Work Text:
After getting barred and securing her job at HHM, Kim decides to buy a cello. The smattering of good memories from her childhood almost all involve making music, so while it feels a bit self-indulgent, it makes her feel good enough to justify the high price tag.
She starts working on a case the day she picks it up, so she doesn't get a chance to play until after that wraps up, but when that chance finally arrives, she's very excited. One of the strings is flopping around when she takes the instrument out of its case, but she remembers enough from high school to fix it. She sets herself up a chair, and starts to play.
And she sounds awful. Like someone stepped on a cat's tail. No--like someone stepped on the whole damned cat. It's as if all of the cello knowledge has been scooped out of her brain and replaced with case law. Which, she supposes, is not entirely wrong.
She tries again the following night, and the one after that, and the one after that. She slowly remembers how to move her fingers and arms, how to not tip her head to one side, how to use her feet to balance herself on the chair. Instead of only being able to produce an approximation of a disturbed feline, she sounds more like a bird--a cockatoo or a parrot, maybe, but at least not just random and horrible screechy sounds. She feels very nostalgic for those good bits of her childhood, which is a very nice thing to look forward to while she's at work each day.
After a couple of weeks of steady improvement, one of her colleagues--a guy named Ben or something who's way too nice to her--stops by her apartment to pick up some papers, and sees the instrument on its stand. "You play?" he asks.
"A bit," she says, and moves over to another pile on her desk, trying to find the stack she needs.
"Do you know that one thing? You know, like--" and he sings a little of the G major Bach prelude she worked on nearly 15 years ago. He grins, and it makes her very uncomfortable.
"Not really," she says, and ushers him out of the apartment as soon as she finds what she had been looking for.
This happens a few more times--always with male colleagues, two more times with Ben--and every single time they ask about that same prelude. "Not really," she says, each time even though she's been practicing it on her own for a few months now. They had gotten it into her head, and she wants to show off when she gets a chance.
And then she gets stuck doing grunt work on a very complicated insurance fraud case, and no longer has even a concept of free time. She leaves the cello out in her apartment, hoping that will encourage her to play even just a little, but by the time she gets home from the office, she's got just enough left in her to heat up dinner and eat it in bed while watching reruns. So it sits for a few weeks, untouched.
When the case is done and she returns to playing, it's not the same. Her arms ache afterwards and she doesn't really enjoy it anymore: it's become work. So she puts it away, and eventually, when it starts to get in her way, plans to sell it back to the shop where she bought it.
But before she gets to do that, Jimmy comes over for dinner. The last time he was here feels like a lifetime ago, when they were both still in the mailroom, but he's here now, as a friend. And, of course, he sees the cello in the corner.
"You never told me you played," he says.
"When I can," she says, which isn't entirely a lie--it's just that when I can these days is never. And then she braces for his next question. Not really sits on her tongue, ready to deploy.
But the question doesn't come. Instead, he says, "Well if you ever need an audience--" and then smirks and points a thumb at himself.
She is totally caught off guard: it's a genuine offer, by the look on his face, and an open one, at that. "Oh, uh. Thanks," she stammers.
He grins at her, and immediately moves on. "So. What's cookin'?"
And as she digs through her desk drawer for the handful of takeout menus she's collected over the years, she decides that maybe she'll keep the instrument after all.