(( This is going to be a little shippy as far as Leo and Elliot go, though it won't be hardcore, if you'd rather read it off as friendship or general awkwardness then feel free to. xD This is copied over from my deviantArt, and I'm not super used to the formatting for this place, so pardon if it looks off! My god I hope I caught all the formatting.. sorry if you see words with little i's or b's around them. ffff ))

Play Lacie For Me

From the windows, the setting sun poured in through the curtains that were bellowing out to the side. The winds blowing a gentle breeze into the large rooms of the mansion. Most of the halls were dark by this time of the evening, with the only real light source coming from candles, and dimly lit lamps around the rooms that were actually currently occupied.

Two of the rooms happened to be taken over by two boys, each content in their silence.
One room was a small bedroom, it's floors around the bed, and the tables were all covered by a number of different books. The owner of the room was quite obviously the Nightray servant Leo, whom was always taking time out of his day to collect a few more handfuls of books out of the library and store them up in his room. The bedroom itself was only a sort distance down the hall from the room which held their grand piano. That room happened to be the one that his master Elliot was currently in.

He set tall on the piano's bench, a hand on his chin, with the other resting on the piano's keys. It looked at if he were paused, his eyes studying the notes on the page which was resting on the dash in front of him. Lately a new piece of music had worked its way into his thoughts, and he knew that he wasn't going to be able to shake it off until he performed and perfected it.

With his fingers now beginning to move along the keys, the few surrounding yards of the mansion were suddenly shaken by the sounds of gentle music. Thought slightly more upbeat in it's chorus, as most of his songs were, it was still a soft tune throughout most of it. He wasn't worried about disturbing Leo, as the other boy would sometimes purposely sit in the room just to listen, anyway.

Leo could also hear it fine from his room, the soft melody, along with the occasional clinks in the song when a wrong note would momentarily throw it off. It wasn't so much that it was disruptive to his reading that gave him the sudden urge to check in, more than it was him wanting to saunter in and give his friend a few pointers. The errors in the song seemed to always be in the same place, as if Elliot were having trouble figuring out how he wanted it to sound.

Shutting his book, after marking his place, of course, Leo proceeded to set the book down on his bedside table and make his way into the nearby room.

As he drew nearer, he the music became louder, and he could hear the errors again, more clearly this time.

Upon reaching the door, Leo paused for a moments to lean up against the door's frame as he watched Elliot move along to the music's rhythm. His eyes were closed, as he took in the notes of the song, but with the next error point came a halt in the entire process. He had re-opened his eyes, clenched one of his hands into a fist, and released a low, irritated growl. If it wouldn't have harmed the piano, he might've just banged down on the keys.
Elliot put his head in one of his hands as he thought, and Leo only smiled, taking the opportunity to walk over towards the piano. His footsteps had obviously startled the other, because he looked over, grew a bit flustered, and then quickly straightened his composure.
"How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to hear your little mistakes once or twice."

"I-I was only practicing."

Leo nodded, moving closer. "I know, I know. Mind if I try something?"

The boy had reached the piano by now, and placed his left hand onto the groups of keys that had always been the ones to trip Elliot's playing up. He reached past his friend as he settled his hands onto them, and Elliot looked a bit put off. "I can do it." He never did like accepting help. This was added onto the fact that a number of recent events had run their course to put more stress onto the boy than he was used to dealing with. Leo might've seemed calm, maybe overly so, but the Nightray didn't handle stress quite as well.

"I'm sure you could, I'm just giving you some tips."
That was a statement, and not a request in slightest.

With that, Leo heard his friend fall silent, and so he had began to play the verse of the song that held the most mistakes, and played just the section of it that could be played with only his left hand alone. His right hand rested on the side of the piano so that he could hold himself up. He wasn't sitting on the bench like Elliot was.

The notes were mostly the same as his friends, with a couple of twists to make the song flow somewhat better. The two had nearly the same level of skill, but Elliot had become used to playing songs that were more upbeat, and like his normal version of their Lacie song, Leo had an easier time putting together gentler pieces of music.
Elliot said nothing as he watched his friends hands move to the song that he had created, and though he didn't want to admit it at first, the notes that Leo had changed had made it sound better. Not that he would admit it so kindly, as his only reaction was to growl a bit, and turn to look out the window. Though, Leo had seen the look in his eyes prior to that, and he knew well enough that his master had taken note of his help.

Once Leo had finished his rendition of the verse, he pulled away from the keys allow Elliot access to them again. "Do you want to give a try?" Leo's voice was nicer than what was typical, though the other opted not to wonder why at this moment.

The older boy stretched his hands for a few moments, trying not to let onto the fact that he was rather eager to give it a go. "Why not? I can do this."

