Duet

S.J. Hartsfield

The pillar lights at Mugen were just beginning to flicker to life as she approached the building. The more tenacious of the student body filed outside in pairs and threes, having stayed late to study and tinker and better themselves. There were many, considering the elite nature of the academy.

She moved upstream in relation to the others, making her way toward the high-rise building and gaining no small amount of attention. Curiosity and detached confusion and, as always, unabashed admiration. What was he doing coming to school at this hour, the handsome Tenoh Haruka? Surely he hadn't forgotten something, collected as he was. Maybe a romantic liaison?

Well. Yes and no.

The truth was, Haruka's classmate-roommate-battlemate had parted ways with her after school, saying she had something to take care of. Haruka hadn't seen or heard from her since. It wasn't that she was worried, exactly - she had no right to be worried, and even less to feel a strange sense of suspicious jealousy. But she thought she'd check, just in case.

She'd only just rounded the corner of the corridor when she heard the Stradivarius. It echoed through the gloomy emptiness of the school, issuing from the only room whence a delicate light still burned. Haruka paused in the darkness, eyes closed, and let the music and the ever-present scent of seawater drift over her. She didn't know the piece Michiru was playing, which probably meant it was an original composition.

When she moved again, she stepped softly in an effort not to upset the sound. She peeked into the room first, to gauge her friend's mood, and her mouth went slack.

Michiru stood in a halo of illumination cast from a single lamp. She clearly didn't need enough light to read any sheet music; the piece was either indeed an original or one she had memorized. She still wore her Mugen uniform, perfectly pressed as always, but it was her expression that drew Haruka's eye. Her eyes flinched with the beat of the music, brows taut over the closed lids. The corners of her mouth twitched in fits and starts, full lips drawing back across her teeth. It might have been sadness or ecstasy or concentration, or some beautiful, sincere combination of all three.

Haruka slinked into the doorframe and leaned against it, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. She couldn't tear her eyes away, though she felt maybe she should – something about the scene seemed… intimate, somehow.

It lasted only a few more minutes before the bow slid off the strings with a painful skreet. Michiru lowered her arms but didn't turn. She didn't need to, the same way Haruka hadn't needed to be told that she'd find her in the music room. They felt each other, these days.

Haruka spoke first. "Do you know what time it is?" The question was a reprimand, but she couldn't keep the fondness from her voice. Wasn't sure she should. Wasn't sure she wanted to.

A delicate twist of her wrist and the lamplight glinted off of the face of Michiru's watch. "My," she muttered, and Haruka couldn't tell if she was talking to her or not. "I have been here a while." Finally she cast her eyes over her shoulder, focusing on the figure in the doorway. "You came for me?" A single nod, a beat of silence as they looked at each other. "Would you like to play with me?"

The taller girl's eyebrows disappeared beneath her sandy fringe. Michiru raised the violin back to the crook of her neck and brandished the bow with a pointed look. "Oh." Haruka's voice only cracked a very little bit. "Right. Sure." She shuffled into the room, discarding her jacket. Deepwater eyes followed her. Draping her jacket over the piano bench, she sat next to it and raised the lid and let her fingers press the keys in a swift scale. The sound seemed too big for the room. She looked up. "What shall we play?"

Michiru lowered the bow; it hummed gently across the strings. "I'll begin," she said. "You follow." At the other's questioning look, she clarified, "Improvise."

"I've never been much good at – " But the violinist had already begun. It was a different tune than the one before – much lower, a throbbing, minor melody that hummed low in Haruka's chest. It felt like wanting. Michiru's eyes were closed once more, the strange look from before returning on her face. Haruka stared unashamedly at first, then remembered herself and turned back to the piano. Her hands lifted, fingertips resting lightly on a chord. Another moment, and she began to play.

