They meet in school for the first time when they are both fifteen. She's new, her family having just moved to the area from Germany, and her seat is right next to his. There is a beautiful smile on her face as she sits down, and ever so fluidly she reaches a hand out across the small aisle that separates them. "Hi," she says, and he could swear that he just heard the voice of an angel or some other stupid sweet sentiment like that, "my name is Klaire. And you are?"

He isn't sure he gives her the right answer to the question, but he prays in the back of his mind that he actually gets the word iDaryan/i out without looking like too much of an idiot. But the way she keeps on smiling at him is rather reassuring, and eventually he offers her one of his own back before his attention is snatched away by the teacher at the front of the room, going over some random nonsense that he really doesn't care about anymore. Not with a little blonde hair, blue eyed, European beauty sitting not two feet away from him.

Daryan needs a distraction, needs something to look at so he's not trying to catch a glimpse of her legs out of the corner of his eyes. She has this skirt on that he's not sure how to describe except ishort/i, but unfortunately not short enough to be breaking the school's code of dress, though it certainly teeters right on the edge of what the faculty deems reasonable. It's short enough, though, to show off tanned legs with the most subtle curve of muscle under the skin. They're the kind of legs that he could stroke for hours on end and be perfectly content. And now ithat/i image is in his head and he really, ireally/i needs a distraction.

So he grabs his notebook and opens it, turns to a blank page before he starts to scribble. The lines across the page become the lines on a staff, and he's scrawling chords across it. It's a tune that's been stuck in his head for a while, mostly incomplete, but needless to say he's found himself a new spark of inspiration. The rest of the class goes by quickly, now that he's not paying attention to it, and it's only when the bell rings that he finally looks up, a little confused. What was that lesson about again?

Klaire is up before anyone else in the class and, oh god, she's leaning against his desk, the world's most perfectly coy smile on her face. "What were you concentrating so hard on, Herr Daryan?" she asks, and before he can cover up the notebook she has it in her hand, eyes wandering over what he has down.

To his surprise, she starts to home the main progression of the chords, picking out the lead notes. She's even tapping a finger against his desk, keeping a nearly identical rhythm to what Daryan had imagined for the part himself. His eyes widen as she hands the notebook back to him with a smile. "Not bad. Though I think an A major would work better at the end. Your fingers can make it, ja?" She moves herself away from the desk and saunters away, and Daryan watches, transfixed, as her hips sway from side to side in the most hypnotic fashion. She waves over her shoulder as she disappears out the door, and only the teacher impatiently clearing his throat gets Daryan moving again.

He didn't see her for the rest of the day, and there's a great deal of disappointment following him as he shuffles through the hall. All he had was five minutes of killer curves and a musical voice and she was gone, like some sort of…thing that disappeared when one wasn't looking. Daryan made his way to his locker and grumbled as he opened it, muttering under his breath about devil women who looked too angelic for their own good. He was in the midst of a rather colorful string of curses when he heard that voice again, behind him.

"Not exactly a lyricist, are you, Herr Daryan?" His hand froze from where it was going for his jacket and he turned his head to look over at his shoulder. She was there, already with her backpack over her shoulders, her head tilted to the side with that same smile she gave him during class that morning. He straightened up when she stepped forward, not sure what to do as she got closer. "It's a shame we don't have any other classes together. I was thinking about that melody you wrote all day." Silently, she took a hold of his wrist and pulled it toward her. There was a pen in her hand, and soon she was writing something across his palm. "This is my number. Call me tonight, ja? I'd love to discuss…music. Auf Wiedersehen." Klaire gave him a little wave and left, heading off down the hallway, leaving him to follow her hips once more.

Daryan glanced down quickly at his hand and stared at those numbers: they were like the magical password to some sort of holy land. He found himself staring at it, memorizing each number like a precious jewel, when he remembered where he was. His eyes went wide as he snatched his coat out of the locker and slammed his door shut. "God damnit, the bus!" Daryan took off down the hallway and made it outside just in time to see tail lights moving away from him. With a sigh (and a silent curse for blue eyes everywhere) Daryan started to walk.

---

The going is slow, but Daryan makes it home eventually, only to find the house completely empty. He sighs as he drops his backpack by the stairs and he heads into the kitchen in order to snatch the note off the refrigerator. iHome late. Hotdogs are thawing in the sink. Make sure Sandra eats something. -Mom/i Daryan rolled his eyes and moved to the sink to grab the hotdogs out of it and put them back in the freezer. He didn't want hotdogs for dinner, and he knew his sister wouldn't be back until just before their parents got home. A year younger than him and she was already on a path that didn't look good for anyone in the family.

Instead, he moves to the phone and picks it up to call the pizza place, and his hands stops halfway up to it. He looks down at his palm, at the numbers there, then at the phone in his hand. He could call her right now, couldn't he? But that'd be a little ridiculous. She said to call him ilater/i, not the second he got home. And besides, the way his stomach did that weird flippy churning thing just leant it to him thinking it'd be a better idea to call her later. So instead of punching in the numbers on his palm, he dials the pizza place whose number he has memorized and places his order.

Once the order is placed, Daryan makes his way up to his room and tosses his backpack by the bed, moving it away from the staircase downstairs where it had the potential to be tripped over and treated even more poorly than how he treats it. He grabs a hold of his guitar, his precious Sarah, the first, truest love of his life, and sits down on his bed. It takes only seconds of rifling through his bag to find the notebook he had written the chords on earlier, and he hauls it out to lay the notes in front of him. His eyes scan across them as he settles Sarah across his lap, fingers picking out notes as he tunes almost on auto-pilot.

