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“How did you find this week’s assignment?” Rhemann asks, stirring a cup of tea as Jean unpacks his violin and fishes for the right music folders to place on the stand by the piano.
“As useless as ever,” Jean says, quickly tightening his bow hair and applying rosin. “Did it have to be a middle school theater class?”
Jean doesn’t know how this man is a tenured professor of violin performance at Julliard of all places, considering how absurd his methods are. It’s been several months since Jean was forcibly evicted from the Master’s studio and ordered into Rhemann’s, and he still isn’t used to the sunlight and comfortable couch and plush carpet.
He still isn’t used to the fact that he knows how long each lesson is, that he has to live in an apartment off campus and not on a mattress in the practice room assigned to him.
The one thing that has stayed the same is his violin. Violins are temperamental, and his one from France had been destroyed by the Master in front of him on his very first day in America. It was his first full size instrument, low end on the relative scale of quality violins, but the first good one he had ever had been privileged enough to play. This one has been with him ever since, loaned to him by some donor who enjoys patronizing the Master’s more promising students. It matches Jean like a glove, strong on the upper positions of the D and G strings, capable of withstanding pressure from his bow without the notes cracking, and clear and crisp and light on the higher registers.
“Yes,” Rhemann answers plainly. “Jeremy said you did a very impassioned recitation of a Shakespeare monologue.”
It is only the knowledge that this man controls Jean’s entire future that stops him from rolling his eyes. For months, he has sent Jean on some absurd adventure every week that has nothing to do with classical violin performance, and he sends Jeremy with him as insurance. Jean has attended jazz nights, poetry readings, ballet classes, musicals, art exhibitions, group yoga in the park, and more, and he has yet to see the point of it all. They never really discuss it during studio, and Jeremy just claims he’s going along because now that he’s won a seat with the New York Philharmonic, he misses his conservatory days, but all it has done is eat time.
The months until Jean’s final juries and auditions and the dreaded concerto competition are dwindling down, and they haven’t picked a piece. Rhemann has refused to pick a piece.
“Tune and then pick a few scales to warm up. I’ve got to dig for some music,” Rhemann says good-naturedly, and Jean does as he’s told.
It’s second nature, working through scales and then his technique exercises of the week as Rhemann putters around the space, occasionally rapping a pencil on a bookshelf or the music stand to remind Jean to focus on the technique, or that he’s not quite centered in the pitch. Jean still doesn’t understand this strange new teacher most of the time. On a benevolent day, the Master would have made him start over and redo everything until it was perfect; on a bad day, that would have been the end of Jean’s lesson, and he would be lucky to be let out of his practice room for class the next day.
“I’ve been looking through your repertoire,” Rhemann says, after Jean has sufficiently warmed up his fingers and his mind. “I think we need to start evaluating options for the concerto competition.”
Jean’s heart hammers in his chest. “I have been practicing several options on my own.” It feels like a sin admitting it, and he still finds himself bracing for the inevitable punishment. But Rhemann just chuckles, his dark hands paging through a few different books in his hand as he plops himself into his arm chair, a music stand in front of him.
“What’s your top three?” he asks. “I want to hear them.”
“Sibelius, Shostakovich 1, and Saint-Saëns 3,” Jean recites easily, the pieces that have been assigned to him by the Master since his very first day in his studio. The Master had heard him play one scale and had known Jean’s true soul—he is meant for the dark, the sad, the technically precise. He cannot convey joy or love through music, and the Master had spent the next several years carving away any chance Jean would have at virtuosity, instead making him technically unstoppable, the perfect supporting voice to the magic of Kevin and Riko.
“Start with Shostakovich,” Rhemann decides, and Jean quickly shuffles for the sheet music. He knows the opening movement like the back of his own hand, but this is the first time that they are doing real repertoire. Jean’s juries last spring had consisted of short, cadenza-esque pieces, meant to showcase his technique without worrying about musicality, and he had stumbled his way through the chaconne that Rhemann had picked alongside it, his injured fingers still refusing to cooperate fully.
They have completely rebuilt the way that Jean plays the violin. Before, Jean held his body as tight as a ripcord, rigid and tense and determined to have absolute control over every millimeter of movement on his bow and every note perfectly centered in the pitch, ringing clear and true. It didn’t matter if the required fingering or technique made Jean’s hand contort or hurt so long as it sounded perfect to the Master, and Rhemann had spent all summer slowly untangling all of the harmful posture and rigidity, not allowing him to move on from the exercise books until he had been satisfied that his healing muscles and tendons were ready for real work.
But Jean is barely thirty measures into the piece when Rhemann holds up his hand.
“No, that’s not it. Sibelius,” he says, and Jean scrambles to obey. This time, he makes it through the first page before Rhemann stops him. “Saint-Saëns.”
