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Gabriel was on his own. Sam wasn’t home right then, he was working the night shift, leaving Gabriel home alone all night. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but it wasn’t the most pleasant. These were the nights that Gabriel didn’t sleep very well, but he made do. He glanced up at the closed door that was shrouded in darkness, then at the clock. 2am. Sam wouldn’t be home for hours, perhaps gone 5am. He heaved a sigh, shifting on the piano stool.
Nights like this, the ones that were so cold outside the chill seeped through the brick and wound itself around his limbs like some kind of creature trying to trap him were the ones he hated the most. As he started to shiver he shrugged on one of Sam’s hoodies, the cuffs slipping over his hands, not that he minded. He rubbed his fingers over the worn grey fabric before rubbing his cheek with the sleeve for a second, then his hand rested back on the piano keys.
His fingers were careful as he started to play. Slow, delicate, as if he was trying something out that he’d never played before although that wasn’t the case, he’d played this tune a hundred times before. He let his eyes close, the sheet music passing through his mind’s eyes, the sensory memory taking his fingers across the notes, tips skimming the black ones as he presses the white ones before lifting up to trail over the black instead.
Times like this, mindlessly playing the piano to himself were times where he allowed himself to breathe and reflect upon himself. Himself and Sam. He? He was, in his own eyes, someone who was lost and who’d strayed too far from the beaten path of life and was now wandering through the undergrowth to get back to any form of guided way. Not that he minded the undergrowth. It suited him. Dark and tricky. Bushes and tangles of thorns that threw up shadows onto walls that loomed and leered, inching ever closer over his head. If he opened his eyes he’d see the hat stand by the door doing the same thing, same with the sofa and the piano. Shadows plastered across a wall that just grow and grow till you look at the small object they’re created from and think that it’s a miracle something so small could have so much darkness behind it. Kind of like Gabriel he thought. He was small but had so much dark and shadow behind him and no one ever really expected it.
That was where Sam came in. Gabriel once referred to Sam as his light but then he realised that there was no way that Sam could be his light. After all, the light came from the front and shines to create the shadow. Sam didn’t create Gabriel’s shadows, he came in around them and bundles them up, shrinking them and taking them away so Gabriel can move freely again.
Something about the tune Gabriel played made him happy. It was a melody that was both happy and sad at the same time, something that would be played over a slow motion romantic montage in a film for housewives to watch on rainy days when the kids were at school, yet it was also a song for greyscale moments of window staring in thunderstorms. The song held a degree of hope to it, like a bird flying around a large cage, soaring near the top only to spiral down again, wings brushing the ornate bars. Yet despite the hope hanging onto every note there was something so desolate about the song, something that made Gabriel feel like the last man on Earth. Something about the way the scales only went halfway up before coming back down again made him feel like he was alone, and was never going to get anywhere.
But he loved this song, and this was his song. He claimed it as his own, because it felt to him like him. Like the song was both trying to run away, and run for something. He was running away from his past, the brothers that fought well into the middle of the night, the shouting, the swearing, the crashing of glasses as they were hurled and the rattling of the window panes as the front door was slammed again, and again, and again. He was running away from the shadows under his eyes and the bathroom given haircuts for Anna when she’d gotten chewing gum in her hair and they couldn’t afford the hairdresser. He was running from nearly everything he knew about life. But as he was running he tripped and fell right into Sam. Sam gave him something to run for. He ran ahead for moving in together, for the proposal he had planned in a few months, for their plans of getting a dog, getting married, adoptions perhaps. He stopped thinking of himself as a man who ran away, and a man who ran towards.
~*~
Sam found Gabriel asleep slumped against the piano and he sighed softly, ignoring the way his muscles ached from the overuse as he wrapped them around the sleeping man to lift him up. Gabriel whined a little in his sleep, curling in on himself to tuck himself closer to Sam’s chest, the whine dying away as he realised it was Sam holding him.
“Shh…” Sam whispered, ghosting a kiss against Gabriel’s hairline and Gabriel just made another noise, letting himself relax into the solid warmth of his boyfriend who carried him up the stairs into their room, laying him down on the sheets and letting him struggle to remove the hoodie as Sam changed into his pyjamas. As Sam slipped into bed beside Gabriel he rolled over, tucking himself into Sam’s arms neatly, them both fitting together like pieces of a puzzle,the yin to the other’s yang. Sam nuzzled his nose into Gabriel’s hair, keeping him held close as they both drifted off into well needed sleep.
Neither needed to be up early in the morning, so at 11am when they did awaken, their bed bathed in sunlight, they didn’t rush to move. In fact, Sam took his time tilting Gabriel’s chin up to kiss him lazily, lips moving against the other’s in a way that made them both sigh in pure contentment, nothing more coming from the simple kiss. Sam was the one to end the kiss too, kissing Gabriel’s cheek, then nose, then his forehead before burying his face in his boyfriend’s hair again, clutching him to him as if he was the only thing he needed in the world at that point, though that wasn't’ far from the truth.
Sam struggled with people, struggled with the thought that someone as special as Gabriel Novak was living with him, sleeping in his arms every night, and cooking him breakfast most mornings. Adoration for Gabriel came from Sam whenever he was given chance to, whether it was washing Gabriel’s hair when they showered together, or it was just making sure they alway have the ingredients for things like pancakes, Sam remembered the little things.
He remembered the exact sprinkles that were Gabriel’s favourite, he knew his favourite songs to play on the piano. He knew that Gabriel loved to be kissed on the forehead, and he melted whenever Sam braided his hair. He took his time to learn every single part of Gabriel, memorising every single scar on his body and how it’d gotten there. Bike accident on his knee, the cigarette burn on his arm from teenage Gabriel, and the purple 3 inch long line on his chest from his high school bully. He knew that Gabriel loved barely there touches to the inner thigh followed by a slow bite. He practically worshipped the way Gabriel said his name, somehow turning a word so simple into something so poignant and powerful. He knew without even looking that whenever Gabriel came his eyelashes would be fluttering, hands clenched into fists and his bottom lip would be trapped under his front teeth. Sam knew all of this because he listened, he watched, he wanted to be there for Gabriel in a way no one else ever had done. He hung onto every word Gabriel spoke and committed it so deeply to memory that he was sure he’d never forget it.
His favourite thing about Gabriel though was the way he played the piano. The way the hands that could chop vegetables into slivers in seconds, the hands that could reduce Sam to noises he hadn’t known he was capable of could dance and place themselves so easily on the keys had him in awe. Gabriel had such striking confidence when it came to the piano, there was no fear there of a bum note, no fear he’d mess it up, and there was a daunting aura of power that surrounded him when he sat on that stool and played his song. Sam never asked why that song meant so much to Gabriel, he assumed if Gabriel wanted him to know then he’d tell him.
To Gabriel, who sat rereading the score of the song, he smiled to himself before tucking the sheets away again. It wasn’t just a song to him, it was a symphony, a joining of fact and fiction, mind and matter that went hand in hand. It was a symphony he played for Sam.
His song for his Sam.