welcome, delicious friend

At his grandmother's house, there had been an old, out of tune piano in the corner. Nobody used it. And yet, it had stayed anyway. Daniil thinks his grandmother couldn't bear to let it go. She'd always looked at it with sadness in her eyes.

It remained in something of a limbo up until little six year old Daniil went there for the first time, and he spent almost all of his time there just looking at it. He still remembers it vividly. Black painted wood peeling away at the edges, a scratch from the cat on the left wheel, the chip on the highest key. The brass pedals were dull, and ill-taken care of.

He remembers grabbing a tiny paper towel, and trying to rub the dust and oxide away. It didn't work, but they almost looked happy, as much as a piece of metal could look happy. He pat it once, twice, with a smile on his face, and moved on to the keys. His parents had to practically tear him away from the instrument when it was time to go home.

Afterwards, he remembers innocently asking: "Can I have one too?" Although he doesn't remember their response, he does remember getting a little toy piano for Christmas the next month, and piano lessons the month after.

His dad puts him on tennis around the same time, and he meets Andrey there, and also Karen eventually. Andrey is loudspoken and extroverted and everything Daniil isn't. Daniil is the one who never seems to know what to say, the one who trails after the same person over and over and is always in a corner. A bit like a stray cat, he muses. For better or worse.

He continues with his piano classes until he's fifteen, and he has to give it up for tennis. He spends almost all of his free time on the practice courts, and whatever time he has left he uses to keep what he knows polished, sharp; ready. For what, Daniil doesn't know. A performance that will never come, perhaps. Maybe just because. All he knows is that he doesn't want to forget.

He has to say goodbye to his teacher, an old lady with a love for Greek statues and the best strawberry shortcake recipe he's ever had in his life. She looks at him with tears in her eyes, and says: "I know you will not stop playing simply because you have no time to sit in front of a piano, or because you no longer have a teacher. You will find a way, somehow, to keep that godawful Bach solo in your fingers and keep your rhythm separate between your hands."

She smiles. "But promise me this. Never stop playing. You might not be the most technically gifted, but you have passion many, many performers envy." It's high praise, especially since she once was a pianist for the Russian National Orchestra, and he has to blink a few tears away before he hugs her goodbye.

And she's right. Daniil does find ways to keep his muscle memory. If he closes his eyes, he can still see sheet music flitting left and right, flats and sharps dancing around tempo markings. He also never stops. Many, many times he's told off for playing on tables, and even more times he's replaying concertos he knows by heart by now, recognising familiar melodies in whispers of songs he overhears.

"Why do you keep doing that, anyway?" Andrey once asks him when he's sixteen, and they're having ice cream after practice. "I mean, we keep telling you off because it's kinda annoying, but at the same time nothing changes, so..."

He stops mid-arpeggio. "I'm playing piano. Liszt."

Andrey raises his eyebrows. "You play piano? Huh." He stays silent for a moment. "I didn't know."

Daniil blinks at him. "What? I never told you?" Surely, he must've mentioned it offhandedly sometime.

"Nope," Andrey says.

"How could you not know? I had classes every single week for years." Daniil squashes down the wistfulness threatening to rise up in his chest. "But I stopped."

Andrey takes a fucking bite out of his ice cream, which, ew, and then asks: "Why?" And oh, that little word reopens a wound he thought was long closed, scarred over and unfeeling.

"Tennis. You and I both know we could go professional. Plus, if I want to have classes, I need to practice. A lot. And that costs time I could also use for tennis." He tries to sound as objective as possible, to ignore the hurt he feels whenever he talks about this. He's not sure if he succeeds. If he could, he would have both tennis and music, but as it is, he only has so much time. If only he had more if it, if only—

"But you still haven't quit," Andrey says, breaking him out of his thoughts. Of course he noticed. He's always been very observant, maybe a little too observant, when it comes to Daniil.

"No." He looks away. "No, I haven't."

The conversation doesn't continue after that.

When it's time for the both of them to go home, Andrey hops off the fence they were sitting on and demands: "You better show me what you can do on a piano. I don't care when, but I want to know."

Daniil huffs out a laugh. "Okay. As long as you keep telling me about whatever's going on with Karen and Aslan."