Simple Melodies - prizefic

"So… why do you even have this if you don't play?" Toni asked, drawing a finger through the thick layer of dust on the piano keys. She wrinkled her nose and dusted her hand off against her skirt, giving Conrad a curious glance.

"I don't play much," Conrad replied sheepishly, one hand going to the back of his neck. "It was… a fit of creative passion, I guess. You know, you get interested in something and you buy whatever feels right at the time."

"Like Pokémon cards," she offered with an understanding nod.

"I-I guess." He grabbed a washcloth and wet it slightly in the sink, then cleaned the keyboard off carefully. "But anyways, I… I thought composing music would be fun, so I picked this up a couple of months ago. Two attempts at writing a song was enough for me, and I never really played it after that."

Toni laughed and sat on the bench, arranging her skirt around her before searching for the power switch. "That sounds just like you, Conrad. Why didn't you return it?"

"Customer service employees are kind of scary sometimes," he replied, sure that if he could blush, he would be turning all manner of red. "B-but I don't mind having it here, either. Sometimes I get visitors who can play it, and… I like music."

"Music, huh." She glanced at him, then back at the keyboard, and began to play a tune that he didn't recognize--slow and simple at first, then faster and faster and more complex until he had difficulty keeping up with the speed of her hands despite his not-so-new vampiric reflexes. "Something like this?"

"How are you doing that?"

"Lots of practice," she laughed, banging out one final chord and coming to a dizzying stop. "I've been playing since I was a little girl. My dad paid for my lessons and played duets with me when I got bored of practicing. The music he played was beautiful, and I guess it was listening to his music that made me want to keep going."

"To get to where you could play it yourself," Conrad finished for her, and she smiled. "You're lucky. My piano teacher was some crotchety old lady whose house smelled like cats and bleach and furniture polish, and I think part of me decided that if I kept playing, I'd end up like her someday."

She chuckled, scooting over on the bench and pulling her skirt close to make room for him. "Well, your house does smell like furniture polish sometimes. Come on, sit."

"I-it only smells like that 'cos I have to polish up after Veser leaves sneaker prints over everything," Conrad protested, edging away; Toni's hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve, and he sat reluctantly, wishing there was a little more room on the tiny bench. Concentration was difficult when Toni was so close, warm and vanilla and coffee and hairspray, and--

"What kind of songs do you know?" she asked with a smile that was a little too knowing; he edged away enough that their elbows weren't brushing and hooked one leg around the flimsy bench leg so that he wouldn't fall off.

"N-not many," and he splayed his fingers out over the board in the hopes that something would come to him and make him look like a musical genius, but nothing did, and he knew without looking that Toni was trying not to laugh.

She took his hands gently she's touching me holy crap what do I do now and positioned them correctly over the keys, resting her own hands on the lower half of the keyboard and looking at him for a moment. "You okay? You're awfully quiet--"

"I'M FINE--" that had come out too loudly and quickly for it to be a casual reply and now she really was laughing at him, damnit.

"Okay, okay, sorry. Maybe you know this one?" Toni asked, finally getting herself under control, setting her fingers to the keys and beginning a slow melody that tugged at some long-buried part of his mind.

"I, uh… I might… kind of?" he fumbled, trying to recall the scent of bleach and the sound of his scolding piano teacher, too distracted by Toni to really be able to. His fingers struck the wrong keys and she stopped playing, repositioned his fingers and pushed down on his index finger to show him where to start.

After that, it was almost like a game of memory, turning the tiles over and over again, recalling little bits of the melody and trying to piece them together into something that sounded right. Toni stopped every few moments to remind him how the piece went, and after about fifteen minutes of trying very hard, his stumbling awkward playing caught up with her smooth chord progressions and the song fell into place.

He was almost disappointed when it ended, but she turned to him and laughed and suddenly he didn't mind so much. "See? That wasn't so bad."

"I-I guess not," he admitted, and placed his fingers in the proper starting position. "Can we try again? I think I was really getting it, there at the end."

"You were," Toni agreed, grinning, plunking her hands back in their starting place and rattling off a few experimental notes. "Alright. Are you ready for it, this time?" He nodded and she began again with a flourish of unexpected notes, and he smiled and joined in.

Maybe playing piano wasn't all bleach and furniture polish and shouting.

Maybe it was coffee and vanilla and laughter, bumping elbows and hesitant fumbling for notes, beautiful music created by two people as different as the parts they were playing.