Piano Man

You are John Egbert, and you can't fall asleep. You've been lying here for hours now. You should be exhausted, you toured Neuschwanstein Castle today. Tavros was dying to see it, mostly because it was also known as the Sleeping Beauty castle. You had rented a car and driven up there, toured the castle for a couple hours, and driven back, but you were still wide awake. You decide to go down to the bar. A beer might help you sleep. You slide out of the bed, trying not to wake Dave, and slip out of the bedroom. You're almost to the door when you trip over something and fall, hitting the ground with a thud. You get up, hoping you didn't wake anyone up, and turn around to move whatever you tripped over, only to discover it was Nepeta. She blinks at you and you motion for her to go back to sleep. You turn back around and leave the room. You head over to the elevators, but then turn around to take the stairs. Maybe taking the stairs will exhaust you. You're halfway down when you realize that only works if you're going up the stairs.

You exit the stairwell into the lobby and head over to the bar. You hop onto a barstool and order the same beer Nepeta had ordered for you last night. The bartender brings it over to you and you chug it down. You wave for him to bring you another, and another after that. A couple beers later you call him over to ask if he has a six pack you could have. You want to do something, but you still want to drink while you do it. He nods and hands one over to you. You thank him, giving him the room number for him to charge it to. You head over to the reception desk and ring the bell a couple times before a worker comes out. "Haben sie ein Klavier?" you ask, and he nods, pointing you to the ballroom. You walk into it and head over to the piano in the corner. It's a grand piano and it's gorgeous. You walk over, pulling a beer out of the six pack and popping it open. You take a sip and sit down on the piano bench. You put the beer down on the floor with the rest of the six pack and place your fingers on the keys. You close your eyes and play the first real piece you ever learned. You don't remember the name, but you played it so much when you were younger, you memorized it. It sounds haunting, and it brings back a lot of memories of when you lived alone with your dad, before you guys adopted Jade.

"Sounds nice." You jump at the voice and fall backwards off the piano bench, hitting your head on the floor. You look up to see Dave sitting there, smirking at you. "Nice." He says, pulling you back on the bench.

"Dave you scared the shit out of me." You say, rubbing your head. "Hand me my beer, would you?" He nods and hands it to you. You take a long drink.

"Sorry bro. Guess I'm quieter than I thought I was." He shrugged and motioned to the piano. "Keep playing. It sounded good." You turn back to the piano and start from where you left off.

"How did you know I was here?" You ask, still playing.

"Heard you trip. I didn't want to get up, but when you didn't come back to the room, I thought I should make sure you were okay. So I left. Couldn't find you, so I asked at the reception desk if they had seen you. And they pointed me here." His voice tired. He leaned his head on your shoulder and you stopped playing.

"Do you want to go back upstairs to sleep?" You ask, taking another swig of your beer.

"No, I want to hear you play some more." He says, his voice soft. So you finish out the piece. "What was that? It sounded really cool." He asks and you shrug, forgetting for a second that his head was on your shoulder.

"I don't know. It was the first real piece I learned. I remember playing it over and over again until I had memorized it. I probably drove my dad crazy." You say, offering Dave a beer.

"What about Jade? Did it drive her crazy?" He asked, taking the beer.

"Jade wasn't living with us at the time." You say.

"What do you mean?" He asks, popping open his beer.

"We adopted her when she was sixteen. She had lived with her grandfather on some tiny island, only it turned out that the grandfather had died when she was young, and she had stuffed him. She had said she was honoring some family tradition, but it was super weird. Anyway, eventually someone found out, and they put her up for adoption. My dad had actually known Jade's grandfather, so we decided to adopt her."

"Huh, you guys look so similar I never would have thought she was adopted."

"Ya, well I never drove her crazy with my piano playing, but she sure drove me crazy with her flute playing. Her bass playing was quiet and nice, but she would play ridiculously high on her flute just to annoy me. Probably payback for all the pranks I played on her." You say, leaning back, forgetting you are on a piano bench. You fall off the back again, this time taking Dave with you. You laugh after the initial shock of hitting the floor wears off, but make no move to get back up again. Dave doesn't try to get up either, so you both just lie there, lifting your heads to drink more.

"Well, what else?" Dave asks.

"What do you mean?" You put your beer down.

"I don't know. What else is there to your life? What's your whole fucking life story? I don't know. I've never been good at small talk. Never had to make small talk."

"Um, well, I was born in Seattle, Washington and I've lived in the suburbs my whole life. Nothing really interesting happened. I had a pretty normal childhood, minus the mom. Learned to play the piano, played pranks, watched a lot of movies. Just normal stuff." You say, finishing off your beer and reaching for a new one.

"Really? Totally normal childhood? Nothing weird at all?" Dave sounds dubious.

"Well, I mean there was the whole anxiety thing and the writing on the wall." You say, without really meaning to.

"What do you mean?" Dave asks, rolling onto his side to look at you.

