Make It Maestoso, Won't You?
Well...sorry that I only write bangers. Here's this.
"Late again? I swear, Addam, I can't recall a single time in the past concert cycle when you've actually made it to downbeat on time."
Addam, reed jammed haphazardly between his lips, had just come flopping down into his seat after several furtively muttered apologies to the other two bassoonists, whom he had had to step over, and offered an impotent self-defense as he fumbled with the bocal.
"It's not my fault, Flora, I had a snack so I had to go to the bathroom to make sure there were no chunks of food in my teeth, and then my water cup was empty so I had to run to the fountain, and there was a line because the theater rehearsal had just let out, and-" With a decisive twist of her own mouthpiece, Flora stopped his rambling.
"Addam, those are all your fault. Besides the fact that you could have done double-duty on both of your errands at one location, I know you would have gotten it all done with time to spare if you hadn't been lollygagging in the bass section."
Fruitless clicks came from the bassoon's keys. "Well, I-- I couldn't help it! Old Vandham buttonholed me, and you know, with fingers that big it's hard to move around his gesticulations."
"You and I both know you didn't go back there to talk with Vandham about his Judician footstools yet again," Flora said knowingly, imitating the pattern of presses right back.
"Actually, it was the muskets this time." "Oh, the muskets, was it? Very intriguing."
There was a beat - several, in fact. Flora tipped her head back and forth as they ticked by. "Will you stop looking at me like that?" Addam burst out agitatedly at last.
"I'm not looking at you," was her simple reply. "I'm looking at someone else who just so happens to be looking at you."
"Oh, no, is he really?"
"Indeed he is. Come on, why don't you wave?"
Addam made to do just that with impunity before he realized he'd been caught out. "Flora-!"
"You can't put anything over on me," she said, pausing to lick her reed and make a few prepatory breaths into her instrument. "Including your lateness."
Agh...she was right. Of course she was right. "Well, but that's okay, though. Khanoro likes me."
"If he really liked you, I would have thought he'd have been the one buttonholing you during break." Jab laid down, Flora frowned and rubbed some tarnish off of the clarinet's trill keys.
"That's-" Done. Everything as it should be. "I'm kidding, Addam. Yes, he likes you - but not that much."
Not that much, indeed: his eyes, beneath the massive eyebrows, were grimly focused on Addam as he rapped his baton against the stand yet again. Flora he did like, and very much so, so she felt at liberty to disappoint him and continue whispering conspiratorially, behind their cover of the frontmost wind row.
"How was it, anyway? Did you say anything interesting, or were you so hopelessly attracted that you couldn't even find the words?" Addam groused, but related the events nonetheless:
"Hey, it's not my fault old Colenstein was born a hundred years ago, I didn't propose to have us play Versimilitude."
"You've got something against this work? I rather like it - the overture is very handsome."
"Eh, it's okay. I mean, for one thing, this excerpt stuff, I don't get to double you as often." (Addam flushed at the flirtatious remark, but made no rejoinder.)
"Oh, and that Raqura? I like Shine and Be Solicitous as much as the next guy, but she's insufferable."
"You know her?" There were quite a few of the cadre of their players that passed around the region from semi-professional to community group to high school theatre pit, et cetera, so it wouldn't be all that surprising.
"Played with her before. Bit of a prima donna, and the tongue vibrato's scary as all hell - not that I'm particularly uninterested in what goes on in that mouth of yours when you play."
"That's a rather...ahem, well. I suppose it is rather different when you don't have to use your lungs and your lips and all."
If Flora had been giggling at their ridiculously awkward and adorable (though slightly perverse) conversation, she didn't show it, because announcements had finally begun, now that the concertmaster had seen fit himself to return to his seat and gesture snootily to Brighid for an A delivered somehow without eye contact - and Flora suspected that that wasn't just because none among them particularly liked to lay their eyes on Zettar.
"Welcome back, everyone. We have only a few things on the docket, and a very many yet in the folder ahead of our performance, so at this time I would like to briefly recognize Flora Hentisane, for her verbose and articulate program notes; Haze Amatea, for providing extra props; and Minoth Castigo, for volunteering to narrate."
"For WHAT?!" Many heads would have swiveled to stare at him if they had, in fact, known where it was that he sat - or stood, rather, but as bassists went he did often tend to the lazier side with a greater reliance on a stool, despite his height.
