*sea metaphors*

"Would it kill you to pay me a compliment?" Phillip spoke on the edge of a sneer, a wry note creeping into his voice. "You're just jealous I can play at all."

Brandon scoffed. "As if I'd waste my time on something like that," he shot back, in part to hide the fact that he was jealous. He had always secretly harbored a yearning for some type of artistry that could be outwardly expressed - writing, music, acting, painting, anything, but at least until now his talents seemed to be reserved for thinking.

People like Phillip fascinated him. Phillip fascinated him. It was as though he didn't even have to try.

"Didn't your mother every try to get you to learn?" Phillip asked, sounding earnestly curious.

"In fact, no she didn't, Phillip. She must have had something else on her mind for the last fifteen years."

Shrugging, Phillip let his sarcasm roll off his shoulders. "It isn't so terribly hard once you start," he said simply, as though just anybody could plop themselves down in front of the piano and become Schubert.

Rolling his eyes, Brandon shook his head. "If it was easy we'd all play the piano as well as you do," he grumbled, tongue catching on his braces and lending a bitter lisp to the words.

Phillip raised a brow. "Was that a compliment?"

"Do shut up, Phillip."

Shut up he did, but only so he could give Brandon one of those long, curious looks while Brandon attempted to look absorbed in his textbook. The weight of the other boys gaze on his bespectacled face was not uncomfortable, and yet it made him feel distinctly itchy, aware of every possible imperfection. Usually he was a master of ignoring others when it suited him, and yet his powers of avoidance seemed lost on Phillip, who had a habit of seeing past his worldly artifice, from his glasses to his braces. Nobody had eyes like Phillip, which could one moment be as wide and guileless as a frightened rabbit, and then in the next be dark and cold as coal, changeable and erratic as a storm. He could look at him all day so long as Phillip looked back at him. Saw him.

Not that Phillip needed to know that.

"Would you like to learn a little?" he asked gently.

Lifting his head in surprise, Brandon frowned. "Aren't you rehearsing?"

"I'm practicing, not rehearsing. Very big difference," Phillip said, a smile teasing up the ends of his words. "I can practice by doing anything."

Brandon felt himself oddly hesitant, unwilling to make himself look clumsy or foolish in front of anybody and Phillip in particular, a fact that made the back of his neck feel hot. "Well..." he began, searching his brain for any excuse as to why he couldn't, all too aware of the way Phillip continued to look at him, taking in every detail of his reticence.

"Humor me, Brandon," he said easily, moving to the corner of his bench and freeing up the space beside him.

"Phillip..." he trailed off, already feeling his resolve crumbling in the face of the other boy's expectant tap of the seat.

"Come here," he ordered, turning his chest back to face the piano, shuffling his music back to the beginning, allowing Brandon to slowly set his book down and join him with purposefully lazy movements. "Sit up straight," he instructed, and before Brandon could process the words he felt the other boys hand against his lower back, giving him the lightest of pushes.

He sat ramrod straight at the gentleness of the touch, hoping he wasn't doing anything as embarrassing as going red at the ears.

If Phillip noticed his reaction he didn't let on, his eyes now focused down on the keys, his hand placed above them in demonstration. "Put one hand just like this," he said, holding his hand aloft until Brandon reluctantly replaced it with his own. "And the other like this," he went on, his other hand placed just a few keys away from the other, watching as Brandon followed his direction. "Now press down."

Frowning, Brandon pressed down on the keys, a long, unsure groan of sound echoing out at his touch. "You've made a musician of me, Phillip," he remarked dryly.

Undeterred, Phillip reached for his hands. "Now here," he said softly, placing Brandon's hands for him, another unclear note meeting the air. Brandon paid only minimal attention to what Phillip was saying, far too engrossed in the sight of their hands together, of Phillip's long, elegant fingers and well-defined knuckles, each detail as carved and distinct as a work by Rodin.

Phillip moved him down, back up, down, up, setting the rhythm for him. "Now do it by yourself," he said quietly, watching Brandon's hands carefully as they began to follow the chords independently. To Brandon's ear it sounded better when Phillip was guiding him, but he had to admit the melody was certainly akin to music, the beat itself as steady as a heartbeat: ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum. "Look, Brandon, you're playing," he said far too kindly.

Sighing, Brandon gave him an unimpressed look. "Satisfied?"

Smiling, Phillip gave him a knowing glance that Brandon felt absurdly caught off guard by, his hands faltering gently in their repetition as Phillip's own hands joined his on the keyboard, his fingers tapping out a delicate, playful dance just beside Brandon's own thump of a beat. Suddenly he felt childish in the best way, almost giddy, as together they played out the now familiar strains of a song he hadn't realized he knew.

Heart and soul, crooned through his memory.

They were playing together. They were making music together. The fact had him stifling a smile that threatened to split the seams of his mouth, his braces pushing against the tight fold of his lips. Without realizing it he leaned his shoulder into Phillip's, the warm press of their bodies against one another strange but comforting, as though he had always been able to touch him, as though they had been born in the same bed like twins. Glancing at him revealed that he was already being watched, Phillip's eyes like earth still wet from the rain, deep and rich, his mouth soft and satisfied. He never looked so happy as when he played piano, and even then he never looked that happy.

Brandon was struck by the sudden urge to kiss him. He found he wanted to very, very badly.

The thought flew from his mind almost as soon as he had it, replaced by a sick, queasy feeling in his belly that told him this would not be the end of such thoughts.

He pulled his eyes from the other boys reluctantly, his hands pausing atop the keyboard as he forced a half-hearted smile onto his face. "W-We'd better stop," he said, hoping Phillip wouldn't notice the stammer. "Any more practice and I'll be better than you are," he teased lightly, relishing in the way Phillip hummed out a small laugh.

A clatter of footsteps rattled down the stairs, David's body swinging through the door frame to give them a weary glower. "Will you two fairies keep it down?" he griped, though his voice was absent of malice. "The whole place can hear you, Phillip, it's late."

A furrow appeared between Phillip's brows, but Brandon's mouth was faster. "Phillip is an artist, and artists don't need to respect the leisure time of lazy bums who should be studying anyway," he called, punctuating the words with a hard, dissonant press of the keys before them.

David rolled his eyes. "You're one to talk," he parried halfheartedly, already turning to go back out he way he came. "Keep it down, everyone is trying to go to sleep," he finished, turning to make his way back up the stairs.

In his absence Brandon turned back to Phillip, still looking chastened, and gave him a gentle nudge with his elbow, merely an echo of the warm way their bodies rested against each other as they played together. "I'll smother him in his sleep tonight," he whispered, the words conjuring a hard burst of a laugh out of Phillip's mouth. "By morning we'll have all of his money, and I'll buy an apartment where you can play whenever you like."

The words were a touch too earnest, and far, far too sentimental. He wanted to cringe at himself, unsure of where exactly the thought had even come from, but Phillip met his eyes with a look that radiated heat like pure sunlight, like he was standing with his back to a fire. Again, he felt the urge to reach out and take his face in his hands, to kiss him like he was sure nobody ever had before. It was unbecoming of him to be so careless with his feeling, especially feelings like these. Childish crushes on ones friends might be normal for other boys, but Brandon wasn't like other boys in many, many ways. They may grow out of such feelings, but Brandon was unsure if he ever would, especially if he stayed sitting on this piano bench with Phillip so close to him.