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• • •
it's the navarra that does it.
in hindsight, it's a foregone conclusion: navarra is their piece, his and brett's. eddy's long come to terms with the fact that he can learn to play any other piece for two violins in the world, have any other violinist alongside him as he performs, but it'll never be as gut-wrenching and intimate as the navarra with brett yang. nothing's ever going to compare, not now nor ever. eddy's ruined for life.
(there's also that little unspoken feeling making a home for itself somewhere in the spaces between his ribs that might be contributing quite a bit to this train of thought, but hey, that's what you get for finding an angel too perfect for heaven, he got sent down to earth. you get confused and seduced and ultimately go with whatever said angel wants, whenever he wants. it's what made him follow brett across five continents, after all.)
so in the end, when his best friend comes up with the idea to play navarra as a sort of finale to the tchaikovsky live they've been planning, eddy doesn't even have to think about saying yes—he just does, no complaints whatsoever.
"aww, great! but we need to practice navarra on top of the tchaikovsky, yeah?" brett flips through the thick pile of sheets on the music stand, eyebrows scrunched up and thoughtful. eddy wants to reach forward and smoothen them out, but that's a bad idea on so many levels. "not that we need it, but—y'know."
and yeah, sounding boastful aside, eddy gets what he means. they don't have to prepare all that much for navarra, not like they have to for other pieces. every note is etched into their bones at this point. a symphony for their souls, and fuck, but that's cheesy.
"sure," he tells brett, pushing down the wave of sentiment threatening to crawl up his throat. if he isn't careful, words he might not be able to take back could tumble out of his lips, and he's not prepared for anything like that right now.
brett grins at him, and that unspoken feeling purrs fiercely in his chest.
(it's an inevitability.)
• • •
so: eddy's developed a strange propensity for staring at brett's mouth. considering it, the shape of it, the curve and the pull and the press of it. the way it forms words, the way it moves with its owner's emotions, the way it lies lax in repose—soft and distant and untouchable.
it's unintentional, really. that doesn't change the fact that, when he really thinks about it, a hyperfixation centered around his best friend's lips is really fucking weird. so, as with all things even remotely brett-shaped in eddy's life, he takes it in and internalizes it, lets his world bend neatly around this fact and keeps his own mouth shut. repression is survival, and this: this is how he learns to live with earth-shattering, world-threatening truths.
(and it's always something earth-shattering and world-threatening with brett yang, of course. eddy is a stormchaser to this force-of-nature of a man, and frankly, he wouldn't have it any other way.)
• • •
there's something about the new apartment that makes eddy's heart grow bolder. something about the way they're together and alone an ocean away from everything they've ever known for years now makes his mind think unusual thoughts. dangerous thoughts, almost. dangerous in the sense that if brett ever finds out what he's up to in his mental space, he'll probably get kicked to the curb. or something.
brett spends most of his time practicing, as he's inclined to do nowadays with the approaching deadline of the tchaikovsky. eddy's resigned himself to waking up in the early hours of the morning with the expressive notes of the canzonetta ringing in his ears. for anyone else, he might've found the music to be overly repetitive as to be grating despite tchaikovsky's virtuosity, but it's his best friend playing those notes, and really, critics can say all the contrary things they want: the tchaikovsky violin concerto is brett yang's piece, goddamnit. this is a principle of the very universe itself, and it'll stay that way even after he and brett are long gone.
and so, despite all the shouts of fuck, it's out of tune! or stupid fingers are getting numb, oh my god, eddy comes to enjoy these practice hours—here, he can sit back and look as much as he wants. there's a softness to the other man in this intimate rehearsal space that eddy's sure most people don't get to witness, reserved for only the trusted and loved in brett's life.
brett allows him to watch. it's a humbling thought.
