First posted to Apples For Me on June 29, 2008.

Title: Sinfonia Cantabile
Characters: Chiaki, Nodame
Words/Rating: 1700+ words / G
Spoilers/Warnings: Alternate future/canon extension (as of Volume 19, Lesson 109). I am reading the tankoubons of Nodame Cantabile in Japanese very slowly, and I am behind on my Nodame canon. Please do not spoil me in comments.
Beta(s): uminohikari and thephoenixboy - thank you so much, dears.
Summary: After Chiaki completes his first symphony, it is Nodame who makes sure it is heard by the world.
Author's Notes: First written on June 15, 2008 while on fic-posting hiatus. It has been almost a year since my last Nodame fic--I hope people still remember me. ; I've been crying myself to sleep every night, frustrated because I just couldn't write past writer's block, when suddenly I was reminded of Chiaki, and thought, "What if he didn't have his music anymore?"

Chiaki closed his eyes, fingering the pages of the symphony score again. The paper was smooth to the touch, a contrast to the embossed card stock cover he'd allowed the Kinko's staff to talk him into. Already the book had been thumbed so throughly the paper's edges were wearing soft and fuzzy. The score was well-worn and covered in penciled baton directions and performance notes. Chiaki had been unable to think of anything else during his period of forced convalescence, the weeks between diagnosis and surgery when he had mentally played and replayed the symphony while impatiently awaiting the day he could reclaim his baton, and when his family and the doctors had told him there was no hope left, nothing else had offered a sanctuary from their pessimism.

Against the passing days, he had made plans for the symphony's first rehearsal. Against the doctors' advice, he had played a few bars every day, hoping and waiting for the notes to register once more. Against his mother's well-meaning dissuasion and his uncle's stern admonishment, he had gone over the score countless times daily, hearing it grow fainter and fainter in his mind as he read the notes and listened to them in his head.

And then one day he had pulled out the score, looked at the notes, and heard nothing but the silence that never left him.

He had been disappointed enough to leave the score on the table, open to the silent first page, where it reminded him all day of what he might never have again. One day turned into two. Two days turned into two weeks. Two weeks turned into four, then six, and then two months had passed. Save the occasional two-bar motif, the silence remained, louder than any din he'd ever heard in any orchestral pit.

Now Chiaki picked up the bound pages, gently blew the dust off them, and closed the book. He opened the bottom drawer to his desk. There, he laid the worn volume carefully upon a stack of pristine scores. Violin parts, viola parts, cello parts, timpani parts, flutes, horns, even a trumpet solo. He took one last look, and then closed his eyes, pushed the drawer in, and locked it.

It was Sunday, three months and eight days after he finished his first symphony, three months and six days since his sudden and complete hearing-loss, two months and twenty days from the initial surgery, and two months and three days past the Thursday his doctors had concluded Chiaki Shinichi would never hear an orchestra again.

Nodame was far too early for a Friday morning, Chiaki thought as he was shaken awake in a now all-too-familiar way. She smelled. It wasn't the rankness of her complete lack of regard for hygiene, but a cloyingly sweet musk. First of all, that scent was far too old for her, and secondly, it smelled at least five years past its intended shelf-life. His mother kept perfume bottles with half the perfume still left in them because they looked pretty in the bottle. Obviously Nodame didn't know they'd expired.

He really needed to lock his bedroom door instead of forgetting every night. He turned his face from her, shifting himself away from the edge of the mattress (and the persistent shaking) a half-second before remembering that she was liable to crawl into his bed if he ignored her. That was enough to make him sat straight up instead. If she did that, he wouldn't be able to disentangle himself without her making a ruckus. It wasn't as if the noise would bother him--oh, if only it could--but the last thing Chiaki wanted to see this morning was the knowing smile on his mother's face as she closed the door on them. As he got up, Nodame stopped shaking him, and showed him a message scribbled in the notebook Chiaki kept close.

Chi--i-sen--i, co-- me w-- an orc--st-- -- --y!

He frowned at the notepad, squinting as he tried to decipher Nodame's writing. Chickens scratched more legibly than she did. "I can't read this," he finally said. Her mouth moved, and for a moment, he thought he could hear her voice: lilting, uncultured, intentionally formal to disguise the Fukushima accent.

The moment passed.

Of course, he couldn't hear anything. He was now deaf, after all.

He knotted his eyebrows against the silence, glaring into Nodame's eyes. "I can't read your lips or your handwriting." She put her hand to her mouth, and then grabbed at the notebook in his hands. Irritation swept over him, and he let go of it, closing his eyes pointedly, leaning back.