"Indeed. Mr. Rhadallis had to withdraw, but fear not, we've cut The Most Efficacious Landscape," (boos and other assorted disappointed noises came from the strings), "so it is only as I said: you will be our narrator, playing the part of Voltis but not that of Doctor Sparklepot. Our Vandham indicated that you would be quite keen for such a role."
"You set me up, old man," Minoth gritted out between his teeth, but Vandham only guffawed at his apparent discomfort. "Hey, you're alright, ain't ya? I know you've got the character in you somewhere, you all but told me yourself."
"Oh, shove it, you clown." "Hey hey, play nice," Malos bellowed over from the trumpet section. He looked pretty smug about his quip too, until Minoth raised a warning finger and he promptly clamped his square jaw shut.
"I'll fill you in on the details later," Pneuma said in her most reassuring voice; she was their liasion with the guest soloists for this concert.
"Fantastic," Minoth muttered with a sigh. No more time for pity parties, though, because we've got some detail work to get on with.
At the end of a rehearsal, there were always those older folk, along with the youngest among their troupe, that packed up quick, bore and cloth and all, and virtually skedaddled out of the high school auditorium, especially when it was dark and the hill below the rear lot was muddy. Addam and Flora, however, were perpetual late-leavers, and tonight they were joined by one remarkably tall fellow hauling an enormous soft-shell case, stool hooked over his foot and making a frankly horrid screeching sound as it skittered across the linoleum.
"Oh, here, let me help you with that," Addam said automatically, quickening his pace towards the double doors.
"Well, well, isn't that charming of you." It wasn't at all difficult to see that Minoth had winked as he made the pronouncement.
"Oh, lord." Third rejoinder of the trilogy complete, Flora, not having the time nor patience to bear through such an endeavor (as well as being ever so slightly inclined to stir the pot), made a sharp peel off to the north exit, forgoing the ease of the ramp in exchange for the preservation of her sanity.
She caught a little water-cooler whispering as she left, too: "Hey, why do you think that Rhadallis guy bailed on us?" "I heard it was food poisoning. I hope it's nothing serious." "Yeah...he did seem like a bit of a croaker, though. But two weeks in advance?" Better two weeks in advance than the night of, right? Meanwhile, outside...
Addam, like any sensible person would, expected Minoth to circle around to the natural incline on the blacktop that led from the entrance driveway to the destination lot and wend his way up the walking route, but he did not in fact do that, instead hefting his bass somehow higher and practically juggling the stool with his foot up the concrete steps split so unhelpfully by a railing.
Well, Addam, a lot of help you're being, but then this is...very interesting to watch. He honestly didn't seem half this skillful when he sat back there boredly sawing along at his part. Addam had seen proficient bassists - Gorg was one, and the way his fingers flitted like coordinated, mermaided fish up and down the fingerboard was truly a sight to behold. Even Vandham made an awesome command of his instrument, huge hands and all. But Minoth...? Addam suspected that he must surely have hidden depths. He couldn't possibly be half so fascinating otherwise.
When he finally began paying attention once again, he saw that they had approached the vehicle in question, a massive purple pickup truck kept in impeccable condition - yet it didn't gleam nor shine for all the evident careful polish and wax and whatever else. A real insight-offering marvel, that.
There was a tarp waiting in the truck's bed, which Minoth swiftly flung aside so as to heave the instrument itself into the open space. He hooked a few bungee cords that poked up through the bed through loops on the case's exterior, then covered the whole job up with the tarp again and sauntered towards the door. No conversation or other spare sound was made until he was seated, but he didn't turn on (and likely rev) the engine just yet.
Then the window rolled down, and a noble, if slightly formerly-broken-looking, nose poked its way out. "Well, see you around."
"Ah, yes. I suppose you will." When Addam didn't move away from the fatefully ajar window, Minoth tilted his head lazily towards the visitor and made a boredly inquisitive face.
"I, er...can't seem to remember where I parked." And he wasn't lying, but something felt off about that statement, to both men.
"You didn't come with your wife?"
"My wife? Oh, Flora - no, we're not married." It was then that Addam remembered something she had said about visiting her sister this weekend - she had probably expected, and they had probably even agreed, that he would ride home with the Ardanach brothers - very polite and hospitable types. Genial, was the word. Almost something imperial about the way they offered a helping hand towards whatever situation was in front of them.
"Huh." Oh, right. Minoth, truck and all, was still there. The bassist finished his pronouncement: "Coulda fooled me."
