Chapter Text
Miya barely glanced up from his laptop as Reki approached the table in the corner of the cozy cafe. “How’d it go?”
“Didn’t count yet, but pretty well, I think.” The hat brimming with bills and coins agreed with a jingle as it hit the table. Reki fell into the armchair across from Miya and dragged his belongings under the table to rest between his feet. “How’s your composition going?”
“Getting there.” Miya pulled his headphones off and closed his laptop as he sat back, finally looking Reki in the eye. “Better than your song.”
Reki’s foot flailed under the table but didn’t locate Miya’s shin as he’d hoped it would. “You don’t know that!”
“I sure do,” Miya snickered and grabbed at his mug, which was apparently empty, considering it was quickly returned to its saucer. “You’re gonna have to start that eventually. It’s due in a month.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Reki waved his hands in something like a dismissive motion. “I’ve got time.”
One of Miya’s eyebrows quirked up at the weak assurance. “Do you?”
“You sounded good out there, kid.” The familiar voice of the owner of the coffee shop accompanied the appearance of two steaming mugs on the table before Reki could offer a counterargument. “I really liked that last song you did.”
“Thanks!” Reki gladly wrapped his hands around his mug filled with ginger tea and far too much honey for anyone’s taste but his own. He snatched a bill out of the hat - one that would cover his tea, Miya’s hot chocolate, and a tip - and handed it to Joe with a grin. “It’s one of my favourites.”
“He wrote it, you know.” Of course Miya would point that out. And of course Reki’s cheeks would warm as a result of being called out like that. And sipping at his piping hot tea obviously didn’t help the situation. “We recorded the track together.”
“You two…” Much to the distaste of both of the younger men at the table, Joe’s hands fell upon their heads to tousle their hair, a fond smile decorating his face. “I should have known as much. When am I going to hear you play live, Miya?”
“Yeah, Miya, why don’t you accompany me one of these nights instead of this thing?” Reki patted his trusty karaoke machine with a fond smile. “We’re great together!”
“No shot,” Miya scoffed with a shake of his head. “You’re obnoxious enough on your own. You don’t need my help to annoy the masses.”
“If they were annoyed, would they have given me all of this?” Reki wiggled his very full hat, showing off the satisfying rattle of coins once more.
“People love buskers!” Joe also hopped in to defend Reki’s side hustle. “I have regulars because of Reki!”
“That may be.” Miya rolled his eyes but didn’t bother to suppress his smile. “But I’m not bringing my guitar here. Sorry. If you want to hear me play, you’ll have to come to the end-of-year concert.”
“Sold.” The sharp clap of Joe’s hand startled nearly everyone in the cafe, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Give me the date and I’m there!”
“Miya will text it to you,” Reki promised with a hand over his heart.
“Good.” Joe nodded, completely ignoring Miya’s weak protest at his labour being offered without his consent. “I should get back to work. Enjoy your drinks, boys.”
A short chorus of thank you’s followed Joe as he scooped up Miya’s empty mug and then made his way back to the counter.
“What’s your shift tomorrow?” Reki asked before Miya had a chance to open his laptop again.
“Nine to one.” Miya huffed back, though didn’t seem too annoyed. He knew by then that Reki wouldn’t let him just sit quietly and work. It was pretty impossible not to after being dormmates for the entirety of their college careers.
“I’ll come here when I’m done work.” Reki decided more than asked. “We’ll get lunch after.”
“Sure.” Miya accepted easily, not that Reki had really given him a choice. “But I have to go home and work after.”
“Fine, fine.”
“You should too.” It was a good point, but Reki would never admit that.
“Maybe.” Nor would he promise anything.
“Reki…” Miya leveled him a stern but tired glare over the mug against his lips.
“I’ll get it done.” Reki raised his own mug and offered Miya a confident grin. “I write songs all the time, it’ll be fine.”
Miya huffed as he set his drink down. “You could at least pretend to care about your future once in a while.”
“School isn’t everything,” Reki countered and placed his own mug down so he could grab his tablet out of his bag. “The industry doesn’t care about marks. It cares about auditions and performances.”
“Which school preps you for. And grades you on. So you know how to do them.”
“Fair point.”
“I’m aware.”
“Whatever.” Reki shot a smirk over the table and propped his tablet in front of him. “You worry about your homework, I have money to count.”
“Do it quietly. I, for one, would like to graduate.”
Reki’s only comeback was sticking out his tongue at Miya before the two shifted their focus to their respective screens. Reki pulled up his financial spreadsheet, input the date, and got to counting. Apparently, it had been a bit of a slower night, but he wouldn’t complain about getting paid sixty dollars for three hours of singing. Even if that sixty dollars was mostly coins. But that was what banks were for. And luckily, there was one on campus.
