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Arthur, the icing sugar is to your left. No, your other le- Catch it!
Arthur darted his hand out, neatly catching the small plastic bowl that had evidently fallen off the counter. He sighed. "John, you do realise I only have one left, don't you?" he said with the air of someone who was repeating himself for the thousandth time.
I was referring to my left.
"We have the same left," came the wearied reply as he dropped the bowl down in a safer place.
John huffed. Irrelevant.
Arthur would have rolled his eyes if he still had control of them. "Whatever you say. Icing sugar?"
To your left, Arthur. As I said.
This time, he reached out a more tentative hand. Holding the bowl gently in place with his other hand, he tilted the icing sugar into it. After a moment, he stopped. "Look alright?"
Of course it does, Arthur, John said with a small huff that could only be labelled 'affectionate indulgence'. You've already displayed your unusual talents in measuring. I don't see why you need to demonstrate it again.
"Well maybe I just like showing off," Arthur admitted in good humour.
You can say that again.
"Be quiet."
And he was, though Arthur could still feel that irritatingly familiar smugness resting just behind his eyes. He shook his head slowly, biting back a fond noise as he began to stir the mixture.
After a peaceful moment, a small ding alerted them to the finished state of the cake.
It was very lucky, Arthur thought, that he'd managed to find a flat with a legally blind owner. Not only did they empathise with the occasional spillage or accidental damage on the walls, but there were already various means of helping the sightless in installations around the house. Like, for instance, the noisy oven - annoying as it frequently was.
Arthur?
"Wh- What? Oh. The cake. Yes. I was just thinking." He supposed it meant something about how far they'd come that John didn't ask what he had been thinking. Not that his thought process this time was anything special - or that there was really anything that he wouldn't share with John, at this point - but, with all the inherent intimacy that came with sharing a body, it was nice to at least be given the option of privacy.
With a little of John's help - and a lot of John's hindrance, because really, did he need to know how horribly the oven would burn him if he touched the wrong thing? - he managed to get the cake out and onto a cooling rack on the counter.
"We'll do the icing later," he decided after they had closed the oven and thrown all the unnecessary used equipment into the sink.
Now am I allowed to know what occasion the cake is for? John asked dryly.
Arthur hummed. "No occasion. Is it too hard to believe that I would choose to bake for fun?"
Considering there were at least three opportunities for severe burns in this endeavour alone, then yes, Arthur, it is. But fine, if you're adamant about it, then I suppose I'll accept that there's no occasion.
It was blatant nonsense, and they both knew it. Even if Arthur couldn't see it, the calendar on the wall clearly displayed June 3rd - the date John had decided months ago would be his birthday, for lack of a real one. For some reason, despite this, both kept quiet.
It was a moment before Arthur turned away from the kitchen and walked out into the living room. That decision went oddly uncontested, which he supposed was a... good sign.
Without speaking, he found the piano, and sat down at it. John's silent, enthusiastic anticipation, strong enough that he could feel it himself, was both flattering and ridiculously endearing, and Arthur fought the urge to chuckle at it.
He paused a moment to get his head together. While John wasn't expecting anything in particular - or, at least, he shouldn't have been, though John expected a lot of things that Arthur would have preferred he didn't - Arthur was aware that what he was about to play was a big thing. He couldn't exactly be unaware, given the last few months had been a battle of his own wits against John's observation. The idea of composing a melody without ever being able to see it was hard enough, to a layman or a musician, but trying to compose a melody without the entity in your head (who also had control of your eyes) seeing it? Unthought of.
John was starting to get irritated, he knew - and worse, he was beginning to get curious - so gently, he tilted his head down to the keys.
One deep breath. Just one.
And he began to play.
It started with a single melody, played on a single hand. A single strain, weary and slow and beaten - and yet, not broken. It grasped hope with shaking hands, and its grasp was weak, but it held. Not this, it seemed to say. All else, but not this.
And then another, as Arthur lifted his second hand to the keys. Lost - lost, and searching. A sadness that sunk in hollow bones that did not know why they were sad. A meaning in its eyes that did not, perhaps, mean anything. Ashes - and a spark that was not of the same wood that had burned.
Together, though. Together.
The sounds were... close. The tunes so similar, yet so distinct. One rose as the other fell - complete in their own right, but somehow more complete with the other. And within the storm of each melody, new storms rose.
A tide of sorrow, underwhelming, overwhelming, full and all-too empty.
Sprays of ire, from waves of anger that glided like the wings of angels over the current.
Winds that caressed with fond fingers. Stars that trusted in the night to keep them shining
It was a long, long fall with belief in something to break the landing.
It was love, and hurt, and devotion, and fear, and trust, and trust again.
It was - two melodies, one song.
Two minds, one body.
Two hearts. One heart.
And then it ended.
Arthur lowered his hands, and waited. There wasn't really anything to say, after playing that. The words "Happy Birthday," resting on the tip of his tongue, evaporated, and nothing else formed to replace them. So he waited.
Until he felt warm tears trickling down his cheeks.
He started. "Wha- John? John? I'm- I'm sorry, I-"
No.
Arthur paused. "I.... No?"
The leaking slowed, then stopped. No, you have nothing to apologise for, John clarified. I was just... surprised.
"O...kay..." Arthur wiped his cheeks dry. "So, you start crying when you're surprised. Good to know."
It was beautiful, Arthur, John admitted with a huff at odds with his words. Still, if Arthur had learned anything in the last year they had been stuck together, it was how to read his partner - and so he recognised the genuine suggestion of awe in John's voice, and felt the warmth that settled in the front of his head.
And he knew that John had something more to say, too, so he waited.
After a quiet moment - I... Do you... Do you see me like that? John asked. His voice held that tentative, apprehensive note that Arthur could never hear without concern, especially with how seldom it appeared.
He didn't need to clarify what he meant by 'that'. Lost, he meant. Without a purpose. Not... whole.
"No," Arthur said quietly. A sense of loss at his inability to physically comfort his partner swelled up then disappeared all in a moment. "No, not anymore."
Somehow, the silence of thought settled into something almost comfortable. It was peace, in a breath.
Arthur?
Arthur shifted slightly "Yes, John?"
The icing sugar has hardened.