that which cannot be said [open]

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Natalia had been obsessing over Christmas. This was going to be her first Christmas as an adult, and she was sure that she was going to end up getting the wrong gifts for absolutely everyone. It had been the hardest to decide what she wanted to get her sister - their relationship had grown so much since the last Christmas, and Natalia wanted to express how grateful she was for everything that her sister had become to her. The thing was, there weren't any words for that. Of course there weren't. So Nat had decided to do what she always did when there were no words - she played the piano. It had been difficult, considering she no longer had regular access to a piano, but the owner of the music shop had agreed to let her use one of their instruments, after she had proved that she could actually play and wouldn't be souring his customer's ears with hundreds of wrong notes. Now, sitting on a piano bench, Natalia was picking her way through the first page of a composition she was playing around with. She was hoping that, with enough time, it would become a full length piece that she could play for her sister at Christmastime. At the moment, though, it was just a handful of disparate measures that Natalia was trying to string together into something coherent. She sighed, and then slammed her hands down on the keys, frustrated. Maybe this hadn't been the best idea for Andy's first real Christmas gift.

the song

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It was the first time in days that Aaron hadn't been stone-cold drunk. He had kept the hangover at bay by keeping himself intoxicated. There were rumors cropping up, as well as rumors of rumors. Fenrir was back. And this time, Aaron's mother wasn't around to protect him. No mother to protect him, and now he had five siblings to protect himself. The moment Aaron found out, he could practically feel his scars come alive, crawling and prickling with the realization that their creator had returned. It made Aaron sick to his stomach, and from that moment on he had taken to drinking as much as possible without killing himself.

A trick he had picked up while dealing with his hangovers was to hide in a rather sheltered corner in Dominic Maestro's, behind the display pianos. The owner didn't seem to mind, or maybe he just didn't notice the scarred man hiding in his store. But listening to the musicians occasionally try out the pianos was soothing to Aaron's aching body. He sat there with his bottle of water while one girl tried her hand at one of the baby grands. He leaned his head against the wall, quietly sipping his water while she played. When she slammed her hands down on the keys, the discordant sounds made Aaron yelp at the sudden throbbing it sparked in his head. "Don't," he moaned, his words slurred and his eyes unfocused. "Don't get frustrated. You play so well."

@natalia

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One of the worst habits that Natalia had was that she tended to zone out what was happening around her when she was playing music. Normally, that was a good thing, but she hadn’t considered the fact that she happened to be in a public place this time, and zoning out meant that she didn’t see when people she didn’t know came or entered the shop. When she heard someone moaning, it took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t alone, and another moment after that to process that the source of the voice was a man with scars on his face. He looked to be in rough shape, if you asked Nat’s opinion. Since he didn’t ask her opinion, though Natalia kept quiet.

“Thank you.” She said with a sigh when the man complimented her playing. She was a little rusty, but it would be rude not to accept his compliment. “I’m afraid that I’m trying to do more than play this time, though.” Natalia explained, not wanting the man to think that she was upset with her poor performance. “I’m trying to compose a song for my sister. As a Christmas gift.” Goodness, she really needed to get better at the balance between being too distant from others and oversharing, because she was fairly certain that she was doing the latter. Natalia closed her mouth before anything else could slip out, sighing softly again as she turned back to the piano, not sure whether to anticipate a response from the man.

@aaron

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Aaron rose unsteadily to his feet, grabbing a piano to brace himself. He blinked slowly, then rapidly, then slowly again, trying to shake himself out of the fog that had consumed him. Overcoming a hangover was like trying to wake up from a dream, a dream where pain could actually be felt. Everything felt like it was in slow motion and his body was not his own to control. It was annoying. It was necessary.

He grabbed a bench from another piano and sat down near the young woman, letting his head rest against her piano, turned slightly so that he could still see her face. It was probably a creepy site: a drunk man sitting next to a young, pretty woman listening to her play piano. But Aaron didn't care. He was still too hungover to care. "It's lovely," he said quietly, studying her face. The crease of frustration was evident upon it. "Don't stop. Keep playing. Your sister will love it."

@natalia

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The man who was talking to Natalia seemed to be a little hungover, and it would have been funny if he wasn’t so…intense. Natalia didn’t worry much about him, though – she was more concerned with the piano in front of her, including the sheet music that only had a few bars written in, the penciling lighter than usual while she figured out what she was doing. The man said that her sister would love it, and Natalia opened her mouth, closed it, and sighed. He was right, of course – Andy probably wouldn’t care if the song was absolute crap, because Nat wrote it. Still, she deserved better.

Natalia obeyed the command to play again, closing her eyes and trying her best not to look at the music she had already written so not to get caught in a creative rut. She found that, with her eyes closed, it was easier, and her fingers simply flew across the keys. The issue now would be remembering what she had played when she was done. Nat looked over at the man. “I don’t suppose you know anything about writing sheet music, do you?” If he was quick enough, maybe he could write while she played.

@aaron