After counting, recording, and storing away his earnings, Reki decided to be nice and let Miya finish his drink and work on his composition in peace. It was probably for the best; as much as he liked to procrastinate, Reki did have a metric shit ton of assignments that would benefit from his attention.
But none of them demanded it. None of them even tugged at the hem of his hoodie sleeve.
Original song? He wrote enough of those. He could probably just submit one of the existing ones. Film score? He couldn’t do that alone, he needed the guidance of the group of TV students he was scoring for. Portfolio? It was a mess and organizing it sounded boring. Lyrics.
Not technically a project he would be graded on, but Reki could call it practice for his songwriting course. And maybe whatever he came up with would turn into a final project. Who could know?
He was sure something he’d written would meet all of the rubric requirements.
Certainly not the song he opened his notebook to, though.
Mostly because it was nothing but the chorus.
I’m not a little on the left
Then a little on the right
I’m on both sidesI’m not undecided
I’m not indecisive
No need to divideThey say one or the other
You gotta make a choice
But I won’t sacrifice“Default” is a lie
I don’t fit in the mold
I won’t apologize
Choruses always came easily. Which made sense, really. Since the chorus was supposed to be the main idea or theme of the song. Was that how Professor Oka had put it? Something like that. It certainly explained why the first lyrics that wormed their way into Reki’s ears often ended up in the chorus.
The hard part was balancing fiction and reality, literal and figurative words. Determining a rhyming scheme and finding words that didn’t make everything sound forced and unnatural. Counting syllables and catching a rhythm that suited the melody. Trying not to switch time signatures halfway through the song. Making sure he wasn't plagiarizing lyrics or instrumentals. Oh god, writing the instrumentals. Writing the sheet music. Sitting at the piano for hours fine-tuning the melody and hoping he’d be able to explain the vision to Miya when they got to the studio…
Okay. Maybe everything but coming up with a vague storyline and a couple of really good lines was the hard part.
Maybe writing music as a whole was the hard part.
Whatever. There was no productivity to be found in silently debating about challenges. The technical aspects could wait.
…as would everything else, apparently.
Nothing was flowing. No lyrics, no stories, no melodies, no rhythms, nothing. Reki found himself staring at his page, reading and rereading the chorus written before him as he sipped on his tea. The words echoed in his mind flatly as though his inner voice was speaking rather than singing. Well, he supposed it was, considering he’d not yet nailed down a melody.
Whatever. It wouldn’t happen if he forced it, he knew that. He was in his performance mindset, clearly. His brain refused to switch over to writing gear, and that was fine. The end of the semester was… what? A month away? Four weeks. Plenty of time to write, compose, record, mix, master… Okay maybe not plenty of time, but it was doable. He’d get it done.
He hoped.
“Ready to go?” Miya asked with a yawn and a stretch. “I’m tired.”
“Yeah.” Reki nodded before downing the last few sips of his tea, which were really just a couple of mouthfuls of diluted honey. He wasn’t complaining, though. Good for the vocal folds. “I am too.”
“Let’s get out of here then.” Miya closed his laptop while Reki collected their empty cups to bring to the counter. After collecting their belongings, they waved goodnight to Joe and stepped out onto the artificially bright street. The cafe sign, neon letters proudly declaring “Cup o’ Joe,” illuminated almost the entire intersection with its bright green, looping font.
“Walk or train?” Reki glanced to Miya as he asked.
“Walk.” Miya’s choice pulled their feet to the left, away from the subway stop across the street. “I drank three hot chocolates. Need to get some steps in.”
“Oh, whatever,” Reki couldn’t help but laugh. “You never gain weight anyway.”
“Because I’m aware of what I eat and exercise accordingly,” Miya countered.
“You could stand to put a little meat on your bones.” Reki poked Miya in the ribs, which were unsettlingly easy to find even under the multiple layers he wore to combat the mid-March chill.
“Whatever.” Miya swatted Reki’s hand away before shoving his own in his pockets. “So how’d you make out?”
“Only sixty tonight.” Reki’s hands found the straps of his oversized backpack and tugged on them in a failed attempt to relieve his shoulders of the weight. He loved his karaoke machine, he truly did, but the thing was heavy. “Kinda slow.”
“Maybe you’ll get more tomorrow.” Miya shrugged. “Or maybe you skip tomorrow and do homework instead?”
“And sacrifice a night’s earnings? Don’t think so.”
