A/N: This is a music AU but it's totally unrelated to the current one I have going on (the one in which Petra's a violinist and Levi's a pianist and they're both out of school already). Idk why I just suddenly felt like writing this so… sorry. I know I should be working on other stuff but like I've said, my muse is the flightiest thing ever. Also crappy title because wow, what are story titles, really.
Warning: This was pretty much a freewrite; I had no idea where I was going and just typed up random crap without thinking about it, so it's kind of disjointed and probably doesn't make much sense. Basically, it's total crap, so don't expect much if anything at all.
He transferred from Eastman, they say. He just randomly decided to leave in the middle of the year, they tell each other in the dormitories so many times like repeating the information will make it more interesting each time. He was the best bassoonist in his grade and he just up and left, they whisper in the hallways, in the cafeteria, outside the practice rooms, whispers loud enough that Petra can hear them over the soft sounds of her flute when she practices her low notes.
"So it's unusual," she says as she slings her backpack onto the library table and sits down next to Rico Brzenska, fellow woodwind player and roommate for the past year. "The guy was going to Eastman, one of the best schools for winds in the country, and decided to transfer here of all places in the middle of the year. That's his choice; doesn't mean everyone has to make such a big fuss about it."
"It's just because nothing ever happens here," Rico says with a shrug. "It'll die down soon enough. Anyway, did you do Dawk's homework yet? Ugh, the man's a slave driver. Did you analyze it as sonata or sonata-allegro form…?"
But when they have rehearsal for the first time with the new guy, Mr. Short-and-Scowling sitting next to Hanji and Mike in the bassoon section, Petra thinks the school's rumor mill has good reason to whisper after all—he plays the contrabassoon too, so he sits in the last chair, but she can hear him all the way over from her spot as first chair of the flute section, his tone so rich and warm she can't help thinking of butterscotch cookies or caramel dip.
His name is Levi, and he sits behind her for Professor Dawk's theory class, and she thinks he sleeps through most of the lectures because she never hears the faint scratch of a pencil on paper or the shuffling of pages behind her, only a quiet, even breathing that never fluctuates.
He knows his theory very well though, surprising Petra and the rest of the class one morning when Dawk asks him for the answer to a problem. Everyone turns to look at him—his chin is propped on his hands, his eyes closed, but he opens them, reciting a string of correct answers for not just the question he was asked but every one on the board, and the class breaks out into whispers because dang, he sounded like Professor Smith for a moment there—their conductor and teacher of the last year of music theory.
They're all woodwinds so they have to stick together—Petra doesn't believe in the rivalry between winds and strings; they're all musicians, aren't they? She's pretty good friends with Anka, concertmaster for their year's orchestra—but she will always feel a special bond with fellow woodwind players, even if they all use reeds and she doesn't, which sometimes results in jokes that she should go join the brass section with her silver flute and mouthpiece. (These jokes are usually met with eyerolls and sometimes punches depending on her mood.)
So one day during lunch when she sees him sitting at a table by himself, picking at what looks like rabbit food, earphones plugged in, she sets her tray down next to him and smiles. "Hey," she says. "Mind if I sit here?"
He pulls one earphone out and looks at her for a moment. His gaze is bright and pale, and just vaguely unsettling. "Go ahead," he finally says, his voice almost as low as his instrument.
He has just the slightest trace of an accent in his words—she can't quite place what, but it sounds interesting. Different. "I'm Petra, first chair flutist, but you probably already knew that," she says. "Are you finding everything okay so far? I know transferring schools in the middle of the year can be a bit overwhelming so… if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help."
"Yeah," he says, spearing a carrot on his fork. "I'm fine."
He's not much of a conversationalist, Petra thinks as they eat in relative silence for the next five minutes. She sees her friends by her usual table looking at them, and she tries her best to ignore them just like she's trying to ignore the rather awkward atmosphere at her own table.
"What are you listening to?" she asks after she can't take it anymore.
With the look he gives her, it's like she asked him where he buried the bodies, and she half expects him to say "none of your business" or at least, if he answers, she thinks it might be rock or metal or dubstep—she doesn't know why, he doesn't strike her as the type to listen to classical much when he's not playing it—but to her surprise, he says, "Verdi," and then she sees his hand twitching on the table beside his lunch tray.
She forgets all about her sandwich and the rather unpleasant expression on his face and that lock of hair falling over his eyes she suddenly wants to brush away. "Are you studying conducting?" she says.
His hand stills and he studies her through narrowed eyes for a moment. "Yeah," he says after a pause. Under his breath, he adds, "I'd like to."
"You should study with Professor Smith then! He's a great teacher, all the other schools want him and—" She sees the look on his face and everything clicks. "He's why you transferred, isn't it?"