"Well, I didn't realize it until I was thirteen, but I was writing on my walls. Weird shit I thought about myself. My dad didn't really think anything of it at first, he just thought I had low self esteem. So he baked cakes for me all the time and left encouraging notes around the house for me to find. But see, I didn't realize I was writing the stuff on the wall. I blocked it out. When I looked at my room, I just saw my room. Without the writing. So I thought my dad was being condescending, and I got sick of his cakes. But then when I was thirteen and it hadn't stopped, my dad confronted me about it. And when I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, he took me to a psychiatrist. Then I was diagnosed with anxiety and minor depression, which explained a lot. Then things started getting better. I was still sick of his cakes, but I started having a better relationship with my dad. But that's about the weirdest thing that happened to me." You say, drinking some more of your beer. "What about you? What was your life like?" Dave rolls back onto his back and sighs.

"My life was fucking screwed up, and I am not drunk enough to tell you about it. Let me get a few more beers in me and then maybe." He says, popping open another beer. "Let's just do twenty questions until then."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want." You say.

"Nah, it's fine. Someone ought to know. Well, besides Rose anyway. What's your favorite movie?"

"Oh god. Tie between Ghostbusters and Con Air." You say. "You?"

"Dude you have got to be fucking kidding me. Those are TERRIBLE movies. What the fuck are you thinking Egbert. I'm only telling you this because I care. You have fucking awful taste in movies." He says, shoving your shoulder.

"Don't tell me how to live my life!" You say, laughing and shoving him back.

"And I don't really watch movies. More of a music man." Dave says.

"Alright then, what's your favorite kind of music?" You ask.

"My music."

"Not full of yourself at all then?"

"Not even a little. Your music's pretty sick, too."

"You think so?"

"Definitely." You shoot questions at each other and eventually run out of beer. You send Dave to get some more. He returns with not only a six pack, but with two bottles of vodka.

"Do you need to be that drunk?"

"Uh, yes."

"Alright. What is your deepest fear?"

"Swimming." He answers without hesitation as he sits down.

"Really? I wouldn't think it." You grab a one of the vodka bottles and drink some of it. It burns, but in the best way.

"Well it goes back to when I was a kid, but you'll hear all about that when I'm good and drunk. What about you?"

"I don't know. I never really thought about it. I don't really have one specific thing I'm scared of. I'm more scared of the idea that we're all insignificant. That nothing we do really matters in the end, that one day, there will be no sign we even existed. And I mean, it's pretty true. In the future the sun will expand, the Earth will roast, and there'll be no sign we ever existed. So I guess it's not really a fear, just me being sad about the way things will end up." You take another sip and notice Dave has almost finished his bottle of vodka. How he's managed to do that you have no idea."You drunk enough yet?" Dave drains the rest of the vodka and nods.

"Ya, guess so. I was orphaned when I was a kid, and my bro found me lying in a fucking park one day. He decided to raise me on his own, instead of turning me into social services. I don't know why, he was only sixteen. But I'm not entirely convinced that my bro is one hundred percent right in the head, so I can't explain his shitty actions. Anyway, he raised me in some apartment that had originally been his parents. I don't know what happened to them, they were out of the picture before I arrived. He started training me with swords when I was really young. I don't know what the fuck he was thinking, giving a kid a sword and then making me fucking fight with him. He said he was training me for something, but he never told me what. Probably just needed someone to practice with. He also 'trained' me by throwing me into the deep end of the pool to teach me to swim. I almost drowned, which is where my fear comes from. After a while, he got more and more distracted and the only time he fucking even noticed me was when we were fighting or we were trading mixes. He had started a store for swords and those stupid pointy shades of his. After a while he had made a fuck ton of money and he started up a fucking puppet porn business of all things. After that, all interactions stopped. I was on my own for money, school, everything. I didn't really need to earn my own money, but I still worked as a DJ, mostly cuz I didn't have an interest in going to college, and mixing music is all I'm good for. So I graduated high school and just kept working clubs." He finished off his beer and turned his head to look at you, his shades shifting slightly on his face.

"Woah. Dave, that sucks." He just shrugs.

"Wasn't so bad. I just had a lot of time to myself. Hey, play me something else." He says.

"Alright. Any requests?" You ask, climbing back onto the bench, hoping you're not too drunk to play anything. You look down at Dave, still on the floor.

"Oh I don't fucking care. Play anything." You grin and turn around, placing your fingers on the keys and start to play. "Oh HELL no. You are not playing the fucking Ghostbusters theme song. Stop that." He yells from the floor, but you keep playing, laughing. He gets up from the ground and grabs your arms, trying to stop you, but you manage to keep playing. Eventually he tackles you to the ground, taking the bench with you. He lands on top of you and you're laughing, almost hysterical. Dave is laughing as well, pinning you down with one arm and reaching for a beer with the other.

"Are you gonna let me up?" You ask, still laughing.

"If you promise to NEVER play that fucking song again. Or at least not while I'm around."

"Fine, fine! Now let me up!" But instead of letting you up, Dave leans down and presses his mouth to yours. It's a drunken kiss, sloppy, but wonderful, and you sink into it, pulling him closer to you. You wrap your arms around him, drawing him in. He kisses with intensity, and you try to mirror it. Dave breaks the kiss first, mumbling something about being tired. You push him up gently and you both stumble back to the hotel room.

You throw his sweatpants at him and then you change into your own. By the time you've got yours on, he's already in bed. You crawl under the covers with him, your head swimming. A bed has never looked this inviting. You curl up next to Dave and close your eyes, eager to go to sleep.