"aren't you supposed to be practicing too?" the sudden question startles him out of his reverie, and it becomes all too clear eddy's been caught red-handed, staring like a fool. thankfully, brett ignores this—or doesn't seem to notice at all, more like—and so he's safe. unscathed. thank god. "c'mon, get up. let's go through this part again, with orchestra." brett catches his eyes, smiles brightly. "that's you, by the way."
eddy wants to protest, wants to say something about how he's polished his part to something close to perfection by now, and that he'd much rather watch brett than pick up his violin, but: to play with this man is a siren call he has no qualms in surrendering to, and so he does as brett wants.
and so they do fly through the piece without much difficulty, just as he's predicted. despite the ease in their playing, brett's mouth still tugs down in a worried frown, and no no no, not on his watch. "don't worry about it," eddy smiles, rests his palms on brett's shoulders in the most immediate act of comfort he can give. it's the least he can do. "you'll do great, man. i'll make you sparkle and shine, hey? don't you worry about it."
brett doesn't miss a beat, mirroring his actions with his own warm hands, and god, but eddy aches something fierce. "well, you better," he grins. there's that thing brett's mouth does again, that radiant and luminous thing, and it takes some effort for eddy to pull his gaze away.
(he never wants to stop looking, is the case.)
• • •
when the day finally comes, eddy's bleary-eyed and caffeine-dependent. despite the inner confidence he carries like a torch within him—big and bright enough for the both of them—brett hadn't been able to sleep the night before, and so in a show of solidarity, eddy had stayed up with him to play smash bros.
of course, as one does the night before a performance to what could be a thousand pairs of eyes all over the world. two thousand, even, he thinks at first. but then the live views keep climbing up and up within the first few minutes, and shit, but almost forty thousand? that's way more than what his hyperactive imagination had dreamed up, like, ten minutes ago.
brett is his usual self, calm and mildly complaining about his restless night, but eddy knows him, and the shivers that rake up and down his spine, too minute to discern from beyond the camera lens, are enough to clue eddy in on the fact that his best friend might not be standing on solid ground right now.
he's about to ask if brett's okay with going through this. brett shouldn't have to do this if he really doesn't want to.
but then: he shouldn't have worried, truthfully.
the moment brett puts his bow to the strings, it's as if he's ascended somewhere beyond reality. the notes curl together in all the right places, entwined around eddy's orchestral accompaniment like vines to garden trellis, supported and lifted up and altogether beauteous. slowly, the tension eases out of his frame, air from a punctured balloon, and somewhere towards the end of the first movement, the man is laughing like he can't help himself.
it's only fair: the tchaikovsky is, again, brett yang's piece. only his, goddamnit; there should be no dispute by the end of this.
eddy's heart swells in the undertaking, the world made warm and wondrous by this display of competence and skill. ling ling himself, he imagines, would have to come down from whatever fluffy cloud he's practicing forty hours a day on just to hear this virtuosity in the flesh.
brett chuckles quietly to himself, as if he could hear eddy's thoughts. he decides to stop thinking, then, and start focusing entirely on the music and the tidal wave of emotions that sweep over him.
he's still got a soloist to carry to the finish line, after all.
• • •
(a thought: he can spend the rest of his life listening to brett yang play the tchaikovsky and never get bored, never grow weary.
a terrifying thought: he'll do anything if it means he could listen to brett yang play whatever the fuck he wants, as long as he's there. just—right there. eddy doesn't even need to touch him; he just wants brett to be there.)
(soft and distant and untouchable: it applies more to the whole than just its individual parts.)
• • •
they finish the tchaikovsky to the muted applause of a thousand clapping emojis from the livestream chat, and then comes the navarra.
"we've got a little surprise for you guys," he tells the camera with a cheek splitting grin, still running on the high of finishing what they've initially set out to accomplish. maybe that's why he doesn't notice the unreadable look in brett's eyes as he lingers in the background, staring at the ground like he's trying to figure out a puzzle.
eddy doesn't see. so, obviously, he jumps a bit when brett announces, "to up the stakes, this is also a ling ling workout!"
—and what the fuck. eddy watches in abject confusion as the other man explains: ling ling shows his superiority in memorizing pieces by making aggressive eye contact and nothing else, so we're going to be staring at each other's faces the whole time as we play, no looking at the piece or our violins, no nothing, so what a challenge, hey?
this is not at all what they've practiced.
he's probably gaping like a brain dead goldfish right about now, which is just—no. shit. eddy quickly shifts his expression into something else, something more not-totally-fucking-surprised. to be honest, he isn't quite sure exactly what something is on his face at the moment, so he gives up and turns away, plucking his violin from where he'd put it down earlier to rest; this gives him time to school his expression into a neutral one.
hey, so their navarra is also going to be a ling ling workout. that's fine, that's fun, he can work with this. whatever brett wants, and he's never been let down by following his friend's schemes before. they can do this. he can do this. eddy unfolds himself from the hunched position he's unknowingly sunk into and turns to brett—and almost smacks him in the face with his bow.
and then it dawns on him: whenever they've performed the navarra in the past, whether it be for private concerts or public showcases, they've always stood apart and at a distance. soft and distant and untouchable, he thinks, has always thought. but now, oh god: there's no space in this cramped apartment, in this tiny little room with the curtains and the 2M balloons, and there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. brett's right there, and eddy's heart has grown bolder, and that terrifying thought looms on the horizon, and wait no, fuck, abort abort—
"what's wrong?" the question is innocent, faintly curious, concerned. brett has no fucking idea.
