WORLD'S BEST DAD. (ap)

❛ you left me, ❜ came the soft statement — there was no need to show such anger in his tone, despite how it had festered within him ( despite how it radiated from him in golden waves, as if it were musik in itself ). he was a god before mortals, a god even among gods; this man was no threat to him, not now, not when he was awake & so very aware of what he could do. he should’ve forced kyogo to stay back then ( but, when his soul yearned for freedom, it would be wrong to take it from others ), none of this would be happening if only he’d kept his promise. ❛ you left me because you are afraid, is that it? ❜ i need you as my ally, i ask for your aid as an ally, not as my pawn — the man had asked for an hour to think & then he’d fled with beethoven & mozart. you left me behind. 

❛ i waited for you, you could’ve told me no & i would be less angry than i am now — you told me you’d come back with an answer; i understand that you said you’d try to give me a positive one, but i’m not an idiot, kyogo. try was the operative term & you left like a coward instead!! ❜ he thought of kanae & how she understood his pain & how he’d been in agony. he thought of kanae with the same brown hair as her father, kanae who was kind — she treated him as a friend; arkhe had only ever seen him as a science project. 

then, kyogo tried to hide that fear behind some sort of facade, as if a nonchalant drawl could do anything to protect him. kyogo had told bach that music communicated things even in this day & age. bach had learned that music was in everything, even in speech. music flowed even in silence ( music was in the gentle rise & fall of someone’s chest as they slept, music was in the way the body moved in dance. music was in the lights that shone at night, the soft glow atop skyscrapers to guide aircraft to safety. music was the waves upon the shore, the clouds that drifted through the sky; music was everything ). 

how he wanted to throw the professor against the wall, to ruin him with symphonies of rage & hurt with him!! how he wanted to drag kyogo back to arkhe, to put him under a spell — but it still seemed wrong. i’m practically shitting myself over here, came that ridiculous drawl & bach had thrown kyogo against the wall before he’d registered his own body moving. hands came to grasp the smaller man’s shoulders, shaking with what was certainly rage & hurt & confusion ( why did you leave, you coward? ) as blue eyes met brown — ❛ if you’d come back, even if you’d told me no, i wouldn’t have broken my promise — now? i’m tired of everything you’ve done to avoid capture. i’ve sent others to fetch you & you put catch them in traps — there is no trap for me — ❜ 

❛ what are you going to do? i’m curious — ❜

         ❝what am i going to do? mmmm…❞

oh great. just great. another one complaining about that sort of thing. well, there was good news and there was bad news--the good news being that this situation was hardly new, the bad being unlike the others, he probably wasn’t going to get away with it. he put a hand to his chin as a stall tactic. 

his first instinct? excuses, excuses, excuses. god, he had two things to say for every accusation bach leveled at him--such was the nature of a man who kept running away from responsibility. you left me because you were afraid. well DUH he was afraid, who wouldn’t be? you could’ve told me no and i would be less angry than i am now. well um maybe that’s because if he’d said no he would’ve been BRAINWASHED??? you left like a coward. yeah he did, but see, the thing about calling a coward a coward is that sometimes, they just don’t care. it was like calling a racist a racist and expecting them to do something about it.

and besides, he wondered, why the hell was bach so angry, if he understood this mortal’s fear? 

how cruel gods could be, to offer kindness and choice but only with a big damn stick hanging over your head. 

man, this was exactly why kyogo never wanted to be a christian.

all he wanted to do is say it. it worked on all the others, especially when he heaped on tender promises that he would make it better. but the underlying refrain of ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck in his head warned him otherwise--bach would surely try to hurt him no matter what he said, just as surely as he would have mind-controlled him back at arkhe. didn’t the bible say at one point that you can’t run and you can’t hide when the lord wants your ass flayed and skinned for a throw rug? well maybe that wasn’t the exact quote, but that was just the impression kyogo got from everything he’d heard about it. he had no reason to believe bach would be any different. he had never had a reason.

Life is short when an angry god wants to fuck you up, he thought. I might as well make it sweet.

