Thank you for the reviews. ^.^ I happily read them all with much smilies and smacking of toddler hands from jabbing at the keyboard.
3
In the gaping buzz of stage lights in their open, empty stadium at seven that morning, they played with Tea for the first time. It was almost a relief when he heard the girl make mistakes their first time going through the song line up. Mai had more or less wilted in relief on hearing how well she did the part after no previous practice, so she had no mind to pick up the imperfections, leaving it all to Atem.
"You cracked when you jumped on heady to sky."
"Sorry."
"The guitar dragged when you came in on the chorus, are you sure you can sing and play at the same time?"
"Ugh, yeah. I think."
"Was that a squawk I heard on measure sixteen?"
"Dear Lord, Pharaoh," cut in Bakura after the sixth time of stopping mid-song for one of these corrections. "Are we going to be able to eat lunch? Or will we be playing up till seven?"
"Yeah, dude, what are you, Hitler?" added Joey, who was tapping the corner of his bass drum in annoyance.
Atem whirled on them. "Pardon, but I'm the only one that's treating her like she's human, not some music god."
"Goddess," Tea all but whispered, her cheek twitching.
It stilled at his sharp glare. "Don't get cocky, girl. These are our songs, not yours." And before the others could give some other smart aleck comment, "From the top, on three."
On more songs than he cared, Atem just did lead vocals, as playing a cello beneath you could easily overcome a tenor voice. During one or two of the songs he kept his cello in hand to play in-between verses, or rather when he dropped his singing. Only in two was he singing and playing at the same time like he liked, and there was only one in which he played alone. Lucky for them, that particular song hadn't been requested for this concert, and Tea wouldn't be required to sing Rebecca's solo. That's all they would need, too: for some strange newbie to pass out mid-concert in front of x number thousands of people. Or was it just hundreds? Wait, he had forced himself to forget so he wouldn't think about. Stop it now, stop it now.
Ten thousand. The stadium held something like ten thousand people.
Damn it, now he'd have to start all over.
His right heel started doing that nervous jumping. If left too long, his calf would Charlie Horse on him during their performance.
Joey must have noticed this, for ten minutes before eleven, half-way through their last song, he brought it to a stop.
"You doing alright, man? Your heels doing the thing."
"I'm fine. I'll do some exercises right after, they always work."
Bakura made a low grunt of amusement. "Cute."
Atem shot him a look. "What does that mean?"
"Stuff," he stood from his keyboards and arched back, popping his spine several times. "I'm done."
"We're not finished! We can't just drop rehearsals-"
"I can do whatever a damn please." Bakura leaned one dark eye over his shoulder. "Or have you forgotten that?"
With that, Bakura ambled into the wings and vanished. A few techies watched on with impassive faces, eyes to Atem for the next directions. Past the stage lights he could make out movements in the stands, where a work crew made last minute preparations to the seats. Others were just finishing up folding out metal stands in the snot section, strait dab beneath the stage's nose.
Joey flung his arms back, cracking his back too. "Yeaaah, I think I'm done too, man. I'm starting to get so hungry its almost nauseating. Don't stress it, though, she sounds great," and he looked at Tea as he said this, flashing a toothy grin. She gave him a hesitant smile in return.
Atem just ran a hand over his eyes. His leg was already starting to hurt from the nervous heel. "Fine. It's not like I can stop you either."
"Aw, com'on, man. Don't be like that, it'll just make it worse for you. I'll see you back in the prep room? I hear lunch's gonna be extra stupendous."
"Yeah yeah, just go."
Atem didn't watch Joey go. For some reason it made his stomach twist tighter. Instead he looked out into the darkness, watching the shadows move around and the chairs click into place. The longer he looked, the easier it got to see the people.
With a sigh, he turned back to get his cello bow loosened and saw Tea with her guitar not two yards away from him. She froze like a deer caught in the headlights when she saw him.
"I'm up for more practice," she said.
"Sure you are," he said dryly, plopping down into his chair, his cello lain on its side besides it. "Everyone thinks you're Billy Joel perfect, so you might as well go get some food."
"But you're right. I'm not."
He pushed a dismissive sigh from his nostrils and picked up his bow. "You're fine." He kicked open his case. He liked to rosin the middle part of his bow, the part he used the most, before packing it for the day.
When her worn converse sneakers tapped into his view, followed by her gingerly laying her guitar out at his feet, he was in no mood for more socialization and debated on jabbing her in the gut with his bow.
"Could we practice more?" she asked.
"No point without everyone else." He brought his bow into position, pretending to blow on the horse hairs.
"Th-then could I...can I...play your cello? Just for a minute."
The unexpected, earnest plea in her tone came out of nowhere, catching him off guard. He looked up and caught sight of a little too-bright blue eyes. Now that he was looking closely at her, really looking at her not just staring in her general direction and eyeballing any clues for drugs, he found himself noticing for the first time how her hands, that she generally kept clenched to her sides, shook a little. From this close he could see shadows under the makeup she wore. If that wasn't enough to clue him in, she gave a nervous lick of her lips.