"nothing," eddy replies, allows a half-hearted smile to stretch wide on his mouth. he hopes no sharp-eyed fan sees through the paper-thin veneer that it is. "let's do it."
and so they do. the first stirring notes of the navarra begin to fill the air, and despite the rush of pleasure through his veins—it's a lovely piece to play, moreso with brett by his side—eddy's nerves are on haywire. every sway of his limbs, every push and pull of the muscle brings him closer to brett, no matter his best efforts to keep himself stationary and unmoving. brett raises his eyebrows at him somewhere after bar forty seven with a look that just screams you're too tense! eddy blinks way too many times, offers a shaky grin in response.
it floats at the back of his mind: this is a live performance. play-by-play. if he messes up, there's no editor-san to save him, no intervention to ease his brutal fall. he's on his own here. he can't mess up.
he can't close his eyes. he tends to close his eyes not only to sink deeper into the music, but to build himself a barrier, one that this challenge has taken away from him. brett's staring at him unblinkingly, and there's a fear that grows: what if he sees?
but this is a ling ling workout, and this is a challenge brett's set up himself, so eddy stares back. he looks and looks and drinks his fill, because this might not be what he's planned for, but he sure as hell won't waste an opportunity like this. besides, brett is unflinching and utterly indifferent to this whole thing, so. eddy's not going to show otherwise; that would just be pathetic.
the piece continues to spool out in breathtaking synchronicity, just as it always should, and so he allows himself to relax. just a little bit. and so he looks, and—brett's lips are very red, and wow, great observation, eddy. if this violinist thing doesn't work out someday, maybe he should pursue detective work instead. his eyes flicker down unbidden from those starry eyes to that mouth.
it's—it's soft and lip-bitten flushed. it moves in time with the music, as if brett's putting all that he is into this performance, and it's enthralling. it's captivating. he's captivating. eddy's pretty sure he can't pull his own gaze away even if he wanted to.
they finish with the last note ringing loud in their ears. eddy comes back crashing down to earth with a jolt, and then he looks, and brett—brett is—he looks like he's run a marathon, cheeks flushed and pupils blown wide, and wait—
maybe brett's not so indifferent. fuck.
eddy can pretend to be unmoving for a lot of things, but this: this is something he no longer has any defences for. the walls of his self-control are tumbling down before his very eyes, crumbling to sand beneath his feet. he thinks of falling. he thinks of math tutoring classes and international flights, thinks of cold mornings sipping coffee and warm nights sleeping soundly. he thinks of a friendship beyond anything he's ever imagined.
he thinks of wanting more.
brett blinks at him, eyes widening by a hairsbreadth behind the sheen of his glasses, gaze dark and dangerous, and maybe eddy takes a step forward, and maybe brett does too, and maybe, just maybe—he can finish—
—the live. they're live.
eddy springs away like he's been burned, twirling in a flourish towards the camera with a laugh he does not fucking feel. "well, there you have it, guys. navarra ling ling workout! we made it."
he doesn't look at brett. he won't dare to. he's not willing to face whatever he might find lurking in the depths of that piercing stare right now; he doesn't think he has the courage to see—well. a lack of anything he wants to see in those eyes. this had been a horrible mistake; fuck everything.
after a few breathless seconds, his heartbeat loud in faltering double-time, brett joins in. "yeah, thanks for watching, everyone! oh my god, i need to practice." he pushes his face closer to the lens, lets the stunning vision that he is take up the entire live video, and good lord, eddy's thoughts need to get a fucking grip.
"go practice so you guys won't have memory slips like us," he adds, quietly inching away from the camera's view frame and into the curtains. what had happened earlier: that had been way too close. he feels a little bit like he needs to disappear right now. immediately.
a button is pressed, and then the live ends. before brett can so much as take another breath, eddy clears his throat, turns around, and flees.
