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“Well, this is me,” Blanca announces from behind, locking the door. Yut Lung hears the tired smile in his voice.
Everything seems intentionally placed—surfaces tidy, décor tasteful. “It’s nice.” Thank goodness it’s nothing like Shorter’s apartment. He wasn’t expecting it to be, but you never know with men.
The black sheen of a baby grand catches his eye from across the room. It's huge, regal almost, but the typical luster is obscured by a layer of dust. This piano's clearly seen better days.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Yut Lung gets a near identical feeling when he looks at Blanca.
“You play?” he asks, glancing back at the taller man. He doesn’t need to clarify what he means.
Blanca’s eyes go a bit wide at the question, as if he were just reminded the massive instrument exists. “Oh. No, it…” He hesitates, a ghost of anxious laughter leaving his lips. “My wife used to play, though.”
Ahhh. Here we go. He hadn’t mentioned a wife until now. He knew there was something up with the effortlessly charming Blanca, that somehow it was all a little too good to be true. As with everything, there’s a catch.
Well. We’re already here; might as well have a little fun. “What, she doesn’t anymore?” Yut Lung teases.
The next words leave Blanca’s mouth painfully, as if they were laced with poison. “She… passed away earlier this year, actually.” An admission.
“Ah,” he nods. So Blanca wasn’t hiding a wife, probably isn’t a two-timing piece of shit. That’s good at least. He glides across the room to get a closer look at the piano.
Yut Lung ponders it all—how it might feel, being so close with someone that their death would be painful, might hurt him the way the man before him is suffering. It sounds exquisite, in a way, and he pushes down a bizarre sense of jealousy.
His mother comes to mind, naturally. But that time was marred with red hot anger, a rage so sticky that it’d consumed him for years. Yut Lung doesn’t know if he’d ever had the opportunity to be sad or simply grieve her. (He didn’t, of course.)
“Mind if I play something?” Yut Lung’s question surprises both of them.
“No, please do.”
~*~
Blanca is… confused by this man. Intrigued.
When Yut Lung heard Blanca’s choked news, he didn’t offer condolences. He barely acknowledged it, actually. Which perhaps should’ve offended him. Instead, he finds himself impossibly curious. In particular, by the immediate reaction to his words—Yut Lung’s features briefly darkened, almost imperceptibly.
(He’d never mentioned Natasha. To anyone, really.)
Then, right back to that cool exterior—that lovely smile, the one that’d caught Blanca’s attention mere hours ago—as if nothing had just transpired.
As if death were commonplace enough in this man’s life, to nod and move on without making a fuss about it.
Interesting.
Yut Lung perches lightly on the bench, swiping a delicate layer of dust off the keys that had settled there in the time since… well…
There is before, and there is after.
Blanca's unable to measure time in any other way at the moment.
Before, Natasha’s meticulously practiced Debussy would ring through the condo, lovely and haunting.
Now, it feels almost unfair—for the hammers to strike once more, for this instrument to dare come alive again, for Blanca’s ears to once again vibrate with the gift of music from within these walls.
It’s unfair, for his heart to stir so intensely at this experience.
Now, Yut Lung plays a slow, gentle melody; simple, yet full of such loveliness and tension that it makes Blanca feel inspired again—to breathe deeply, to listen—and to discover more about this beautiful, mysterious man.