Great. Like it wasn't enough that he was getting stage fright.
For a split second, he fought with the urge to pounce on her weakness and scare her off, if for nothing else so she would leave him to brood with his cello in peace. But then, seeing his same apprehension brightening her eyes with tears moved him. The impression he had had of her as an arrogant, confident Mozart fell away, and once more he could see a girl with a dust of freckles across her nose.
Heaving a sigh, he handed her the bow he had been readying to stab her with. "Nervous?"
She flinched mid-reach for the bow and her hand recoiled. "You think I'm not?"
"Well-"
"I'm terrified."
Her fisted hands had come up to press against her breasts, emphasizing how tiny her voice had become. The bright eyes looked down, hiding tears from him.
"I've never played on a stage this big, and if that isn't bad enough I have to play songs that I've only heard the night before for a enormous, paying audience. I mean, I've sorta done this before, but it was the school talent show-that's really different-and then there's all this-frick, I still think something horrible is going to happen to me. I mean, this is got to be too good to be true, right? I mean, Mai just gave me a peek into how much I'll be earning and-and-" her voice cracked, her chin wrinkled, and a swollen bottom lip curled. Her next words definitely sounded broken. "I'm going to screw it up."
And as the first tear dropped to the stage, Atem just sat there stupidly, holding out his bow, blinking hard as though a spotlight had been flashed in his face.
"Shit..." he breathed.
Wrong thing to say. Tea started visibly curled back from him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't-aw, crud, I'm such an idiot, I didn't mean-I'll be practicing, kay?"
"Tea-"
"-I'll be fine, I didn't mean that as a threat or anything, I can do it." She had swiped up her guitar and turned to leave.
Cursing, he jumped from his chair to catch hold of her shirt, dropping his bow in the process. Surprised, she looked at him, giving him the first view of the tears leaving tracks of mascara residue on her cheeks.
He let go of her quickly. "You wanted to play my cello, didn't you?"
She bit her lip and nodded.
So he picked up his bow and once more shoved it in her direction. Once she had it in her hesitant fingers, he stepped to the side and gestured to his chair, his stomach in all sorts of complex yoga twists.
"Th-thank you." Still with the tiny voice.
"Can I play with your guitar?"
"It's not mine. Miss Mai's loaning it to me because she said Rebecca's is too short."
"As it is," he said, picking up the simple maple electric acoustic she had left on the ground before plopping down with his legs crossed. He plucked a few chords, but didn't pick out anything exact. Mostly he just tried to focus down his world to the warbling of the strings and push out the confusing mix of nausea, nerves, and guilt cramping up his leg and now his gut too. Somewhere along the edge was alarm. Tea's meltdown had triggered something in him, and now all the emotions he had so carefully avoided the night before were creeping up on him.
Because, although no one had said it, Atem knew this situation was all his fault. Him, the band leader, the one they trusted...who Rebecca had trusted.
Tea didn't try to keep talking to him, and he was glad for that. He didn't know what he would've done if she had. Instead, he plucked out nonsense on the guitar, and she gave some experimental drags across the cello's strings. Footsteps of techies and other crews worked about them, their voices like the hum of bees on a late Spring afternoon: background noise.
After a while, the cello's light, tentative hums began to grow. Some of Tea's confidence seemed to return as she finally let the horsehair bow bite deep into the string, filling the air about them with the dark chocolate 'ahhhhh' of a low, deep G natural.
At the end of the bow's length, he heard her let out a shaky sigh, one pinched with relief.
His heart jerked.
And then she moved into a slow, belly rumbling lullaby that made his throat warble. Without meaning to, he released his own puff of tension, eyes closing and fingers falling still. The song didn't sound familiar, but it was simple. It was the kind folk songs were written for.
But, unlike him, she didn't start singing or humming along with the strings. She just pulled and pushed, as though moving with the coming and going of the ocean tide.
When she finally stopped, he roused himself like one does from a deep sleep. The tension in his calf had left, and somehow the guilt in his stomach didn't seem so acidic. He thought maybe he could actually swallow some food now, as he'd never been able to get anything down the day of a concert.
With all the care of setting down a pane of glass, Tea lay his cello back onto its side and handed him his bow, already loosened for storage.
"Thank you." Her tone had even lost that pinched, tiny quality and had returned to normal.
As he reached for his bow, the sudden urge to run his hand up her arm and to her cheek struck him. He paused for just a moment, fingers hovering over her own, before taking his bow with a hard mental shake.
"Take it as an apology for how, uh, rough I was on you this morning." For some reason his mouth didn't want to work right and it took more concentration than it should have to even get those words out.
"It's cool. I actually really appreciated your help. You really were the only one treating me like I was human."[J1]
After she left, he sat there on the floor holding the guitar for longer than he cared to admit.
[J1]I want her to seem confident and aloof to everyone else, but every so often show how unsure and delicate she is to Atem.