I've seen a few things with Becky's opinion of Balthazar and vice versa, but overall in fics they seem to relate as 'my boyfriend's teacher' and 'my apprentice's girlfriend', and there's a similar sense of distance between Dave and Veronica. I like the idea of them all derping around Manhattan together, so I thought I'd throw something out that develops the friendships between the non-romantically-involved ladies and gentlemen.

I roleplay Balthazar with a friend, and in my character development, I offhandedly came up with the idea of him being a minstrel or court musician off and on as he travels the world. It developed into a strong character trait through the course of a couple games, but it took me a while to connect it with Becky being so musically inclined.

This could be read as a 'hey, maybe they should trade romantic partners' kind of thing, and while I'd read/write that (or inter-Merlinian polyamory) for the lulz, that's not what I'm trying to express here. Just trying to convey images of Balthazar and Becky having a jam session while Dave and Veronica have earnest conversations about the Large Hadron Collider.

54. Musical (1050 words)

Genre: Gen, humor/fluff

Characters: Balthazar, Dave, Becky, Veronica

Warnings: A single low-octane swear word.

Socializing was a little awkward for the post-battle week Balthazar and Veronica lived in Dave's lab. What he wanted was time alone with Becky, time to kiss and cuddle (or maybe more), time to just stare at her blue eyes and golden hair and listen to her laugh.

He couldn't take her to his apartment, not with Bennet always hanging around, gaming with friends or courting his own feminine interests. Unfortunately, Becky had similar restrictions on her alone time, sharing a place with two other girls. The turnabout would have been ideal if it hadn't been inhabited by a pair of ancient sorcerers trying to get reacquainted.

When he and Becky showed up one afternoon after classes, ostensibly to study together, Balthazar was poking around the kitchenette on the upper level, sipping coffee and listening to a classical station on the radio. Dave greeted him sheepishly, but Becky immediately moved to adjust the volume up. "I like Holst," she said. "You can tell he was thinking about the mood he wanted to convey. Not just the technical stuff."

Dave went to get sodas for them both out of the mini-fridge. "I didn't know you liked classical music."

"What, you thought I only listened to rock and pop? I like playing contemporary stuff on my show, but seriously, there's nothing I don't listen to."

"Dave told me you were majoring in legal studies," Balthazar studied her.

"Just because my parents insist." She grimaced. "I'm minoring in business, but I'm kind of hoping to get into the music industry. Maybe represent artists trying to get a fair deal with bigger studios or whatever."

Dave recognized the spark in his master's eyes. Balthazar seemed to have previously mentally labeled Becky as a nice enough girl and good for Dave, but he had never had much interest in her personally. Abruptly, his attitude had shifted. "That's practical," the old sorcerer told her thoughtfully, "but you should follow your heart. Do you write anything, or play an instrument?"

Becky blushed. "I sometimes write lyrics, and I've done some vocal arrangements, but composing isn't really my talent. I can play the piano, but I'm not great. I just…want to be in the music, if that makes any sense."

"Perfect sense, but don't sell yourself short," Balthazar smiled. "I've always thought of myself as more of a lyricist, but every now and again I'll hear some tune I came up with in the 1600s recycled by a Celtic pop group or something. It's flattering."

"Wait, what?" Dave gaped. "You can play music?" Somehow he wouldn't have thought it of Balthazar.

"I'm not allowed to use magic for profit," his master said, smirking. "I had to find some way to make a living for the past thirteen centuries. Not exclusively music, of course. I've been a falconer, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a doctor…but whenever I could get work as a musician, damn right I played music."

"Really?" Becky looked intrigued, and sat at the table across from Balthazar. "Any particular genre?"

"Genre was different when I got started. I've been all over the world and picked up bits and pieces of all kinds of traditional styles, but my work has mostly been simple ballads and madrigals. I played the shamisen a little in Japan, but I can't quite duplicate the vocal acrobatics the masters of traditional Asian music can do. If you're familiar with early Renaissance stuff, that's what most of my better work sounds like. I used to play the psaltery, sometimes the lyra or the flute."

Dave recognized he was about to get left out of the discussion. "Uh…hey, where's Veronica?" he asked in a last-ditch effort to participate.

Balthazar smiled. "Downstairs, reading your physics textbooks. She'll tear through your entire library by the end of the week."

"Okay," Becky said, ignoring the brief side conversation, "I went to this lecture on Medieval and Renaissance music a couple months ago, but they didn't have as many actual audio samples as I was hoping for. Maybe you can help me out? I was totally into the polyphonic stuff, especially Palestrina…"

"Oh, God, Palestrina," Balthazar tilted his head back with a blissful eyeroll. "One person can't duplicate that sound on his own, but I know I can find some scores of his for you. Have you heard…"

Suddenly they were talking a mile a minute, dropping words like 'motet' and 'dissonance' and 'melisma', and Dave was looking from one to the other as if they were playing a tennis match. After a couple minutes of increasing bewilderment, he muttered an excuse and slunk off down the stairs. He was glad his master and his girlfriend were getting along, but after years of social awkwardness, it was easy to feel hurt by getting shut out of a conversation.

At least his Tesla coils loved him.

When he wandered into the lab proper, he found Veronica standing on her toes and running one hand almost reverently over one of his coils. There were half a dozen books stacked around her feet, and a pair of reading glasses, no doubt borrowed from Balthazar, was perched on her nose.

"…Hello," he said to her uncertainly.

"Hmm?" she turned and flashed him a grin, pulling off the glasses. "Hope you don't mind. I have so much to catch up on. My God, over a thousand years of technology and theory!"

He peered at a page of the open book at her feet. "Oh, that one's from high school. I actually have some way better textbooks this year, and a bunch of old scientific journals, if you want to borrow."

"Please!" The reply was unhesitating, and he glanced up to catch a look of raw intellectual hunger on her face. It was an expression he couldn't recall ever seeing anywhere except in the mirror.

He broke into a grin. "No problem. You want to see the coils in action?" She had missed, no doubt, his Tesla attack on Horvath, since she had been possessed at the time.

"Of course!" Brightly, she gathered up the books to move them out of harm's way, and Dave reflected that it might be nice to be part of a quartet, after all, instead of a loosely gathered collection of pairs.

Upstairs, the radio played Tchaikovsky.