and there is a harmony in the movements of their mouths that could never be conveyed by music. Their lips mesh together time and time again in careful, short-lived kisses that reincarnate into the next ones, and there is such tenderness it threatens to overflow and make the heart burst because it feels way too fantastic to be that important to somebody, closer to surreal than anything, and for them, there is no recreating elsewhere the bond that allows them to share that wondrous sensation between each other. Armin had called it destiny once, more on a whim than seriously believing in fate, but it fit them well, fit the bewildering puzzle of circumstances, a picture of stained glass that the two of them had been gradually putting together for the better part of their lives, and though it was still far from complete, the outline that they could make out seemed breathtaking in its beauty and their minds short-circuited at trying to imagine the end result. It was something infinitely precious, something fragile and invincible and enormous and unnoticeable and just was, without a definition, because they've surpassed those the moment they met, and intolerable to comparison, the very base of existence that towered over everything, lingering on the horizon as a perpetual landmark, as the heap of maroon wool circling her neck snugly, intimately, thousands of strings making it up and holding it together. If it was there, if that person was there, nothing could erase that base, because that person was the base, and no ripped dresses or broken strings could do any damage, and during those moments, when all shells peeled off, it was far more than that - it was the existence.
If you're by my side, I can do anything.
On the other side of the glass, highlighted by the lamps rapidly fading after a moment of brilliance, golden rain kept pelting on the window.
A/N2: This was first conceived in my mind as a oneshot, but I might expand it into a twoshot, once the midterms are over. I'm an awfully slow writer, though, so you probably shouldn't hope for much. Sorry about that.