She nearly laughs at his expression now—he probably didn't expect her to figure him out so quickly—but that's always been something she's good at; she just notices little things. "Keep quiet about it," he finally says. "I don't want to… that is…"
Yes, he's definitely not much of a conversationalist, but Petra finds his struggle for words somewhat endearing even as she puts him out of his misery. "I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to," she assures him. "But… well, obviously people are going to know once you actually start."
"I know," he says, flicking his wrist experimentally a few times, and she thinks it might be the clarinet solo part with the harp from Verdi's La Forza del Destino. "But for now, I'd rather not."
She promises, and she recognizes something like a faint smile on his face when he looks at her.
It's probably because she figured out his "secret" or whatever (why he doesn't want anyone to know, she has no idea—becoming a conductor sounds pretty cool, and he can't be afraid of conductor jokes; everyone knows the viola gets the most crap in music jokes), but he talks to her a lot more after that. Beyond hanging out occasionally with his section—Mike and Hanji are super chill people, even if Hanji gets a bit crazy sometimes and Mike has that weird habit of sniffing people (apparently Levi smells like soap and soap and yet more soap; Petra can't tell)—Levi is usually found alone, whether eating or studying or practicing or off sleeping somewhere. Sometimes Petra makes him join their group of woodwinds at the lunch table and sometimes he gets dragged off by string players curious about him, and once she sees him looking very uncomfortable as a couple of brass players—mostly Hanji's friends—interrogate him.
Petra doesn't know if it's obvious to her because she already figured it out or if everyone else is just unobservant, but to her it's clearer than day that Levi wants to be a conductor—she's never seen someone pay so much attention to everything their conductor says; even if Professor Smith's talking to the percussionists about a few measures in a piece where Levi plays contra and therefore doesn't have much to do, Levi will still stare at him and then his music as if every word is essential to his own playing.
Whenever he has earphones in, his right hand is moving to whatever rhythm he's listening to, and Petra likes to guess what he's listening to when she's bored. He listens to a lot of Beethoven's symphonies, and she calls him Karajan enough that he starts responding to it before catching himself with a scowl.
"You tend to play a bit too much behind Smith's beat," he will tell her. "He does use the Russian style sometimes, but he's more about being in tempo than conducting with the music's feeling, though he does both. It's good for a student orchestra… easier to stay together that way."
"So what, you're going to get a bachelor's in bassoon and a master's in conducting?" she wants to know.
He shrugs. "That's the plan."
He says it nonchalantly, but she knows it means a lot to him—he transferred schools just for this and he hasn't even spoken to Smith about it yet, for heaven's sake—and as she watches him pore over orchestral scores in the library while she checks her music history answers with his, she wonders why.
Hanji and Mike have always let her have their old double reeds (Auruo's always been stingy with his oboe ones), but Levi lets her play with his used contra ones, big and bound in black wire, and she marvels at the careful workmanship. "Do you make all your reeds yourself?"
"Yeah."
She sets it down on the table and peers at him where he is sprawled across his chair, up to his elbows in sheet music. "When did you start on the bassoon?"
He scrawls something down and flips a page, nodding his head. "… Hm?"
She rephrases her question: "Why did you start bassoon in the first place?"
He looks up at that, his gaze thoughtful, and she thinks he probably won't tell her; he's quiet and awkward and he hates talking about himself, but after a moment he answers. "I started on the flute first."
She tries to imagine him with a flute to his lips; the image suits him. "Yeah, a lot of bassoonists I know did."
"And then… my dad made me switch. Because he played bassoon. My mom played flute. It doesn't really matter."
He goes back to his scores and she lets her eyes stay on him for a while before moving back to her own work, but she thinks about his words long after he said them. Four short sentences spoken in that abrupt way he has, gruff and almost irritated, but she knows better by now, and she never says anything about it to him but she thinks she might understand part of the reason why he wants to be a conductor now—some semblance of control over something, because if he can't even choose the instrument he wants to play, at least he can have say over something.
The quintet is Auruo's idea—they have recitals every so often, usually solos, but Auruo printed Danzi sheet music off the Internet and asks at lunch if anyone wants to do a woodwind quintet for the next recital.
"Hanji's doing a solo and Mike did one last time, so Levi, you want to join?" Auruo looks a bit hesitant as he asks, like he's afraid of rejection; for some reason their first oboist has a great deal of respect for the contrabassoon player.
Levi takes a bite of his salad (that's another thing Petra learned about him, he never has much of an appetite, and it makes her wonder how he has so much strength and air to play, especially contra) and swallows before answering. "Why not."
Petra watches Auruo's face flash from worried to ecstatic before he smoothes out his expression and turns to Petra. "You're playing the flute part."
