Tojo Nozomi looked up from her cards, green eyes dulled, "Eli-chi?"
Her tone was an immediate warning to Ayase Eli that something was off, "What's wrong?"
"Maki's in trouble."
"With school? She's top of her class."
Nozomi shook her head.
"With the new songs? She seemed pretty pumped."
Nozomi shuffled the cards together before Eli could lean over and read them herself.
"I'm…not sure. I don't know enough."
Eli knew Nozomi rarely admitted ignorance.
"She talks to you, though."
"Not really. She spends most of her time with Rin and Nico. They're the only ones who can get a word out of her sometimes."
"She respects you."
Eli snorted, "She'll still steamroll over me. Nishikino confidence is katana steel sharp."
"I don't think she'll talk to me about this, Eli."
Eli got up and moved to the window, "I can try. If it'll help Muse."
"It will."
###
Nishikino Maki had frozen. At the piano. Incapable of making any music out of the images, thoughts, memories, wonderings smashing around, demanding all of her attention. Had she played at all? Beethoven, briefly? Or Satie? Or perhaps Wild Stars?
A quick knock on the door. Maki glanced over. Twintails. Nico-chan. She could feel her cheeks redden. Her pulse raced. Was she breathing? Nico knocked again. Maki inhaled and nodded, slightly. The door opened. Maki forced her eyes to stay on the keys.
"Want me to walk you home, Maki? Nico could buy you a smoothie."
"No." Too harsh, too immediate. Maki could just see in her peripheral vision as Nico's cheerful expression dimmed. "I have to finish."
"Oh." Nico's tone was relieved. She sat next to Maki, making Maki's frozen state even stiffer. "Nico knows Maki-chan can write the best songs. Muse is the luckiest to have Maki working so hard."
Nico's hand squeezed hers, "Finish up so tomorrow Nico can walk you home. Nico's been working on some ideas for how to get more people at our next show. Wonder Zone was good, but we need lines that wrap around three blocks."
"Sure." Maki had lost the context of what Nico was saying.
"Maki-chan knows Nico's always right."
Maki knew Nico always said she was right. It never seemed to matter if Nico was wrong, everything got swept up in a wave of hard work and charm and then somehow it worked out all right, whether Nico did it herself or someone else actually saved the day. Maki found it fascinating to watch. It was as if Nico could speak things into existence.
"So think about Nico."
"What…no…it's music; that's the problem…I'm not…" Maki had pushed back from the piano in a panic, almost knocking Nico off the bench and now standing behind the bench feeling tall and stupid."
"Do you have a fever, Maki-chan?"
Concerned eyes, so soft, so deep, Maki could float in them, and then panic in her stomach and she stepped back. "I have to finish. Don't you listen to me?"
Nico tilted her head, "All right. Nico will leave Maki-chan to be a genius. But tomorrow, Nico wants some attention from her favorite fan." And Nico spun, giggling, "Nico Nico Ni."
Maki grunted, sitting back on the bench, listening for the door to close. Tomorrow, she had 'til tomorrow to remember how to talk to Nico. Nico was sharp; Maki in a fugue state would lead to too many questions. And Maki had no answers for her own questions. Nico's would be apocalyptic fire.
###
A hand on her shoulder, shaking her. Firm grip, but not Nico. Nico's touch was always…open somehow, very confident, but…curious? Why had that word popped into her head.
"Hey, Maki." Eli's voice, "Didn't Nico stop by to walk you home?"
Maki lifted her head off her arms, thoughts tumbling.
"Maki?"
"Told her to go home."
Eli was obviously worried. Maki decided continuing to stare at the keyboard was her calmest option.
"Did you fight?"
"No." Maki's temper broke through control. "We don't fight all the time."
Eli felt herself shrug. Maki was obviously exhausted, her eyes wide, panicky. She seemed ready to bolt. How to get more information without making Muse's composer too skittish to communicate.
"How's the song?" Music first.
"Which? I'm working on three." Maki's answer was snappish. "I'm going home." She stood, picking up her bag, pushing past Eli.
Then she stopped. "I can't talk to Nico." It was a whisper.
Nozomi was right. "What do you mean?"
A subtle shrug, "I don't know how to talk to Nico. And no, we didn't have a fight." Hunching defensively.