"Yes, well." "Well?" Minoth gestured broadly in an arc to his right.
"Oh, sorry, I'll get out of your way."
Eyes rolled, ponytail wagged. "You gonna get in or not?"
"Oh. Yes. I am. Going to." Addam's arm wavered dangerously as he hefted his case.
"Stick it in the bed, there's room under the tarp." He hadn't noticed any such room, but indeed there was, and the bassoon was soon safely tucked away under its stringed cousin. Addam tentatively shuffled around to the right side of the cabin and hefted himself in. It smelled a little...rustic, but sophisticated all the same. Clean, of course. Very interesting.
"Well, here we are. Home sweet Iona." Oh? Several intriguing things about that statement. First, that Minoth had bothered to stop and announce the place, instead of just indulging his impatience and peeling out. Secondly, that he had referred to the truck as home - even if that was sarcastic, it was a little odd. And thirdly...Iona?
"Hey, she's reliable, easy to take care of, and I love her. 'S good enough for me." Addam winced at the thought that he'd voiced the last point aloud. Fortunately for him, Minoth was unbothered, and turned the key in the ignition now. The recessed lights cast their faces into quiet relief (it was dark outside, and had been the whole time, but Addam hadn't seemed to notice before this point), and there was a steady rhythmic something coming from the speakers. Lightly percussive, appreciably constant, perhaps classy, even. You can do this, Addam.
Minoth was an expert driver, descending out of the lot with ease, and they were soon out on the main road that connected to the school's eponymous inlet. If Addam heard suspicious thumping and rattling noises from the rear of the vehicle, he said nothing, only clutched the nearest available part of the interior's features to steel himself. Better not to know.
That was all well and good, of course, until a certain someone took notice. "You think I need a copilot to shift for me, Addam? Or have you got another reason why your hand's on the console?"
Addam was about to respond, and probably explain something pitiably mediocre about an interesting coin in the cupholder, when Minoth spun up the volume on the sound system and began obnoxiously drumming on the steering wheel. And not just drumming, but syncopating the exchange of his hands and varying the fortitude of the heels thereof slamming against the vinyl. They were hurtling down the highway in the mid-fall dusky night, and Addam suddenly needed to actually grip the shifter just to allay his fears, but the trajectory of the vehicle budged not an inch.
Eventually, he calmed himself down and began to actually listen to the source of the music. It had a heavy groove, with triplets (perhaps full triadic eighth-note groups) carrying through. The way the guitarist attacked those notes was very intriguing, to Addam. It was so...free, almost lilting, for all the bombast of the piece - song, rather.
"Oh, that's rather interesting, isn't it."
"What?" "The syncopation, and the meter changes."
Minoth smirked. "Of course it's interesting - you think I'm gonna go around listening to plain old four-chord common-time shill? Not that there's anything wrong with that, in general, of course," he amended hastily, somehow without losing an ounce of swagger.
Just as he finished this pronouncement, the most distinctive meter change of all occurred, and with it went the bobbing of Minoth's head. Addam was so preoccupied with trying to decide whether this was a fast four, fast eight, slow two, slow four, whichever, despite the feel, that he almost missed the caesura which, of course, Minoth caught and escorted perfectly.
"I think I like this after all - what's it called?" But, Minoth didn't answer, busy as he was belting out the lyrics that the damn thing apparently had at its tail end: "I am the one who guided you this far - all you know, and all you feel! Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand..." If he didn't know better, Addam would have thought it was called "Do Not Perceive Me" or some such, whatever it was the kids were saying these days.
Taking advantage of a brief lapse in the singer's urgent, raspy lines, Minoth gestured to the visible portion of the tape in the cassette deck - "Escapade of Kings", it read, and the band name was cut off below.
"You keep that one song on its own tape?"
"I sure seem to be confronting an awful lot of your silly notions today, Addam. You really think I made this when I was any older than ten?"
"If you hadn't, this piece would have to be pretty old, then." Ah ha, getting jocular and handling yourself well now, Addam - bravo, bravo!
The bark of Minoth's laugh was somehow more alarming than any previous scream of a synthesizer. "Round about forty years old, yeah - and that's not the same number you'd put on me." He might should have been coyly embarrassed at the actions of his pre-teenage self - or at least, Addam would have been, if it was him - but if he was he showed no sign.
"This is the sweet spot, see," Minoth continued. "Some of the most powerful stuff, while the drummer was the showrunner, so to speak, but before he started leading them into pop himself."