"Whatever," she says, flicking a french fry at him.
"I already gave Gunter the horn part… how about you, Rico, for clarinet?"
"Sure," she agrees, so they set a date and time for a practice session.
Petra finds she has to lead many of the parts, and it's rather unnerving—as first flutist, she's used to playing solos and having others' eyes on her, and she's known Rico, Gunter, and Auruo for what seems like forever already—but whenever she feels Levi's gaze slant to hers, whenever she sees those pale gray eyes fixed on her in the corner of her vision, a strange sort of nervousness grips her heart like she's on stage for the first time, playing in front of the school or for all her professors in a final exam.
"You play a bit later than your cue," he tells her a week later when they are in the library again, studying for the upcoming theory quiz. Well, Petra's studying; Levi is accompanied by a binder of orchestral scores and his music player as usual. She thinks he must spend more time studying them than he does practicing his instrument.
"You mean when I cue you guys in?"
"Yeah, you're a bit behind." He raises his hands to the right side of his face in an imitation of holding a flute and breathes in before breathing out and bringing his "flute" down in the same motion. "It should be more like that. You often come in slower than the tempo you give us."
"I get nervous," she confesses, and bites her lip before she accidentally admits why.
"Don't be," he says, and then he picks up his pencil and raises it in the air. "Here, I'll help you."
She holds her breath as he starts conducting the first few bars of their quintet, his pencil beating a perfect steady rhythm in the air. His movements are clear and precise—a bit like Professor Smith's, really—and easy to follow, and she thinks he'd make a great conductor. She's always preferred the steady ones to the wild crazy ones who basically dance all over the podium.
"I'll give you the pickup to the first beat," he says. "Pretend you're giving the cue with me. It's easier if everyone breathes together—doesn't matter if you're a string player, a percussionist, whatever. If everyone's with the music it's easier to come in together from the very first note. Everyone might play something different but if you breathe together, it's like we're on the same page, speaking the same language."
She picks up her own pencil and holds it by the side of her face, following the motion of his with her mock-flute. His eyes are brighter than usual, the pale gray nearly silver under the library's dim lights, and she realizes she's not looking at his fake baton anymore, she's looking right at him as he practices the pickup to the first beat with her over and over, his gaze never leaving hers.
"You think you got it?" he says, and his voice is hoarse, his eyes still locked with hers.
Before she can respond, Auruo and Erd (a percussionist) pop up from behind a shelf nearby. "That was pretty good, Levi!" Erd says with a friendly grin. "You just doing it randomly or something, or have you actually studied conducting before?"
The expression on Levi's face is wary—caught between annoyed and worried, almost—and it looks so much like her impression of him the first time she talked to him at the lunch table, and she thinks of how much better she likes him like this, more open and sometimes almost even friendly, that she just blurts out, "He wants to study it."
His face kind of freezes, but before Petra can regret her decision, Auruo says, "That's awesome, dude! You'd be great at it. You got Petra so much better at the first cue in that short amount of time!"
"I'd totally play in an orchestra you conduct," Erd adds, giving a thumbs up.
Petra dares to sneak a peek at Levi's face then—it's still somewhat frozen, but the muscles around his jaw have loosened enough for him to open his mouth and say, "… thanks, I guess."
He seems shocked they're not already making fun of him or something, but then again, this is Erd and Auruo. What did he expect?
He finally turns to look at her and she offers him an apologetic shrug, hoping he'll understand. He stares at her for a moment, looks at Erd and Auruo (who's still beaming), then turns back to her, and she doesn't know if he fully understands but he nods a little, and for just one second, a brief smile appears at the corners of his lips and she smiles back.
(It's a start.)
I play the viola but I LOVE viola jokes. So much. (What do you call a viola playing octaves? … Major sevenths. Haha.) Also I love the bassoon! I'm not a huge fan of Mozart but I can listen to his bassoon concerto on repeat for ages.
Also, Herbert von Karajan was a conductor pretty well known for his Beethoven.
Anyway, idk what I was doing with this. I'm pretty sure I won't be continuing it, but whatever. This was kind of random and I wasn't going to post it but now I am anyway, idk why. Also, the only woodwind I've ever played was clarinet like seven or eight years ago for school band so I'm sorry if I got anything wrong about wind instruments.
Edit: Uh, I may or may not continue this depending on my super sporadic muse, and if I did I'd just post new chapters here, so you can add this to your alerts if you're interested, I guess. I'm going to keep this fic listed as 'complete' though because I wouldn't come up with an actual serious plot spanning a couple of chapters or anything; new chapters would just be more drabbles set in this AU. Though there'd probably be relationship development and all that.