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“Hey. You’re Wolfgang, right?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something you need to see.”
Pyotr and Dmitri are still giggling when Mozart opens the door to his studio. The speakers echo with a familiar notification sound and the two composers at his table burst into laughter again, leaning against each other as they look up at him.
“What the hell was that?” Pyotr gasps between laughs. “‘Chocolate in, chocolate out’?”
“Some prodigy level stuff.” Dmitri snickers from beneath him. “Teach us your ways, o mighty composing legend!”
“Alright, that’s enough, the both of you.” Johann interjects, smiling as he shoves Dmitri and Pyotr out of the seats. “Let Momo do damage control, go and use all that energy you have to eat the cake Ludwig baked, or else we’re going to be hearing him whining about how no one appreciates him for days.”
“Damage control?” Mozart asks as Dmitri and Pyotr slip out of the door behind him. “Why - what damage control.”
“Dmitri was kind enough to post your composition on YouTube.” Johann smirks. He brings up the group’s YouTube channel on his phone and shoves it into Mozart’s face - lo and behold, there’s a newly uploaded video.
There are fourteen thousand views on it already. It’s only been a minute.
“It’s public?” Mozart asks, swaying every so slightly on his feet as he makes his way to his laptop. He turns it around so the screen can face him.
Fifteen thousand views. There’s a comment peeking out from the bottom of the screen.
what the hell is this omg
Johann nods. “Probably did you a favor, you can just go and make a Tweet saying it’s your birthday gift to the fans, or something.”
Even more comments, as Mozart scrolls down. idk how to feel about this, one user states. i thought this was a comeback trailer wtf? another one jeers. momo: “i’m a prodigy kid” also momo: whatever the fuck this monstrosity is, yet another one adds.
People like that last one, it seems. There are about a thousand likes on it.
“Are you checking comments?” Johann’s hovering over his shoulder, watching as he scrolls past more and more comments.
this sounds like shit
the rest of the members gave such insightful solo pieces meanwhile wolfgang amadeus mozart is out here fucking around
what did we expect from mr lick me in the ass
“Momo? Hey, is everything alright?”
don’t be shy, show us the other unreleased songs
“Jesus - don’t slam it like that, you’re gonna break it -”
Mozart yanks his hands far away from Johann’s reach - and shoves.
“Get out. Get OUT!”
“This is your handwriting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, this is my - where did you get this?”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Can we sit down?”
His hands are bleeding.
Pyotr had mentioned something before, filling in the silence as they sat in traffic, waiting to go back home after a schedule. A philosophical problem, about whether or not you could call something by the same way if they no longer served its purpose. Was a chair still a chair if you could no longer sit on it? Could you still call an electric fan an electric fan if it wouldn’t turn on and give you relief from the heat?
Johann had been worried about the laptop. Mozart gazes down at the scattered pieces of aluminum, glass, and plastic, and thinks there’s no laptop to worry about anymore.
A sob echoes throughout the room. It sounds so fake, like the sobs he’d hear echoing from Nannerl’s tinny laptop speakers as they watched romcoms on the rare days their father hadn’t packed their schedule full of activities from 7 AM until 8 PM. She’d cry along, he’d remembered, and he would make a point of fake gagging and pointing out something about the scene’s lighting or dialogue until she got fed up with him and would try to kick him away, their giggles growing louder and louder until their mother rapped lightly on their door, shushing them before their father caught wind.
She’d given him that very same laptop only a month after he’d moved in with the rest of the band, had slipped it into his hands and dodged each and every of his attempts to return it to him.
“We have a studio.” he’d tried to reason out, trying to trip her over after she’d dodged again. “I don’t need this -”
“- and I don’t need to hear any more snippets of interviews where your bandmates talk about what you do on the studio computers, you menace.” she’d sniped, holding his hands firmly in place over the laptop. "Take it , Wolfie. No other laptop has all those shitty movies you like.”
“Don’t call Legally Blonde shitty.” he’d gasped, scandalized.
The laptop had been smuggled into his room a few hours later.
Mozart cradles shards of aluminum in his hands, barely flinching as they press into the cuts on his hands, and thinks about Nannerl’s note, slipped quietly in between Friends with Benefits and 13 Going on 30 .