His big talk, which he had hoped would result in some flawless rendition of his piece, had ended in him still slipping up again. Though better than before, it was still littered with occasional off notes. He tried getting through twice, before, eye twitching, he sighed and pushed away from the piano, the bench scooting a few inches across the floor as he let out an irritated sigh.

Leo was still persistent. "I can show you again.."

"I watched how you did it. Four times!"

The servant was momentarily thrown off, trying to think up ways to get Elliot to focus enough on his music. He could've made it work, in Leo's a break was what was needed?
"Please? It's not like it's-"

"Not like it's what? Not that hard? Well maybe I've just got too much going through my mind to care right now!"

"Don't get mad.."

"Then don't bother me about it." Elliot stood up from the piano bench, and made his way towards the window. He took a few seconds to peer out at the scenery, before turning around the look at his friend. The couple deep breaths he had taken obviously hadn't done much to calm him down. "I'm sorry if I don't care much about some stupid piece of music, Leo! Maybe you hadn't noticed, but I want to find out who the hell is killing my family" His voice had raised loud enough that Leo was sure even the people on the bottom level could hear him, or so it felt like they should have been able to.

Leo tensed then, shrinking down so that he was the one who was sitting on the piano bench now. Whether or not he would let Elliot onto it, he knew that his persistence on having the other focus on his music was just some way to keep his mind off the issue that was floating around. No one had been taking the Head-Hunter incident lightly, Elliot had been no exception. He had been trying to figure it out just like everyone else, and Leo had been doing his best to keep him calm, and keep him side-tracked. He wasn't looking at his friend anymore.

"Sorry.."
His voice had lost the energy it had held when he had first entered the room.

Pausing, Elliot then realized that yelling at Leo wouldn't help matters at all. He didn't need both of them getting
"Why are you sorry?"

He took a few light steps towards the piano again.
"Don't apologize when it doesn't make sense."

Leo said nothing, out of not knowing what to say without letting something slip that he didn't want to bring up. He only stared at the ground, slightly slumped over.

Elliot took the opportunity to sit down next to Leo, trying to calm himself down in the process. Leo had never looked so thrown off by Elliot's fits before, though lately both of them had been acting different in their own ways, he was sure. "You're a strange one." He said, matter-of-factly.

His servant said nothing, but looked at him with somewhat of an offended stare. With the thoughts that had been going through his head lately, he was inclined to agree with that insult. Though, he failed to realize that it hadn't really been an insult at all.

The blond(*) put and arm around the raven-haired boy's shoulders, brushing his hair away from his face before that. "Which is why you were so interesting to me in the first place."

Leo felt his face heat up, tilting his head away slightly in order to knock his bangs back in front his eyes again.

There was a few seconds of silence before Leo finally spoke, but when he did, he ignored the conversation at hand, and had completely switched the topic. He believed that if they kept all that up, he probably would've let Elliot to all the things that he had spent the last few months trying to hide from the other. "It'll be okay, Elliot."

He tried to keep his voice steady.

"It will be. We've got Pandora helping us, so.. for now, lets just focus on something else. You don't have to work on that piano piece, but lets just play Lacie or something. That's one that you and I both know well, right? We could play that."

Why was he rambling?

Elliot monetarily placed a hand to his forehead, as he waited for Leo to finish.
"Yeah, yeah. I get what you're saying. Can't do much about the stupid head-hunter right now, can we?" As he spoke, he had stood up and used one foot to push the bench back towards it's rightful place in front of the piano. For the first second, Leo had remained sitting on it, being light enough to not hinder Elliot's action. As he moved to stand up, Elliot had finished moving the bench, and upon sitting down, had proceeded to grab Leo's arm and pull him right back down into his sitting position. "Why'd you bother standing?"

That was the second time that Leo had found himself being unsure what to say.

The blond(*) took his music sheet down then, "You wanted to play Lacie, so lets play Lacie."
His voice was still a bit gruff, and commanding, but it was his own way of being kind. Somehow the situation had reversed, and Elliot found himself being the one to do the cheering up now.

Leo had been more than just a little glad that Elliot had gone along with the change of topic, even if it had been somewhat out of guilt. It was just a few more minutes that they could spend in peace together, and the boy knew all too well that it was something that wouldn't last. So his one wish now, was for the peace to remain in their lives for as long as it possibly could.

Putting his own hands on the piano now as well, he watched as Elliot led, and the duet of their song Lacie began to ring out through the halls. With the sun nearly fully set, and the candles making the room glow, the feeling of not wanting this to end was something that they were both in a silent agreement upon.

AN: * Elliot's hair color is all over the place in this fandom, but calling him blond was the simplest thing.
Also I'm not sure where I was going with this, to be honest. When I typed it up a few months ago the only thing I knew that I wanted to accomplish was to have a few minutes play out between these two while the head hunter issue was in full swing. Most of us thought something was up with Leo at first, but this was to show his feelings, or guilt.