They'd come up to a red light, and Minoth paused his diatribe to back up and thus make a greater spatial allowance for those travelers in the left turn lane from the part of the intersection to their right. And of course, Addam had never bothered to let go of the shifter, because the truck had been careening happily along in one gear (the highest possible always, it seemed), so his hand was still there when Minoth's clamped down on top of it.
His palm was warm, creased. Addam could feel the callus on the index finger from years of careless pizzicato where the digit laid over his own. Breathlessly counting down the nanoseconds until he got a snapped "Do you mind?" to send him careening through the cranked-down window, he tried frantically to slip his offending appendage out and around the lever, and away. However, the trapping hand only squeezed tighter - its owner depressed the trigger with his pinky instead, logistically and semantically unbothered by the blockage.
Well then. He'd just have to say it himself. "Don't you mind?"
"You've got woodwind hands, my friend. You need this to build some character, I almost think."
So saying, Minoth drove them on to their destination with one hand on the wheel, and Addam was transported with his heart held fast under the other.
"So, how was it?" Again, flopping down into seat, but this time early, with the stage mostly empty before everyone rushed upon it. Being one week removed from the concert made them all as an ensemble complacent, somehow; next week they'd surely be warming up and fiddling away like nobody's business, but for now, with no soloists in sight, it was calm. Too calm. And of course Flora was changing that, though in a rather irrelevant way.
"How was what?" Addam frantically worked at the zipper on his case to temporarily block out her reply, which he had already predicted. In fact, that wording was too generous. He knew straight-out exactly what she meant, and was avoiding it with every damned last measure of fortitude.
"Your drive home last week, of course." There it was! There it was.
"Oh, yes, of course. How could I ever forget?" "That bad, huh?"
Reed back in mouth, he shifted it to the right side to speak (more mumble) around it. "Do you know he thought we were married?"
"And that bothers you? I thought you were so intent on me believing that you weren't swooning after him."
"Oh-- Never mind that. I just thought it interesting that we should seem that way, more so than, I don't know, Jin and Malos or Lora and Haze."
Flora smiled and quirked an eyebrow, gaze slightly wistful at the music in her folder as she shuffled it into order. "Besides the fact that you've just named a pair of fiancés and a pair of fairly serious girlfriends, we are the only ones who actually sit next to each other, so I don't blame him."
"Flora, what are you saying?" Addam may have been a susceptible, credulous young sort, the type to whom things happened with tremendous abandon if he didn't stop to take a hold of them, but he was not a misconstruable, bumbling wimp. Heaven forbid it.
"Silly goose. I'm just saying that if ladies had best men, you'd be mine."
As Flora fumbled with the catch on her stand (they were still using the wretched silver things, and somehow she always put off bringing her nice powder-coated aluminum one from home until the week or even night of the concert), Addam instinctively put out a hand to steady its contents and catch the falling pencil. Best man, indeed. They were partners in crime, back there leading the lower winds, and doing a damned good job of it, too. A little too old to be getting into scrapes, they were, however.
"And just what does my best woman propose I do next about this anti-sordid affair?"
"Why don't you play him the Printemps Ritual?"
"You want me to intimate primal sexual urges to him with this?" Addam shook the instrument clasped in his hands in front of him to accentuate his protest.
"Or whatever else, it's not my business." "You're right, it's not."
"And yet you had me pick you up again this week. You're making it my business, Addam."
"But- I- well-- Why don't you just sacrifice me to Joseph and Azurda yourself, I'm sure it would be easier," he ceased his spluttering and muttered at last.
"Even if you aren't the Chosen One, I'm sure it would be, because they wouldn't care quite so much about how this turns out. You like him, don't you?"
Addam drew himself up to fullest seated height then (and she was petite, so it really was quite effective). "Yes, Flora, I like him. He's very attractive, and very intelligent. And he's musical in...his own way." He'd of course not yet told her about the progressive rock primer he'd had, or really experienced. "Will you just let it alone? I'll handle it. I've got it handled, even."
"Mhm, right." Because he'd asked her advice, more or less, just there. He was quite possibly hopeless. Ah, well. The stage crowded, the A sounded, and they were off.
This time, Addam made a point not to spend his requisite fifteen minutes anywhere near the bass section, instead choosing to keep in the trumpets and trombones with Niall and Hugo. Buried among the masculinity that was the rigid brass, he could forget about his silly crush - and hopefully Flora could forget about it too. Maybe not the crush though. He was allowed, even encouraged, to remember.