“Stupid.” The metallic stench of blood grows stronger as he raises his fist, slamming it against the side of his head as his breath escapes him in short, insufficient gasps. “Stupid, you fucking - stupid!”
The keyboard keys barely make a sound as they bounce against the walls. An inside force scrapes at Mozart’s throat as he hits harder , but it’s not enough, it’s never enough , and both hands find purchase in his hair as his foot makes contact with the nearest wall, his screams going higher and higher with each kick.
why couldn’t they just tell me what was i doing wrong why do they hate me leave me alone -
“Mama.” he sobs, curled onto the floor, his knees touching his nose and his cheek pressed onto the rough carpeted floor. His hands tug and tug at his hair, pulling inch and inch and insufficient inch at the vice that’s gripped his chest, keeping him prisoner against the jeers and whispers and stares.
i’m sorry, wolfie, Nannerl had written, all lowercase letters. you didn’t deserve it.
Mozart stares at the mess of silver and red and white that is his room, and thinks she was wrong.
“They’ve been spreading it for a while now. I think everyone has a copy.”
“How long -”
“A couple of weeks. I got it yesterday.”
The pressure digging into his side disappears.
Mozart’s breath hitches as he inhales. He doesn’t move, inching closer to the wall.
There’s another person in the room.
Johann must have given them the key.
He can feel them hovering, picks up on the short distance between their hand and his shoulder. He curls inward, hands tightening in his hair again, tugging, and finds nothing left for him to spill.
Please, not right now. Give me time, he begs, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. He’s not mad at Pyotr, or Dmitri, or Johann, not really. He doesn’t have an explanation for the mess that is his room, but he will, soon enough, if they just give him time.
He opens his mouth -
“Amadè, baby?”
Mozart’s eyes fly open.
He turns.
“Niccolo.”
“Hi.” Niccolo smiles. Oh, but it’s wrong, isn’t it, somehow neither the confident smirk the violinist would throw at him from across the practice room, nor the sultry grin Mozart would trace with his fingertips in the confines of his bedroom. And it’s definitely not Mozart’s favorite - the soft, gentle smile Niccolo would give him just as he was waking up, the one that made Mozart want to bury himself into Niccolo’s arms and never let go.
He reaches for Niccolo, all the same. Like always, Niccolo meets him halfway.
“Your hands are so big.”
“Yeah?” He’s laughing, Mozart thinks. It doesn’t sound like a laugh, though. But it doesn’t hurt, either, when Niccolo smoothes his thumbs over the lines of red on Mozart’s palm. “Yeah, because your hands are really small, Amadè. Small hands for my baby.”
He’s supposed to say something, Mozart remembers. Their dynamic’s always been one of a push and pull, a fun little game of cat and mouse. They’re Niccolo Paganini, the angry playboy, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the childish tease. He’s not supposed to just sit there, soft like putty in Niccolo’s arms, as the violinist gently hoists him up so he can lean his head on his shoulder.
“I broke Nannerl’s laptop.” he says, instead, closing his eyes when they burn at the edges with something that feels like embarrassment. “And I shouted at Johann.”
“It’s okay.” Niccolo answers, quickly. Like he knows. “We should clean your hands -”
“No.” Mozart hisses, tugging them away from Niccolo’s hold. “No, I -”
“Okay.” Gentle hands wrap around his arms, tugging him close. “Okay, Amadè, take your time.”
It’s close enough that he has no choice but to bury his face against Niccolo’s neck, feel Niccolo’s pulse beat against his eyelids, erratic and wild like he’s nervous. Like he cares.
What a funny thought.
Niccolo takes a series of breaths, one after the other, like he’s trying to control it. Mozart’s body rises with each breath, his eyes unseeing as he runs his fingers over the buttons on Niccolo’s shirt. He settles on the one nearest the center of Niccolo’s chest, traces his index finger round and around, and closes his eyes as the side of Niccolo’s throat pulses a steady rhythm onto his right eyelid.
“I’m sorry. I made a mess.” he murmurs, looking up. He isn’t all that surprised to find Niccolo gazing down at him.
“It’s okay, cuore mio .” Niccolo whispers, smoothing strands of hair away from his face. “It’s nothing we can’t fix.”