“Worth a shot…” Miya huffed, but there was a smirk on his face. “Oh, by the way, are you busy on Sunday?”
“Work in the morning, but other than that, no. Why?”
“TV guys messaged me. They want to work on the capstone score.”
“If it's after two, I’m good.”
“Cool, I’ll let them know.”
The conversation nearly died, but Reki wouldn’t stand for silence. He redirected the chatter to the topic of graduation, future planning, job options. Music was a fickle industry. Competitive and cutthroat. Miya’s eyes were set on a local production studio, the one he’d interned at the previous semester. They’d liked him well enough, and one of their engineers was producing his own music, getting popular enough that he might leave the studio and open up a position.
“So tell all of your friends about him.” Miya smirked with a devious glint in his eyes. “Get his streams up so he quits to focus on performing full time.”
“You’re acting as though this is some evil plan.” Reki shook his head, but pulled out his phone to write the guy’s name down so he could promote his work. “You’ll be helping him, you know that right?”
“And then stealing his job.”
“That he’s going to voluntarily leave?”
“Oh come on,” Miya whined and knocked his shoulder into Reki’s. “It sounds more fun if it’s a little conniving.”
“Okay, okay.” Reki held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll help you with your very evil plan of helping this guy advance his career, gain popularity, and achieve his goals so you can weasel your way into a position he leaves.”
“Thank you.” Miya nodded with a serious expression before they both burst out laughing. Once the giggles died down, Miya got the conversation back on track. “What about you? Still planning on teaching?”
“Yeah.” Reki let out a long breath, not quite a sigh. “Boss at the community center says I’ll have a job there as long as I need one, so as long as my work visa gets approved after grad, I’m good. Experience, you know? Maybe I’ll find something at a performing arts school. Or even an elementary school. I don’t know.”
“Fair,” Miya mused with a shrug as they turned into the parking lot, just a few steps away from the entrance to their dorm. “You’ve got options, that’s good.”
“Yep,” Reki had to agree. “And I can always busk or find gigs on the side. That, and sell songs. Or produce my own stuff. Options.”
“Options.” Miya nodded as he swiped his student card and tugged open the door. A contented sigh squeezed its way out of him once the cold was shut out and they were under the steady stream of hot air coming down from the ceiling vent. “Why is it still so damn cold? It’s Spring. It shouldn’t be cold.”
“Did you expect this year to be different than the last two?” Reki practically had to drag Miya out of the vent’s path and through the second door into the lobby. “Do you expect next year to be different? It won’t be.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m aware.” Miya growled but let himself be dragged past the RA napping on the front desk to the elevators.
“You could always go back home after grad,” Reki teased as he pressed the button for the sixth floor and the doors closed behind them. “Enjoy the heat and humidity.”
“And work myself to death?” Miya scoffed. “No thanks.”
“Then get used to it.” The elevator doors dinged open, which Reki thought only proved his point. “At least it’s not winter anymore.”
“Snow sucks,” Miya groaned as the pair stepped into the hall. “Ice too.”
“Agreed.” Reki pulled out his student card to swipe them into their room. “Dibs on the shower!”
“Rude,” Miya huffed, but didn’t protest, and instead just disappeared into his bedroom.
Reki barely made a pitstop in his own room, only darting in to drop his backpack and grab some pyjamas. He made quick work of his shower, ensuring he wouldn’t get an angry knock on the door and a lecture about how early Miya had to get up the following morning. As if Reki didn’t also have to get up at the ass crack of dawn to get to work. He decided against blowdrying his hair and let Miya have the shower. It wasn't as though Reki would go right to sleep anyway, so it didn’t really matter if his hair was damp. It would dry before he actually ended up in bed.
Once the door was shut behind him, Reki unpacked his bag and got his electronics situated. He plugged in his karaoke machine and laptop, located his phone, then fished the ziplock bag that contained that night’s payment out from the bottom of his bag. The latter two items got tossed on the tangled lump of quilt before he dropped to his knees and grabbed the shoebox out from under his bed. He hopped onto the mattress with a thump and a jingle and pulled out the bag of leftover coins from the shoebox, as well as a handful of coin rollers and got to work making his deposit a little bit more bearable for the poor soul who had to work in a bank on a Saturday.
It wasn’t long before the small payout was properly organized and the stragglers were cast into the shoebox, hopefully to be added to a roll the following night. The shoebox went back under the bed and Reki tossed the rolls of coins and bag of bills into his bag to deal with in the morning before once again attempting to find interest in his school work.
But alas, there was none. Homework was just not destined to be completed that night.
That was fine.
It would get done eventually.