As ever, he needed to rush out to the hallway to fill his water cup, and he did so again with a dearth of minutes left because it was so easy to get wrapped up in conversation with old Kerry. Quickly, quickly, Addam, but don't spill, and don't trip on the P.A. system cords, or the flag, or the podium that's out here, why is it out here...?
And then-- His foot caught on something hollow and wooden, a metal spike spun dangerously in his direction, and he was falling, and then his fall was interrupted by something very solid and strong.
Ah. Minoth's arm. Even through the plain linen shirt his bulky forearm muscles were obvious. Well, not exactly bulky. More toned. Sculpted, even. Oh. He'd fallen in multiple ways, it appeared.
"Careful there, hon. Oh, would you look at that, you've got a big strong man to catch you. Isn't that just the sweetest thing?" Dahlia was winking. Wonderful. And, something in a much less obliging mood: "Mind you don't go tripping on any more cellos, Addam," a broad voice carried from the front of the section.
"Oh, can it, Jimbo," Minoth answered the admonishment as he proceeded to not change the angle at which he was holding Addam one singular inch, degree, minute, or second. "No one's gonna trip on your Tantavalius."
"Jimbo?" Addam asked quietly, grateful for the sudden closeness between them if for no other reason than this.
"Yeah, whatever. It's funny, isn't it? He's a drip. He'd get it if he wasn't."
"Do you just have a pre-picked bone with everyone in this orchestra?"
"Not you, Addam." Minoth's sly grin was affectionate as he almost reluctantly returned Addam to standing upright - a physical a tempo after the rubatoed cadence, if you will. "Now get back to your seat. We need that countermelody on point, you know."
Once again, Flora departed from the deserted school building at the three hours' end with impunity, and Minoth looked none too surprised to see Addam sheepishly, furtively following him to his truck like a lost puppy in search of an uncertainly promised bone. Only, a dog knows a bone is good for it, knows what it wants. Addam was none so self-assured, even if he had sneaking suspicions that threatened to swallow him whole.
"So, what's the program music of the week?" he asked nervously as they were once more shut up in the cabin together.
Minoth smirked, like he'd been expecting it. "Got a good one for you - the band's called No."
"No?" "Heh. Yeah, thought you'd get a kick out of that."
Without further comment, Minoth jerked the truck into reverse and wheeled them out of the parking lot, not missing a single violent, jarring orchestra hit (they were more stings, really) as he twisted back to check for potential collision victims. His hand, of course, landed on the passenger side headrest, as hands do when you're backing up. Well, those attached to shorter arms, like Flora's, went to the shoulder of the seat, so Addam could be thankful for small and miraculous favors, at least.
Dress rehearsal the night before the concert came and went. Zettar made an insistent (and unwelcome) suggestion about tempos and cues, Khanoro looked dourly upon him and the soloist of the moment as he dismissed the thought, and Minoth played a high harmonic to connote some measure of simpering, faux-sympathetic amusement.
Addam would have laughed, even giggled, too, were the noise not conspicuously intentionally made to sound as if it had issued from a bassoon, and with the distinctive tonal timbre of their section leader, to boot. Eyes were upon him. A very many eyes, particularly one statuesque pair of piercing blue.
"Now just what was that all about?" he asked, almost demanded, when they had stopped play and the singers were off dousing themselves in draughts of very specifically branded bottled water and trying to avoid the lithe, psuedo-conversational, wishfully social-climbing grasp of a Mr. A. Malthus.
"That guy? He's an ass. You know it, and I know it. His bowings are all backwards too."
"Of course they are," Addam ventured with a hint of a smile. "You're looking from the opposite direction."
Minoth shook his head, but he was smiling too. "Patroka complains to me about it, about him, all the time. Even Pyra does. Guy struts around like he owns the place, but he's no more than a peacock. Pretty ratty one, too."
And now Addam just had to stifle a full-blown guffaw, because the first chair first violin really did look like a bit of a rodent, didn't he. That was going to be trouble come tomorrow if Minoth kept at his michief of disembodied, ventriloquisted notes. Time to change the subject.
"You know, I'm really quite proud of you."
"For what? Getting your ass in trouble just because I'm a snarky S.O.B.?"
Addam bowed his head with a rueful laugh. "No, no, but you're a damned handsome snarky S.O.B., if that makes things any better."
