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"Here, let me show you something," Daniil says, Peter and him thrown together at some place in the Stillwater.
It's something they'd been saying to each other a lot in the past few weeks. Since the Polyhedron's fall and the end of plague, they were both swallowed by an all-consuming need for something, or someone, to occupy their time with — a need for company, really, big and heavy enough to bring together even two men who until then thought themselves accustomed to their own solitude.
The first days they spent with almost no words. They would find each other — often drunk enough not to mind being joined by a foreign presence, or to fear being minded as a foreign presence — and give and take the simple comforts that come only with such presences and the physicality it allowed. If anything, it was somehow grounding, somehow sweet, and it was somehow nice.
Then they started to ask. At this point, they’d cried quite enough (wetted each other's shoulders quite enough), they’d held each other quite enough, they’d had each other… well, there could be some more times. There would be, they were sure. In any case: when the words came again and they started to ask, they did it carefully; tactfully, almost tenderly, running a finger around the edges of an open wound but never daring to touch it. There was no Tower, no lab, no recent passings, no fire nor dust, no disease anymore — more than afraid of hurting himself with the memories, Peter feared scaring the Bachelor away, and the Bachelor must have feared the same thing, for they stayed without speaking a word of it all. It was agonizing, in a way, but it was all they could do.
Instead, they asked for smaller things.
They learned a thing or two about each other during this time. Daniil would stay living in the Stillwater until it was time to go back to the Capital and whatever that city had still left for him; he, as he confessed himself, was thinking of leaving as soon as they started sending trains again — but that, he had said, trying not to sound neither disappointed nor relieved, won't happen until next month, I'm afraid. (And Peter, too, tried to force himself unaffected. Tried not to pity himself, not to dread a life of solitude, not to look at Daniil as if he expected anything else, because he didn't, because life would go on and so would they, even if every moment still felt like frozen, foggy, still images. Better to enjoy them while they last.)
Peter, as Daniil made him confess, had no idea what to do now. Talking to anyone else — the Kains, even Andrey — still felt like a duty too heavy to carry on with, for they were always asking for things bigger than he could bring himself to care, and "future" still felt like a word from a language unknown. He feared not to recover ever again. He feared (though this he did not confess) to die of hypothermia when winter inevitably comes, to his body to fail him way before his mind (he hadn't been very kind to it), and he feared not to mind it all. He feared: a slight chill down his spine, a whisper of a touch, reaching skin but dissolving itself as soon as it dared penetrate him further, so thin it was almost imperceptible, almost pleasant.
"Let me show you something," Daniil said, says, as he had done then, as Peter had learned to do to him. It was easier than asking questions: here, let me show you something. A book; a picture; a sketch or calculation; a tale; a place; a memory; a dream. This time…
Daniil gets up and Peter follows. "A piano?"
It’s old and ugly, a structure ready to fall apart with just a blow.
"You would think it's far beyond salvation, but it actually works decently enough. Not perfectly tuned, but…" Daniil explains and, as if just to prove it, plays a little scale. It sounds… nice; even the slightly out-of-place notes, when put together like this, join each other in a way that Peter can’t quite call wrong.
"I had no idea Eva was a pianist," Daniil continues. The mention is quick and impersonal — he shall not reach this close to the wound. "Though I did not find any scores laying around."
Peter sits behind him and attentively watches as his hands move from key to key. "Right," Daniil says, as if announcing something, and tries his shot at some song. He starts and restarts melodies with the care of one who calls a bird or stray cat, only to scare them away; trying to bring himself back to memories not completely rational, not completely physical either, abandoned by years of no practice. But then there’s a note thrown at the wrong time, a segment he doesn’t know how to continue, a rhythm he can’t remember exactly, and he gives up to try some other song.
"It's been years since the last time I really played," Daniil says between one discarded melody and another. But he knows not to be truly sorry: Peter enjoys watching him do whatever, and he, too, finds some amusement even in failing at conjuring songs.
"I'm sure it will come to you.”