It was tentative, the movement of her hands. By contrast, Michiru charged ahead, arching against the music with ferocity Haruka rarely saw in her outside of the battlefield. She let herself feel out only single notes and uncertain arpeggios at first, but soon grew accustomed to the melody being offered to her. Before long, both hands were flying across the keys with the sort of unmitigated abandon that usually only came to her on the motorway.

She wouldn't be able to recall or replicate, later, what it was she played. She would only remember the feeling the music gave her – the twisting, clenching grip deep below her belly. Her slender fingers whipped lightning-quick, bronze streaks on black and white, and she felt herself pouring into the melody months of pauses and flushed faces, of things almost said and so many thoughts left unacted upon. The mission, her music said, our mission has always been here, between us, an impenetrable barrier between desire and possession.

To hell with the mission, came the stringed rejoinder. Unspoken, but undeniable.

Their songs swept together and collided in a brief cacophony before shifting and righting themselves, adjusting to the tempo of each other. Haruka felt it stronger then, the tug and the pulse of the air between them. Never before had she been able to play without sight; now she closed her eyes, even threw back her head as the sound pulled her into a sweet, wicked embrace. Faster now, fuller and brighter and impossibly right, and she could feel herself –

TRONK. She slammed her palms flat onto the keys. Michiru's bow slid over the strings only once, twice more before halting. She dropped her arms to her sides, instrument hanging precarious and limp in her hand. Her eyes were enormous and black in the low light, chest rising rapid and shallow, as breathless as Haruka felt; a fine sheen of sweat made her skin shine and Haruka would have put money on her own face matching it. "Why did you stop?" Michiru demanded.

Haruka tightened her hands into fists, hoping to mask their trembling from the other girl. She stood and the bench scraped back with an ugly sound that pained her, particularly in light of the lingering resonance of their duet. "I thought," she said, careful, "I'd better." Their eyes met and she didn't have to say before we went too far.

For a moment, they only stared at each other as their breathing slowed.

Michiru whipped around to fling open the case and slam the violin inside. Haruka winced; only a high fury could ever make her friend so careless of the instrument's value. Her mouth had hardly opened before Michiru interrupted her. "I'm going home," she hissed. Her shoes ticked against the tile floor, six steps to the door, and she turned. A breath ago, Haruka would have sworn she was about to say something, but her face changed and her expression of icy detachment was more frightening than any look of anger. "I'll see you there." Her tone was a hollow church bell; Haruka's nose burned and she hated herself.

The room felt colder when she left.

Haruka gathered her jacket from the piano bench and cloistered herself in it, but it did little to fend off the sudden chill. She could hear fading footfalls in the corridor and followed them, brain racing. What on earth was she supposed to say? That they'd gotten carried away, that the song felt like making love and they couldn't get that close? It was ludicrous, but it was the honest truth. And they'd both felt it, she knew they had.

It didn't take long for her to catch up. Her legs were longer and freer and more accustomed to speed. Michiru never looked back and Haruka walked just a bit behind her most of the way back to their apartment. She waited patiently for the lift to reach the lobby, for it to carry them to their floor, for Michiru to unlock the door. Not even a murmur passed between them and Michiru went straight for her room once they got inside.

"Michiru."

Years later, Haruka would curse herself for not paying attention to the look she had on her face when she spoke that name. It would have been extremely convenient to remember, because whatever it was made the frost around Michiru's eyes melt in a heartbeat. "We should get some rest," the smaller girl said. She sounded tired. "This is the first night in a long while that the sea has been quiet."

Haruka nodded, glad the storm had passed, hoping for more and knowing it couldn't be. "Should I make dinner?" she attempted.

Michiru actually smiled at that. "I wouldn't dare impose." Her gaze flickered to Haruka's hands, back to her face. "There are some things you just can't do." With a final, "Goodnight," she disappeared into her bedroom.

Haruka stood still for a long time in the darkened entryway before glancing down at her hand. She balled it into a fist once more. "You're right," she muttered. "There are."

~* End *~