"Handsome, huh?" Minoth mused slowly. "Sure, that's better. But what for, then?"
"For taking up the empty part. You're doing a wonderful job." Addam's earnest praise was, somewhat disappointingly, met with a lackadaisically waved hand holding a stray cake of rosin.
"Eh, I'm doing okay. Just parroting the lines from back in college. Our beloved librarian - long-drawn-out Ph.D. student, then - hated, and I mean hated, this work. Said it was way too cosmopolitan and base-minded."
"Thomas? I suppose I can see that, coming from him."
"Unfortunately, I can see a lot of things, coming from him. Freaking composition major who couldn't and can't even play the piano that well, let alone a real primary instrument."
"Oh?" Addam prodded, and Minoth smirked. "Between you and me - or not, if you wanna fight the good fight - he can't hardly take a viola up into third position. It's laughable."
"I can tell." They'd moseyed off into the rear mezzanine sections of seats (that is, a high school auditorium's facsimile thereof), and a lucky thing, because Nim with her ever-perked ears surely would have heard them gossiping otherwise.
"I wouldn't be surprised if I caught him and ol' Lenkovich there running around together. They deserve each other, just share of dignity and all."
"I repeat, picking bones much, Minoth?" "Hey, I get so soft with you, I gotta keep my spine straight somehow."
His back did indeed snap straighter as Mr. Malthus walked in the absolute stiffest way past them (he looked, quite frankly, like he was constipated, and let's not dwell on the physicality of his gait for any longer or in any greater depth than that), signaling perhaps that it was time for one final push before the big night tomorrow.
With that in mind, Addam offered his last encouragement. "I really do mean it, Minoth. Your talent is amazing." Minoth only rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and looked away, but Addam bumped his shoulder as they ambled back down to the stage, and after a beat got a bump back. Showtime.
Prior to real showtime the next night, of course, all was a flurry, with Adenine, their true librarian and a woman of the people despite Mr. Malthus's puppetmastering, rushing left and right to coordinate folders and spare pieces that somehow both inside and outside contingents of quite a few stands of string players had managed to misplace. Mr. Brounev and Ms. Stewart were having a grand old time of a boisterous sing-off, recalling favorite lyrics and passages from the various and sundry musicals they'd both starred in at some point or another (but never at the same time), and Haze, with Lora's help, was fussing over the prop box for Shine and Be Solicitous.
Ms. Sol Esteriole stood off to the side, not helping in the least even though she was sure to have many a qualm about the placement later on - prima donna, indeed. Absently, Addam wondered why they hadn't had someone on for the part of the Old Lady. Her numbers were some of his favorites, particularly Fitting In Is No Sweat. Well, nothing to be done about it now. He was just passing through the side doors to get to his seat for miscellaneous warming up when he spotted the back of someone with long hair that he didn't recognize. Could she be part of the ensemble cast after all? But no, this person was wearing a suit. Wait a minute...
"Oh - Minoth, is that you?"
The head of hair gave an abrupt stuttering motion, but quickly schooled itself and rotated towards him with ease. "Expecting someone else?"
"N-no, it's just...your hair." That vague, stammered and distracted descriptor didn't do it half the justice it deserved. Dark, wavy curls, a veritable mountain of them, cascaded down from the same crown as ever, some hiding the birthmark over the left eye, but the freer style was now just as unapologetic as matched his personality. He didn't look all that comfortable with it (though perhaps that was only the effect of the tuxedo, complete with boutonniere provided by their harpist), but...well, Addam privately hoped that he'd eventually be able to see the same beautiful mane hanging around a grinning face. Perhaps one that was grinning at him. Because of him.
"Oh, yeah. That. What, did you forget that ponytails come up from down?"
Indeed. "I suppose I must have. It looks very nice."
Minoth rolled his eyes, but not without a wry smile. "Nia insisted on helping me with it."
"Nia?" "Yeah. Girl from a queer youth group I help out with. See, she's up there in the lighting booth with a kid from the school. Rex, I think his name was."
"Ah. That's very...philanthropic of you." And you needn't sound so hesitant about espousing it as such either, Addam. "You thought you were the only one I bum rides to? Nah."
The thought of 'bumming rides' and whatever else it was that happened in that truck cabin suddenly became a little more distasteful when Addam processed the fact that there were impressionable youths also traveling therein from time to time. A return to something more palatable, maybe...?