It does come. After some more minutes of trial and error, he finds something his hands and brain retained enough of a memory to play entirely. Peter watches all stages of his remembrance: the care not to let the memory fly away from his grasp, fingers moving precisely like machinery; the surprised welcoming of his own then-forgotten reflexes, when he starts to move with less tension and lets his hands take the reigns from his mind, realizing they know more than well what to do; the losing-himself-in-song, hands and wrists and fingers flying over the keys like an animal of its own, dancing together with song. At this point, a note played at the wrong time, a mistake in pacing or the already untuned keys simply feel like a natural part of the whole thing, and Daniil continues and repeats himself and continues and tries something else like he had always known how to do it.
"Brahms?" Peter asks, amused.
"Yes— I think so."
Daniil plays lively and spirited songs, some of which Peter recognizes very well, fingers tapping in his own thighs behind the true pianist; he, too, carrying the remains of what could have been a lifetime, abandoned almost a decade ago, of classical training. Daniil is not the only one doing exercises on memory and time: as he plays, Peter lets himself be guided by the sounds. It comes to him by bits: he remembers Brahms and Lizst and Dussek and Schubert; cold rooms filled with father, mother, uncles and aunts, a thousand other tiny eyes; endless afternoons spent with the family piano, alone or alongside a tutor; quicker, nicer evenings when he played with his brother…
He remembers learning, at the tender age of eight, how pianos weren’t originally invented for the sole purpose of four-handed play, just as he started learning about everything else that was wrong with the world. He remembers playing made-up songs with Andrey — setting up some sheet paper, starting to play as if they were someone else, but turning it midway into something only they knew. Like a wordless conversation — the sharing of everything that gets lost in between one word and another and can only be passed through hand-and-hand, shape-and-shape, sound-and-sound. He remembers looking at his brother during recitals, then to the audience, then to Andrey again, as if secretly laughing, we two are the only keepers of all meaning there is in here.
He remembers a series of events that proceded the end of childhood: boarding school, when melancholy and boredom began to take him away from those things he enjoyed the most, moving places, the start of university. He remembers when they both — him and Andrey — started to grow away from their family home, and how easily they traded their hours of play in the family’s piano for a taste of anything new. He remembers growing away from him. He remembers, though faintly, some of the people he had met after that, students and artists, many of whom ended up musicians as well; how awkward it felt to share a keyboard with them, when the few opportunities for that eventually came; how clunky and big and weird and too-near while also too-distant every hand felt, and how out-of-tempo everything sounded; how irritated he got at every minor mistake, be it by him or his pair.
Daniil couldn’t anger him, he thinks, watching as the back of his head slightly sways with the pulse he set. He looks confident and proud and handsome, seen like this. Peter doesn’t want Daniil to anger him. The song — the last one he remembered — ends in an adagio, and Peter thinks of dancers thanking each other before leaving the dance floor. When Daniil turns back to him he notices subtle trails of sweat falling down his forehead, and he thinks of reaching out and wiping it with his hand.
Daniil laughs, conjures a laugh, breaking away any uncomfortable silence before it could worm its way in between them. “As I said, I haven't practiced in years, and some of the keys are damaged, so…”
“You played beautifully, old boy." Peter tries to smile and wonders if it had come out wrong; Daniil looks at him weirdly and he notices the faintest shade of pink through the skin of his face. It contrasts weirdly with all the paleness it had acquired in the last few weeks.
“You flatter me," Daniil says and clears his throat. "Anyway, um, Andrey had mentioned you two used to play together as children, so I thought this could be of your interest."
Peter feels something warm curling inside of him. More than the fact Daniil had remembered it, it feels… nice, or something of the sort, to know it was a memory Andrey had shared with him. He wonders how long ago that was — had it been back in their Capital days? When Daniil arrived in town? Now? He hadn’t talked to his brother in weeks, but perhaps Daniil did — Daniil, who plays the piano for him, who visits the loft from time to time to bring him groceries, who had already began dreaming and planning a new life outside that little town. Life has to go on, he thinks. Daniil can’t anger him.
And there is the invitation, laying somewhere in his words. Peter considers it for a moment, then considers it for one more.
“Oh, no,” comes out of him plainly. Better to enjoy things while they last. Daniil can’t anger him. “It’s been too long for me to remember anything. And besides, I’d rather just listen to you.”
Daniil smiles and, for better or for worse, does not press any further.