Daryan smiles a little to himself when the pitch is just right, and he shifts around on his bed in order to be a little more comfortable and properly read the chords lying out in front of him. He taps the guitar a few times in order to establish a beat before he starts to strum. It sounds just as it did in his head, even better because he's actually playing it where he can hear the notes out loud. Often times he'll find that as amazing as it would sound in his brain, what came out was always completely different. But not this time. This time it was iright./i

He sighs and puts Sarah aside as he stares down at the chords in front of him. That Klaire had an ear on her, the kind that was rare to find in ianyone/i, and it was one that Daryan would have never found if Klaire hadn't shown up at school that day. He gets up and moves to his computer to open the music program he has installed on it, to officially transfer the notes over from handwritten paper to something that will actually be legible. He's in the middle of transferring when the bell rings, and he heads downstairs to get his pizza.

The rest of the evening goes well. Daryan spends most of it parked in front of the TV and munching on pizza, and he barely notices when his sister gets home. He does, however, slap her hand the moment it creeps toward his dinner, and she walks away muttering under her breath about stupid older brothers, but he ignores every word in favor of the cop show he has on.

It isn't until later on in the evening that he realizes he never did call Klaire. Empty pizza box disposed of, Daryan runs upstairs and practically locks himself in his room as he sits and stares at his phone, gaze going back and forth between the phone and the number still written on his hand, even though he has the seven digits memorized by now. (Ten, actually, but the area code is the same as his, so it doesn't matter as much.)

Calling her turns out to be harder than he ever thought it would be, with several false starts and quick hang-ups before the first ring could even sound through the phone. However, eventually he calms down and allows the phone to finish ringing, to allow someone on the other end to pick up. It's a simple "Hello?", but the voice is distinctively male and Daryan has a panic attack. Did she have a boyfriend already? Was he interrupting something? There's another impatient hello, this time with the underlying threat of hanging up behind it.

Eventually, Daryan finally blurts out, "Is Klaire there?" The phone on the other end goes quiet for a moment before that male voice sighs, tells Daryan he'll let her know she has a call, and then eventually, sweet as anything Daryan had ever heard, her voice finally chimes in.

"I've got it, Kristoph," a brief pause, the click of another phone being hung up somewhere, then, "Hello?"

Daryan lets out a little breath before he clears his throat. "Uh, hey, Klaire? It's Daryan."

Klaire laughs lightly, a sound that is so warm and inviting that Daryan feels like laughing along with her, though his would be slightly more giddy than relaxed. "Of course, Herr Crescend. I was waiting for your call, you know. It's not polite to make a girl wait so long, ja?"

She was waiting for him to call? This knowledge puts Daryan right on top of cloud nine in an instant, his head reeling from all of the implications that that one little statement made. Of course, he's probably absolutely out of his mind to think that she actually meant what he hopes she means, but it's okay, because thinking for an instant that she might want to know him as much as he wants to know her is enough for now. "Yeah, that's me. I just wanted to say that the last chord you told me to try? It was perfect."

There is another laugh, and Daryan can almost see Klaire grinning even through the phone. "Of course it was. I gave you the suggestion after all." She pauses for a brief second, and Daryan opens his mouth to say something to fill the silence before she speaks again. "Herr Crescend, do you think that perhaps you could play it for me? I would love to hear it."

Daryan's heart skips a beat, and he nods before he realizes that she can't see him doing that through the phone. "Of course! I'd love to. I mean, I'd be honored. I mean…hold on, let me get my guitar." He nearly smacks himself in the forehead as he puts the phone down on his bed. Daryan rises and goes to grab his guitar before he sits back down again, facing the phone, instrument in his lap. He stares at the phone for a moment before, finally, he starts to play.

It's a little strange, he thinks, to be playing for someone across the phone like this. If he wasn't so completely caught up in the pure essence that was iher/i, he would have tried to be a charmer and told her that she could come over anytime to hear it in person. But if Klaire wanted to hear it over the phone, then Daryan was going to play it over the phone.

When he's done, Daryan picks up the phone again and asks her, almost breathless, what she thought about it. She doesn't answer right away, leaving Daryan to think that he sucked iso bad/i that she had to walk away from the phone in order to keep herself from laughing at him. Instead, she finally speaks, and the words are exactly what Daryan wanted to hear. "That was iwunderbar/i," she almost gasps, and there's an excitement in her voice that's hard to miss. "I'll need to hear it again. In person, next time. What a lovely tune; there are all these words forming and--oh, I hope you don't mind if I write lyrics for it? Never mind. We'll talk again tomorrow at school, ja? Kristoph is glowering at me from the door; something about someone calling him soon. Gute Nacht, Herr Crescend." And before Daryan has the chance to wish her a good night, she hangs up the phone.

There's a silence as Daryan lets all of what Klaire just said sink in. From what he could tell through the ramble, she wanted to write lyrics for what he had put together? Was she serious? He lets out a slow breath as he puts the phone away again first before Sarah is polished and placed back into her case. The shower he takes that night is a little longer than usual, thoughts of a certain blonde haired German beauty dancing in the back of his head making it just that much better. By the time he crawls into bed, Daryan is nice and relaxed again, barely able to contain his excitement for what the following day held.