Based on the prompt: Sharing a Park Bench

Will read in the park for only one reason. Oh he told his friends and family that he enjoyed the fresh air and that it was a welcome distraction from his job and his studies but those weren't the real reasons. The real reason was the violinist.

The violinist played covers of pop songs and pieces written by Bach and Mozart and composers that Will couldn't name. He was as tall as Will was but thinner. He was unsettlingly beautiful. Not girlish, but still beautiful was a better word than handsome. He was smiles and kindnesses and would crouch down to talk to children who asked him ridiculous questions. The week after he was asked to play "Let It Go" by a seven year old girl with a braid over her shoulder, he had learned it.

Will did not sit near him. He didn't want to be noticed. He sat near enough to hear and each week he'd walk by and drop too much money in the violinist's case while he was talking and smiling with someone else. Will sat on the bench around the flower garden so that usually, his back was to the boy who threw all of himself in to each song. When it was a busy Saturday, he'd turn and look and watch the way he moved like the music was being pulled out of every inch of him.

Will had an ereader onto which he had loaded very nearly every poem he'd ever read so that he could read things that matched up with the day's selections. He got to know the moods of the violinist with his flashing eyes and bleached out hair. Some days were melancholic. Some days were joyous. Some days were about nature and slow edges. Some days were vibrant and almost ridiculous.

Every single Saturday afternoon, he made his way here. He reorganized plans to make it happen. He found his violinist and gave up two or three hours to just listening and reading.

Or he did until the day that the violinist wasn't playing. Will got to the park and settled in on his bench and there was no music. Disappointment rolled through him like he was being denied things far deeper than a free musical performance. He opened his reader and read his favourites and tried to remember what the music was supposed to sound like. A solitary violin lifting and falling and turning like the notes were steps in a dance.

Someone dropped down beside him in a rush of hurried energy and Will broke away from his poems and his memories of melodies to look at the interruption. It was his violinist. His violinist had dropped onto his bench with his violin case and a distant look in his eye. Without the instrument and the crowd of onlookers and his smile, he was strangely human. Not as ethereal as Will usually imagined him to be.

Just a boy with a leather case.

"Are you alright?" Will asked him.

"Of course," he said but he looked at Will with eyes like the forest at night. So dark they were almost black but layered and deep. He wore a jacket pushed to his elbows and he didn't so much hold the violin case as cradle it.

"Will you play today?" Will asked because he didn't have anything else to say.

"I have an audition tonight," the boy said, "I should be practicing. I shouldn't be playing silly Disney songs and that same Prelude over and over. I should be practicing."

"They'll love you," Will said. There was honest fear in the boy's voice, like he doubted that he was capable of the audition. Will couldn't imagine it. He couldn't imagine anyone choosing someone else when this person was one of the options. How could they?

"You're needlessly kind," he said with a laugh.

"I come here, every week and listen to you," Will said which was far more true than he had intended. His obsession was his secret and here he was blurting it out, "I love every note. I'm a reader not a musician but still, I love every note. They'll be able to see your brilliance."

The boy turned and stared. Stared. He looked at Will like he was looking at something that he had never seen before. Like he was seeing an impossible vision. Will was suddenly nervous. No one looked at him like that. People looked at him because he was pretty but no one looked at him like they wanted to see his soul.

"Your music is beautiful," Will said as simply as he could. He said it like he wasn't getting lost in the eyes of a stranger. Will didn't know his name. And yet he needed this person to know how amazing he was.

"My music is passable," he said.

"You're one of those. I probably could have guessed if I was thinking about it, of course you're one of those," he said.

"Those?" he asked.

"Those people who down play their own achievements," Will said.

"Would you rather I boast?" he asked. He was releasing his grip on the violin case as he talked. He leaned back against the bench beside Will and gave him a smile. It wasn't his stage smile for charming crowds, this was more honest. Will gave him an exaggerated expression of consideration and then nodded. It got a laugh.

"No really, impress me," Will teased.

"I went to Juilliard. I graduated with high honours though not quite top of my class. I am the only child of over achieving parents and that not quite the top was a bit of a disappointment. I do all the arrangements for the string quartet I am in. We mostly do weddings. I hate weddings but they pay well. This audition is for the symphony. The Symphony. I haven't told my parents so they won't be disappointed if I don't get it," he said.

Will laughed, "I'm sorry I asked. I feel a little incompetent just sitting here. Why play in the park?"

"It's fun and no one expects me to be impressive," he said with a shrug, "Symphony people are snotty and wedding people are high strung. I like to just play music without all of that. Last Tuesday an elderly couple waltzed while I played. They waltzed just because there was music and they could. I like it out here. Do you really come every week?"

Will considered lying because it was very nearly stalking but he'd already said it so he nodded, "I read, I listen, I hope I don't get rained on."

"And you hide over here while you do it?" he asked with a laugh.

"If I went and sat on your side of the tulip garden, it would be obvious that I was stalking you. I was trying to be discreet," Will said hoping he could cover his creepiness with humour.

"Shall I play on your side today or would you rather continue hiding?" he asked turning his violin case on his lap so that he could unlatch it. He had long narrow hands and was pulling his gloves off as he spoke and Will found himself noticing. Who knew that gloves were so damn interesting? Where did this boy get off having beautiful hands as well as everything else? Will shook the thoughts off as he looked out down the path at the overcast day.

"I can't hide now," Will said.

"True," the violinist said, "I know you now, I'm going to be looking for you. Tell me your favourite. Today I'll play for you. I like having someone to play for."

Will blinked a few times and looked down at the little screen in his hands because he didn't want to stare. He could feel the attention on him. It mattered. The answer to this question mattered. He didn't know the name of a single piece of music but he didn't want to choose something silly and be thought stupid by someone like this.

"The one from last week that sounds like flying," he said.

He was taking out the violin as Will was thinking and was fussing with the bow when Will said that. He shook hair out of his eyes and lifted the instrument to play just a few bars. Will nodded. He hadn't thought that his comment would make any sense.

"Now you need to tell me your name," he said as he closed his case and checked the tuning on his instrument.

"William, Will," he said.

"Lovely to meet you, Will. I'm James though a very small number of people call me Jem," he said.

"Hello Jem," Will said deciding to put himself in that small number just to see if he would be accepted. It earned him a smile.

"Hello," Jem said and then he stood up, leaving his case open on the ground beside Will and his jacket tossed over the back of the bench. He was someone different again, the performer instead of just a person but he gave Will a smile before he started to play the piece that sounded like flying.

Today, Will didn't pretend he wasn't watching.