He scouted the packed auditorium, narrowly visible through their crack in the stage left curtains, for the very thing, and found it blessedly easily. "Oh look, there's Brighid's wife."
Unfortunately, Minoth was none so easily diverted. "Yeah, there she is. Wave to Mòrag, and all that. But look at you - your tie is crooked, and your collar's messed up. For heaven's sake, Addam, what would you do without me?"
Addam looked decidedly like if Minoth's stand had been rotated sixty degrees upward so as to be flat, he'd be propping his elbow upon it and leaning his cheek on his palm, gazing on like a lovestruck fool. And, well, his next words expressed that same sentiment just as good as the same posture. "I really don't think I'd like to find out."
As he finished the declared adjusting of vestments and gave two confirmational pats to the chest upon which they rested, Minoth suddenly found himself caught in the path of Addam's expectant grin. Oh. Well... He slipped one hand around the side of Addam's torso, underneath the neck strap, and moved the other to the other man's chin.
"May I?" "Unless you think it'd mess up my playing." "Oh, perish the thought."
Addam's lips were soft, if they tasted a little woody, and the kiss was impossibly sweet and warm. Maybe he didn't even care if they'd thrown the whole concert then and there. If Cole had been around for a hundred years, give or take twenty-five for his career to get started, then surely someone else somewhere else had done him enough homage sometime along the way that this one night didn't matter. Oh, well, it mattered...but in a different way. Yes, it mattered a hell of a lot.
"Wasn't half bad - we'll say brilliante, even." That wasn't what that word meant, but the infatuated Addam didn't pick bones. Who has the time, when the anacrusis has been laid? Downbeat, and away. "But next time, let's make it maestoso, huh?"
The Southeastern Alrest Symphony Orchestra presents COLE 100 ! featuring excerpts from Versimilitude:
Overture / Battle Music
The Most Efficacious Landscape Imaginable Cut - to be replaced with Let Us Sow Our Lives Well
To Exist Is To Rejoice
Shine and Be Solicitous
How Very Contented We Are
OUR SOLOISTS
Ozychlyrus Brounev - Versimone
Raqura Sol Esteriole - Quenelope
Baltrich Chancer - Minimillius
Pandoria Stewart - Bocksette
Peter Rhadallis - Doctor Sparklepot / Voltis (Narrator) Our very own Minoth Castigo as Voltis !!!
~ Personnel ~ (players are listed alphabetically, an asterisk denotes the section leader)
VIOLIN I
Padraig Abble
Pyra Bennett
Dagas Dardash
Corvin Fox
Zettar Lenkovich *
Joseph Perdido
Patroka Pyne
Eric Seveyers
VIOLIN II
Haze Amatea
Azurda Barrett *
Vale Jesspreddy
Nikki Kora
Sheba McDonald
Naomi Obrona
Dughall O'Neil
Ursula Phillippe
VIOLA
Herald Ayendo
Dolmes Bomere
Akhos Harrison *
Mikhail Kramer
Adenine Laurel
Perun Rialina
CELLO
Laila Agate
Dahlia Burke
Nicholas Echell
James Eulogimenos
Arina Poppili
Aegaeon Ragland *
BASS
Minoth Castigo
Gorgon O'Connor
Nim Thorburn
Vandham Thorp *
OBOE
Brighid Ladair *
Kasandra Engler
Pneuma Saint John
FLUTE
Vessta Newman-Williams
Jin Schwab *
Rockary Tod
CLARINET
Milton Gerran
Flora Hentisane *
Carys Rhea
BASSOON
Azami Gallagher
Janine Newton
Addam Origo *
TRUMPET
Niall Ardanach
Malos Davidson
Godfrey Kostov *
TROMBONE
Hugo Ardanach *
Kerry Cressidus
Tora Hardiker
TUBA
Vill Ethelmar *
Boreas Hirano
FRENCH HORN
Corinne Fonsenia
Lora Moyer *
Alvis Ritson
Perceval Shale
PERCUSSION
Mythra Bennett
Alexander Thornley
TIMPANI
Wulfric Summers
HARP
Dromarch Roberts
STAFF
Thomas A. Malthus - librarian
Khanoro Tikaram - director
Some of this may indeed have been based on personal experience...but I'll never tell. Here's Minoth's sweet ride of the moment.
(Please don't hate Bernstein. Please do roast me for my instrumentation/characterization choices.)