Go to sleep, little starling, his mother’s voice whispers gently into his ear.
It is too cold in his room for Niccolo to mistake the dampness at his throat for sweat, but Mozart hopes, anyway.
“Wolfgang, you will tell me what was in that journal of yours -”
“Papa -”
“How you could be so stupid as to bring those here! Do you not trust your own parents?”
“It’s not like that, I just didn’t want you to know -”
“And tell me what good that has done you now, hm? Tell me, you stupid, useless child!”
It takes Dmitri and Pyotr two days to talk to him.
“We took it down.” Dmitri says first, lips pursed, fists clenched. “I know it doesn’t change anything, but it’s not available on official platforms anymore.”
Mozart looks up and catches Dmitri’s gaze in the full-length mirror. Pyotr hovers over his shoulder, so downcast that even his hair seems lifeless. He stifles back a chuckle before returning to his phone. “Don’t worry about it.”
He doesn’t need to look up to catch the way they turn to each other, surprised. He rewinds the video on his phone back a few seconds, frowns at the choreography error he’s sure he just made.
“I - I think we should?” Pyotr speaks up. “Worry about it, I mean - Momo, you were clearly upset. You don’t have to lie about it.”
“I was overreacting.” Mozart shrugs. He puts down the phone - there’s no way he’s going to figure out how to get that right without their choreographer giving him a very detailed set of instructions - and settles his face on his left hand, gazing up at Dmitri and Pyotr through the mirror as he pouts. “I ruined a perfectly good laptop for it too, boo.”
“And that was our fault.” Pyotr bites his lip. Poor guy, all worried about his Juliet - not that everyone doesn’t know it’s a certain bespectacled violinist - and now he’s gone and thought he’s done something wrong to Mozart, of all people. “It’s your laptop, we shouldn’t have gone messing around, it’s why you broke your laptop in the first place.”
“Eh, I dunno. Johann was right, it was a good birthday gift for the fans.” Mozart grins. He’d been trending for a while after its release. “I didn’t even have to say anything, they just knew.”
The fans were still going crazy about it, too. It was the most attention Mozart had gotten and he hadn’t even had to do anything!
“It was a violation of your privacy.” Dmitri insists.
“Mitya, you’re angrier than me about this!” Mozart’s face burns red with mirth, cheeks aching as he giggles. “It was a joke song! You heard the lyrics, didn’t you? It’s about chocolate, for fuck’s sake! It’s not like you took pictures of my diary with all my deepest darkest secrets and posted them for the entire world to see!”
Dmitri’s face falls, lips pursing even tighter. Behind him, Pyotr is pulling an expression that would have made people think Mozart had said he’d hated him.
It doesn’t make sense.
“You - you didn’t deserve that either, Wolfie.” Dmitri spits out. “We shouldn’t have posted it either way, but if we had known -”
“Momo!”
All three of them look up to find Johann staring at them from the practice room door.
“Ah, it’s your turn, Wolfie.” Ludwig offers, his smile gentler than it’s ever been. “The mandatory check-up, remember?”
“Boo !” Mozart whines, falling onto the floor. Dmitri and Pyotr are still looking at him like that - like he’s broken, like he’s troubled, like he needs to be fixed - and Mozart shifts his gaze to the older members of the group. “Can’t I just skip it?”
“No, you brat.” Johann scowls, stomping towards him. “Come on, get up.”
“Johann.” Ludwig tuts. “We talked about this.”
“Talked about me?” Mozart grins, letting his body go limp and eyes shut close as Johann tugs him up by the arms. “Aww, you do love me!”
The tugging stops. Mozart opens his eyes, and his face falls at the look on Johann’s face, on Ludwig’s face, on Dmitri’s and Pyotr’s, too.
“Of course we love you.” Ludwig breathes, soft and caring and -
Nannerl’s eyes, wide and disbelieving, her hands gripping his arms tightly, “why didn’t you say anything, Wolfie, you idiot, I would have done something -”
Mozart scrambles to his feet and tugs himself away from Johann’s arms.
“Don’t miss me too much!” he shouts over his shoulder, rushing out the door.
He wipes his tears away quickly, and scrubs his hands over his face with a laugh.
Trust the members to embarrass him to tears.