She touched his arm a few moments later, hands ungentle, and Chiaki's eyes flew open again as he glared at her once more. "Go away," he said without looking at the notebook.

Nodame shook her head firmly, waved the notebook in front of his eyes, and then began to pull at his arm, trying to get him out of bed. They tugged against each other, Chiaki half-risen from the mattress, trying to lie back down on it, and Nodame with her death-grip on his arm, so tight Chiaki was certain she would soon cut off his circulation.

"Dammit, Nodame, let go!"

She shook her head, mouth moving again, and pulled harder. Chiaki found himself lifted further away from the bed against his will, and gave up pulling against her, instead shaking off her hand violently once he was upright and able to balance. "Nodame," he growled, "Have the decency to--"

She waved the notebook in front of him again, and he grabbed at it. "Stop that! I can't read it when you shake it!" He turned away from her, glancing down to see what she was so desperate to say.

I learned senpai's symphony! Conduct me with an orchestra--

There was more, but Chiaki didn't bother to read the rest of it before he threw the notebook at her. "You're mad!" he shouted, pent-up frustration and anger adding an almost-tangible staccato to his words. His symphony? That godforsaken piece, cursed work that it was? What was the point of a symphony the composer couldn't even hear in his head? Worthless! Trash! Why had he spent so many years of his life writing it? Why hadn't he finished it earlier? Why did it have to be this way? Even Beethoven had received advance warning that he would lose his hearing, Chiaki thought bitterly--why couldn't God have granted him the same courtesy? "In case you haven't noticed, I'm deaf, and I can't hear the god-damned orchestra to conduct it!"

Nodame continued to cling to his arm, and gave him one of her most pitiful looks, the one with that horrible pout and big eyes that threatened to water.

Chiaki felt the anger drain away, only to be replaced with a bone-deep weariness. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't to blame for his deafness, and neither was she to blame for the length of time he'd taken to finish that symphony. "Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but you're not helping," he said, feeling a hundred years older. "Just leave me alone."

Once more, she took his arm, shaking her head, and pulled. Her fingers were tight, but not the death-grip they had been before, and he could now sense the soft warmth of her palms against the bare skin of his arms. Her mouth was moving, the silence a reminder of everything he had lost.

Chiaki gave up. Fine. He'd pretend to listen. Perhaps that would satisfy her, and then she would go away.

She led him to the piano, and Chiaki wondered why its top was closed. He walked to the bench, waiting for her to sit, and began to open it, one hand lifting the heavy wooden panel, the other feeling inside for the small stand to prop it open. "Hurry up," he said.

She was writing in the notebook again. On the lid, the scribbles said.

At least, that's what he thought they said. But there was nothing on the piano. No scores, no metronome, no Puri Gorota miniatures. He glanced at the bare floor, too, just in case. "There's nothing there," he said.

She shoved the notebook at him and pulled him along with her as she moved around the piano. He dropped the lid, and though he couldn't hear the bang, he felt Nodame wince--he'd done so himself out of instinct, and he could only guess how loud it was for her and her perfect hearing. She didn't stop leading him, though, and now Chiaki could see a chair had been set next to the piano, the perfect height for climbing up onto the Yamaha grand.

Realization sank in. "You want me to sit on the piano."

She nodded happily, a grin breaking across her face, and pushed him again, mouth working to words Chiaki couldn't hear.

"Nodame," he said warningly. He wasn't going to climb onto that chair. One did not sit on pianos, contrary to what jazz lounges would have you think. If this was one of her hare-brained ideas of what made a man sexy...

She grinned, nodding stupidly, and made upwards shooing gestures as her mouth worked wordlessly once more.

Chiaki sighed. Well, whatever made her happy. He stepped onto the cushion of the chair, and then carefully settled himself on the piano lid, apologizing mentally to his mother for this. Whatever was going through Nodame's mind, he didn't want to know. He didn't think she had much of one, sometimes, and this definitely felt like one of those times.

Nodame beamed at him from behind the keyboard. Chiaki shook his head and rubbed his temples, hoping to deter the impending headache. The sooner he indulged her whimsy, the sooner he could be left alone. Nodame bent her head, took a breath, and placed her fingers on the keys.

Three months and thirteen days after Chiaki finished his first symphony, three months and eleven days since his sudden and complete hearing-loss, two months and twenty-five days from the initial surgery, two months and eight days past the Thursday his doctors had concluded he would never hear an orchestra again, five days after he'd given up all hope--

--six months and two days before he conducted its public orchestral premiere, Chiaki Shinichi listened to the inaugural performance of his Sinfonia Cantabile while seated on his parents' piano as Nodame played on.

- end -