“I happen to have allergy at deadbeat assholes and it actually is acting up.” Chopin wasn’t surprised by the man’s demeanor  - he heard enough stories of Kyogo from Kanae to have an image formed.

It was even more awful to know that essentially Kyogo left him behind alongside the other Classicaloids that weren’t Beet or Motes.

“Do you have any idea of how Arkhe is actually like?” 

          ❝oh, yes. terrible people.                i was in debt to them for the             longest time. did they put you                in virtual debt slavery too?❞

             ❝happy deathday to you~                       happy deathday to you~             happy deathday, dear BEETHOVEN…                    happy deathday to youuuu~~~!❞

that is, if he even got the date right--march 26, was it?--after all, part of having literally zero sense of adult responsibility usually ended up in missing important dates like the day your children bit the dust. not that he’d actually take notice if beethesloid actually died; he was a Loid, not an Otowa, and kyogo wuold have an easier time making new ‘loids than he would new otowas. mm. he was getting kinda hungry right now. best to cut the conversation short as soon as possible so he could get on to lunch…or maybe, on a whim, he could take beethes with him.

yeah, that sounded like a good idea. just as long as his “son” didn’t ask too many questions.

At first, Chopin jumped and dropped the stick, considering to leave it there and just save his skin. But the voice and the attitude was…known…somehow.

Oh boy, was Kyogo going to get his ass handed back…

He switched into Musik form and pointed his baton right between Kyogo’s eyes. “Maybe I am, but at least I don’t abandon the ones I care about for essentially nothing. You jerk.”

        ❝oh no, are your allergies acting up?❞

he was afraid. marginally. no--more than marginally. he knew batons out meant business in the classicaloid world, just like dicks out meant business in the human one. but what could he do other than laugh at his own cornered helplessness? everything was funny because nothing mattered anymore. he’d decided that a long time ago.

            ❝really, cho-chan. calm down for a second.             think about it. you don’t want to be put in anger                management on top of all your other issues.❞

he likes talking to strangers. if there’s anything even remotely redeemable about him, it’s this. sure, it’s more to entertain himself than anything else, but humans were very entertaining. people say that using others for your own entertainment is a sign of sociopathy. well, then, he thought, let me be a sociopath. to him, why anyone wouldn’t use others to amuse themselves was the question. humans are just so fun to mess with.

he leans forward on the pier and fixes his gaze on the sun over the ocean, not even looking at birdy as he speaks.

           ❝do you believe in angels, kid?❞ he laughs at the very                   concept. ❝they say every human has a guardian one,              but look at all the trouble i’ve had…where’s mine?❞

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh FUCK.

OHHHhhhh fuck. oh fuck. oh FUCK.oh fuck. he could feel as many variations of that go through his head as there were parts to the well-tempered clavier--how many were there again? 38? 39?--not relevant. BACH WAS HERE. BACH WAS HERE FOR…whatever. something really upsetting. something that had really upset him, because he looked kinda mad. something that would probably mean kyogo’s blood on the walls--or worse, getting yelled at kanae-style about why he never came hooooooome. (at least that one time he was in the hospital, she actually acted concerned about him and not his debts.)

he’d had the feeling he would piss him off, just like he pissed off his current daughter. only now did he regret giving bach those Washboard Abs™--he had the kind of bod that kyogo would gladly bang, which meant the kind of bod that could shove him against a wall and make him beg. 

for a moment he gave bach the look of a man to whom fate had caught up fast. you know, that look. that look when his eyes get wide and his mouth falls open just wide enough for the oh fucks to be silently exhaled with the breath. it really didn’t suit him, a man who never gave a shit. he sensed this. and so his face froze back into its assholishly nonchalant façade, but surely a GOD would see that flash of shock, the confession of sin by the body, not the mind.

      ❝yo, yo, YO! bro, i love the ‘FRO!❞

cue a few arbitrary fist clenchings that could barely past for gangster signs. just because he knew of rappers, didn’t mean he knew much about them.

            ❝how was that?❞ he laughed. ❝not as great as                the great Schubert’s rhymes, i’m sure,                             but pretty good, wasn’t it?❞