“What we can do, Mr. and Mrs. Mozart, is to file a disciplinary act with the school -”
“That won't be necessary.”
“Sir, I assure you, the school is taking this issue very seriously. Your son’s privacy was violated -”
“And the perpetrators are children. They don’t know any better, and our family has decided it is not worth it to drag this issue any longer for our son’s sake. Informing their parents of their actions will be more than enough. It’s what he wants, isn’t it, Wolfgang?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Do you know why you’re here, Wolfgang?”
“Uh, because it’s mandatory?” Mozart laughs, shifting so that he has one leg crossed over the other. “That’s what Johann said.”
“Yes, it is.” The lady in front of him is neat, her hair tied back into a bun, each and every strand kept in place. She has a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other. “The company wants to make sure you’re doing alright.”
“Tell them to make our choreos easier, then.” he scoffs, crossing his arms across his chest. “I swear I’m going to have nightmares if we have to switch another step out again.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” she says, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Johann says you’re very good at picking it up, though. He told me you’re probably the best at it.”
“Wasn’t lying in our debut. Prodigy kid, right here.”
“Of course, how could I forget.” she smiles. “Now, Johann says you had some … trouble, a few days ago.”
blood dripping from the cracks in his hands nannerl’s laptop in pieces his writing was everywhere -
“Johann’s overreacting.” Mozart smiles - doesn’t wince. “He’s very paranoid, ‘cause he’s the leader, y’know?”
The lady purses her lips. Her eyes dart downwards, quickly, before she looks Mozart in the eye. “He said you hurt yourself.”
pain overflowing in buckets tangible finally understandable finally something he could control -
“I threw a tantrum.” Mozart sighs, ducking his head downwards. “I’ve got - I have anger issues, I think. I overreacted.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It was just a stupid joke.” he laughs, embarrassment making his eyes burn at the edges. “All they did was upload one of my drafts to YouTube. I overreacted because the fans were laughing.”
“It sounds like they invaded your privacy.”
invaded your son’s privacy - what did you write - I am not fighting this until I know what we are up against -
“It was on my laptop, just out in the open. If it was private, I should have done a better job of keeping it a secret.” Mozart snarls.
The lady’s eyes are wide - surprised.
Just like Nannerl -
“That’s it.” Mozart jumps to his feet, makes his way toward the door. “I know the rules, you can’t keep me here -”
“Wolfgang -”
“I’ll take whatever stupid little punishment Bang YG has for me, I don’t care, I’m done with this -”
“Wolfgang, take a deep breath -”
“Why does everyone make such a big deal out of this!” Oh, but his voice is loud , he should probably tone it down - “Everyone - you all think I’m some sort of - that I’m traumatized - they never hurt me, all they did was take my stupid - it was my fault, and anyway, it doesn’t matter - I forgave them, it was years ago, I should be over it!”
He’s crying, he registers suddenly, hands in his hair as his breathing comes in short gasps.
Johann’s going to make such a big deal out of this, he’ll never hear the end of it -
“Wolfgang.”
He jerks away from the hand on his shoulder, his back bumping against the door handle. “No, I -” He shakes his head. The world is fuzzy, fuck, he was sure his eyesight had been fixed, all those years ago, “- I don’t want to be here. Please, just let me go back. I wanna go back home.”
“Alright, Wolfgang, we don’t have to talk about it now.” the lady says. Wolfgang closes his eyes, breathes deeply, in and out. He’s old enough to know what regret sounds like. “I’ll call your manager -”
“Nuh - no.” he gasps, pressing his forehead against his folded knees. “Niccolo, I want Niccolo.”
He’s recording, you selfish bastard, someone spits in his ear. But of course Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart doesn’t care about anyone else but himself -
“Amadè?”
Wolfgang sobs, arms wrapping around Niccolo’s neck, and he buries his face in familiar curls. “Home, home, I want to go home.” he chants, clinging closer and closer and closer-
“This can’t go on like this.” he hears Johann whisper in the car on the way home. They think he’s asleep - Niccolo’s still holding him in his arms, Ludwig’s seated on their other side, and Dmitri and Pyotr had been asked to take the other car.