Gently, Eli thought, "What happened?"
"She smiled."
"Nico smiles a lot."
"I know."
"You should be used to it."
"Right." More sullen.
"Tell her?"
Maki whirled, fists clenched, mouth an angry line. "Why?"
What would Nozomi say? Something irritating, something that would just get under the skin, prickling until truth came crying out. Maki probably wasn't a crier. Which was good because if Nico came back and found Eli comforting a crying Maki…well, Eli did not want to have that talk.
"Don't just stand there and stare at me."
No, that was Nico's job. Ah. Eli knew what Nozomi would say.
"That's Nico's job isn't it?"
Maki's face reddened, "SHUT UP."
Silence Eli didn't break.
"I'm going home."
Eli watched Maki speed out the door. Would that be enough to help her friend to a breakthrough?
###
Nico was glowing. The school was staying open. Practice had been turned into a celebration and Nico was GLOWING. Maki blinked, unsure if there were sparkles glinting somewhere or the sun was slanting in at a new, Nico-centric angle. She jumped, she glowed, she shared and Maki's cup pushed forward, everyone else's following by reflex as "kanpai" was shouted and Nico dimmed a little. Not much. Just enough that Maki could breathe again.
And then Umi…Umi with fierce eyes, announcing this shattering thing, this unexpected thing, this abyssal rift rapidly opening between Honoka's brightness and Kotori's gray, but then it was a collision, Kotori, Kotori the calm, lashing out at Honoka, pain whipping through the room, filling it so Kotori fled, followed by Honoka, and Umi. And then Maki, air in the room too heavy, was in the hallway, up the stairs, but not turning to the piano, no to the roof. There should have been practice, nothing would have gone wrong if there'd been practice.
###
Maki felt the metal of the fence bite into her fingers. She hung her head down, forcing chords into her head to push out the raw pain of Honoka and Kotori, the slash of Umi, the silence in the room. Why? Why now? Why was everything falling apart?
"Maki?" Nico's voice. "You weren't at the piano."
"We should have just had rehearsal. I hate parties. Parties make everything go wrong."
Nico's hands were on Maki's waist, turning her around, "Nico will race you somewhere. You'll lose but Nico will be cute and then everything will be okay." A wink. That smile, "Loser buys french fries."
Maki laughed, doubling up like she was throwing up all the tension twisting inside her with every racking guffaw. Then somehow, Nico was sitting on the wall, leaning against the fence, her arms around Maki and Maki was almost breathing.
"That's better. Maki-chan is the cutest. And Nico knows cute." One hand to her temple, "Nico Nico Ni." And the real Nico smile, with the sly, knowing humor, the shared warmth. The smile Maki loved.
"Don't smile at me, Nico-chan. My ribs hurt."
"Don't be so cute."
Maki reached up her hands, feeling the tears against her cheeks, "I'm crying, Nico-chan."
Nico's fingers were gentle on her cheek, "Still cute."
Twilight. Maki should have been home. How long had she been standing there? What would happen tomorrow? Nico's fingers were now brushing her hair behind her ears and Maki couldn't look away. Nico's expression was puzzled, her head tilting, as she searched Maki's face for the next reaction. Maki's heart pounded so loud, it filled her ears, her pulse a stranger inside her, wanting out, to surge, to be grounded.
Lips closer. Had Maki ever been this close to someone? Shared breath, through the skin of their hands, Nico's eyes lava incandescent, Maki closing hers to have some hope of surviving this rush, and then soft, firm, wet…none of those things Maki expected, just reaching, touching, like when a perfect chord filled her brain, and she pressed every note into the piano and there was suddenly a new world, full of this mood, this wonder, this new, all motion, but met with equal motion, lip to lip, not to talk, but to create, to shudder, to sing a silent song all the birds heard in their bones with the life that dawned anew every morning.
"Maki." A whisper of wonder.
Maki's eyes fluttered open, Nico still so close, but instantly catching her glance, everything not said, smiled. Everything not said, smiled. Maki knew she'd learned Nico's secret. And now it was theirs.
A/N:
I just had the thought that one day, Nico smiles at Maki and Maki can't think straight anymore so this happened.
Drop a comment/hi; it's been a long summer.