(cowardly? maybe so. but self-preserving? yeah, he has to.)
• • •
he tries looking at the comments, afterwards.
well. it's a normal day when the shippers come out to play; that's a given. the sharp-eyed fans he'd been so terrified of are commonly found amongst their ranks, after all. however, scrolling through his social media feeds, it becomes all too clear that he has, in fact, messed up. there's hundreds of posts pointing out the 'tension between them' and the 'heart-eyes-motherfucker kind of aura' and the undeniable fact that he and brett had been mere seconds away from a kiss. he could argue that it would've been a hug, but no—deep down, he knows what he had been about to do.
"shit," eddy says to an empty room that does not commiserate with his distress, "they saw." god, this is a nightmare of epic proportions. if brett ever checks the internet for anything, he's going to know.
and then it turns out the room is not so empty because there's a response: "saw what?"
eddy nearly puts his head through the window with how far he's jumped away from the sound of brett's voice. the man himself stands at the door, arms crossed over his chest. he can't quite scrounge up the capacity to do anything other than to gape dumbly and stutter incomprehensibly, so brett takes the opportunity to forge on forward. "finish what you started, asshole."
eddy blinks. blinks again. "what—what are you talking about?"
"you know full well what i'm talking about," comes the reply, frustrated and strained. "don't think i haven't noticed what happened earlier."
clearly, the only way forward is to act dumb. dumb and casual, and so eddy shrugs with a faint air of confusion, pretending like he isn't actually on the verge of a panic attack right the fuck now. "noticed what?"
this is, in fact, the wrong answer. in a flurry of motion, eddy suddenly finds himself pressed to the wall, cold plaster behind his back as brett crowds him in with a wild look dancing in his eyes. "i mean you! you, looking the way you do," brett yells, flaps an accusing hand at him when all eddy has eyes for is the way his best friend's throat works around the words, trembling, "and looking at me like that? anyone would get the wrong idea here!"
eddy is breathless against the storm of the other's frustration, left adrift in the warring battle of reckless uncertainty and a dawning sense of understanding. he thinks of tornadoes and earthquakes and all sorts of forces of nature, and he thinks: have you been looking? have you been looking too?
have you been looking as much as i've been looking at you?
just as suddenly as he's invaded eddy's personal bubble, brett retreats, throws up his hands in the air like he's given up on everything entirely. "y'know what—forget it. i'm spouting nonsense at this point. i was just," the fight sags out of his limbs, and in the aftermath, brett looks—he looks like a lost child. something breaks in eddy's chest, then. "i just thought, you know. i—well, obviously i fucked it up, so nevermi—"
the words seem to stutter and die in brett's throat midway the very moment eddy takes a step towards him with something like purpose, something like determination. they're on the edge of a precipice, and maybe falling won't hurt, not if they're in this together.
eddy takes those virtuoso hands in his own, cradling their warmth against his palms. he leans forward painstakingly slow: just enough opportunity for his advances to be rebuffed if they aren't wanted.
brett's eyes grow impossibly wide. brett isn't pushing him away at all.
and if there's anything else he can do in the moment but to kiss this wondrous man with everything that he is, eddy sure as hell doesn't know what.
brett tastes of that orange juice they have in the fridge and kisses like sunshine, warm and glorious and wholehearted. every inch of eddy's skin sings, buzzing in his veins; brett's eyeglasses push against his cheek when the other man tilts his head sideways in an attempt to get even closer, and he laughs, giddy.
god, but he feels brett smile against his mouth, and it's making him a little lightheaded.
when they finally pull apart to breathe, it takes him a moment to find his voice and speak. "you aren't wrong," eddy says, and he'd feel embarrassed over the way the words come out like they've been carved by a cheese grater out of him, but this: it's only fair he's been outbalanced, shaken to the core.
"yeah," brett says. his fingers are warm where they're wrapped around eddy's collar like a vice. "yeah, i get that now."
and so maybe someday, they won't hesitate. maybe someday, in another livestream, in another performance, they could kiss under the weight of an audience watching them, and show the world the love they've kept safe in the confines of their bonds: unbreakable, undeniable. maybe someday. but for now—
"kiss me again," brett tells him, and eddy willingly, happily obeys.
(it had been an inevitability.)
(brett lets him look all he wants from here on out.)