“We all know that.” Niccolo snaps back. Mozart cuddles closer, and Niccolo isn’t paying enough attention to figure out it’s a more conscious action than anything he could have done while fully asleep. “But he isn’t ready for it yet, and if we keep forcing him to talk about it -”
“You’ll wake him up.” Ludwig scolds. All bark and no bite. “Quiet down.”
“All I’m saying is you need to shelve this for some other time.” Niccolo hisses. “This is not fixing it, this is causing him more and more distress . And not just him - or did you not see how Dmitri and Pyotr looked when they saw him?”
“They’re guilty.” Ludwig sighs. “Dmitri was the one who posted the song to the public, and Pyotr was egging him on. They think this is all their fault.”
“Momo told them he had forgiven them, though.” Johann mutters. “They just couldn’t accept it.”
“Would you?” Ludwig asks dryly. Mozart doesn’t need to open his eyes to see the look on his face. “If you had done a silly little prank and it had turned out you were triggering your friend’s trauma, would you forgive yourself that easily?”
Trauma. There it was again.
“Oh, shh, it’s alright, Amadè, amore mio , I’m here.” Niccolo whispers, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. Mozart sniffles - he must have made a sound out loud.
“I agree with Paganini.” Ludwig says, after they think he’s fallen back asleep. “Dmitri and Pyotr might benefit from talking to a counselor some more but it’s clearly hurting Mozart more than helping at the moment. The best thing we can do now is to prevent something like this from triggering him, and let him know we’re here to support him whenever he does feel ready to talk about it.”
“That, and keep this a secret from Bang YG.” Niccolo murmurs. “If he puts Mozart on a hiatus -”
“That’s not going to happen.” Johann snaps.
The conversation comes to a standstill. Mozart takes a deep breath in, shifts in place, and pretends to be asleep as the car continues on in its journey.
I’m sorry, he wishes he could say. You’re going through all this trouble for me.
It was just a childish tantrum, he wants to tell them. There’s nothing to talk about.
I’m not traumatized, he would plead. I made a stupid mistake when I was a kid. I’m fine.
Actions speak louder than words, he decides.
Tomorrow, he’ll be better. Tomorrow, he’ll make such a ruckus as Ludwig and Johann prepare breakfast that they’ll swat at him with the spatulas and swipe at his hands to keep him away from the pancake mix. Dmitri will groan and threaten to throw him off the bed when he crawls under his blankets to smother him in a hug, and he’ll dramatically pose in the mirror to distract Pyotr while he practices his verses. He’ll duck into Niccolo’s recording booth and blow him kisses until he grows red in the face, and he’ll throw sultry winks at their fans’ cameras and make everyone happy.
Everything will be fine, because he’s fine.
He’s fine.
The front door creaks open.
“Hello, kitty.” Mozart croaks, smiling through tears as a cat comes running from across the street, whizzing up to him to rub herself onto his legs. “Did you come to cheer me up, hm?”
She looks up at him, green eyes sparkling in the night, and meows.
“Good girl.”
She sits there, eyes barely blinking, as he wrenches their garbage bin open, as Mozart’s hands pull, tearing away lists of people he trusts and accounts of his days and page after page after page of lined paper marked with blue ink. i think they all hate me, he sees before the paper tears in half. His vision swims, and he sees i hate them all, too , preserved perfectly in his classmates’ galleries, replicated a hundred - no, a thousand times, sent over message and Bluetooth and posts and we can delete the source, but once it’s out there -
He inhales.
Happy birthday, Wolfie! his sister’s writing greets him. Here’s your very own journal, so you can talk to someone when I’m not home. I love you, my favorite composer!
The cat squeezes herself gracefully in between his legs, long tail curling around his right leg.
The hardbound cover of his journal makes a thunk against the bottom of the garbage bin.
Mozart crouches down. He cradles the cat’s face in his hands and smiles at her fuzzy appearance.
Maybe he should tell Mama he needs to get glasses.
“Come back tomorrow.” he whispers, smoothing his thumbs upwards. The cat closes its eyes, slowly, and bumps her head against Mozart’s palm before trotting away.
The garbage bin is sealed.
Mozart steps back. Closes his eyes, just for a minute.
Exhale.
He smiles.
When he turns, the glint of metal in his hand shines in the dark night, just for a moment, before it’s gone, like it was never there in the first place.
A moment later, the front door creaks shut.