Jean cannot stop the rebellious flutter of hope in his chest when Rhemann nods along to the rich, low opening. He is not failing. If he can just play this well enough, then it will be okay. They will work on it, and it will be better. If he is enough, then it’ll be good.
Rhemann listens to the entire first movement, before he shakes his head.
“I want to try something different,” he says. “I was sent a recording through the grapevine from your home practice.” Rhemann has at least given up on Jean using the university practice rooms, as that is training that he will never be broken from.
No one outside of the Master’s studio and the faculty has heard Jean perform a solo work. His quartet required him to play viola, as Riko and Kevin were easily violins one and two, and they were not permitted to engage in the tomfoolery other students did before orchestra or chamber rehearsals, doodling and testing out repertoire well out of their talent.
With the way the Master set up his studio, it hadn’t been an issue. The whole thing was soundproofed, and there was a practice room for each of them where they spent all of their time outside of structured class. Rhemann’s is different—he just has one large room for lessons only, and they’re supposed to use the university practice rooms when they are not actively in a private. But Jean cannot risk being heard, and so he had set up his own crudely soundproofed box in the corner of the apartment he shares with Cat and Laila—a cellist and percussionist respectively.
So if Rhemann heard something through the so-called grapevine, it’s because one of them sent it to Jeremy who sent it to his old teacher. And Jean knows exactly what it is, a moment of weakness and sentimentality he had been foolish to indulge.
“It is not in my repertoire,” Jean deflects instantly. “I have not studied it in full.”
“Humor me,” Rhemann says, placing sheet music for the Tchaikovsky violin concerto in front of Jean. “Play as far as you know.”
“Yes, Sir,” Jean forces out, but he has to close his eyes as his vision begins to flash away from the sunny, warm studio. It is his first time in Paris, and he is gripping his sister’s hand tightly as she stares up at the stage as a woman in a beautiful dress plays one of the most famous violin concertos of all time. She hums it the entire long train ride home, and she finds it on the radio, and soon the melody of the first movement is synonymous with blackberry bushes and duckling-patterned dresses and the one person on this earth he would give everything for.
He hears her laugh as he focuses on the melody, on widening his vibrato and making sure the strength of the tone is never harsh but still lusciously full and powerful.
“That’s the one,” Rhemann says quietly, when Jean just stares into the distance for several long sentences. “It fits you like a glove.”
“I can’t,” Jean says immediately, the warmth of nostalgia instantly replaced with the freezing tidal wave of panic. “That is… if Riko is not using it, Kevin is. Using the same piece as them—”
“Kevin is performing Brahms,” Rhemann says. “I don’t know what Riko is planning on using.”
“I can’t. He will use it,” Jean stutters out. “Please. Please pick another. I will do anything.” Jean drops to his knees, prepared to beg like he has not been forced to in many long months.
“You cannot let him dictate your life,” Rhemann says forcefully, as he gets on the ground with his student. “You cannot let him limit your opportunities, your repertoire. Trust me here, Jean. Give it a go. We can work on Sibelius as a backup.”
“It is your studio. I will obey what you wish,” Jean says lifelessly.
Rhemann doesn’t know what he’s asking Jean to do. He doesn’t know that this is going to sign Jean’s death warrant. He doesn’t know what the process of having to work with this concerto day in and day out is going to do to him.
But it has never been Jean’s choice. He will accept whatever fate his masters decide.
Jean was foolish to think he ever stood a chance in the concerto competition. He was naive to ever allow himself the security blanket of hope.
——————
“Do not ever record me again,” Jean growls the second he storms into the shared apartment. “You do not understand what damage you have caused.”
“Easy,” Cat says, holding up the palms of her hands in surrender. “What happened?”
“I have to play Tchaikovsky. It is my last chance and I am being sabotaged by you,” Jean forces out. “And Rhemann.”
“Whoah, back up,” Jeremy says, materializing from the lumpy couch. “That’s the opposite of sabotage.”
“Yes, it is,” Jean grinds out. “It isn’t in my repertoire for a reason. This will ruin me.”
“No, it won’t. I heard you practicing. It’s good. Why haven’t you performed it?” Jeremy asks, as if this is genuinely confusing and not the most obvious thing in the world.
“Oh, I see what’s happening,” Cat says finally. “I did not send you that audio clip for you to send it to Rhemann, Jeremy Alan.”
“Jean,” Jeremy starts, reaching for his boyfriend’s hands and trying to not let the hurt on his face show when Jean flinches away. “Look at me,” he orders softly, and he waits until Jean’s grey eyes lock on his own and he accepts Jeremy’s grip on his hands before he will continue. “We are not sabotaging you. If you really don’t want to do it, Professor Rhemann won’t make you. But I think you should try it. It really could be magical.”
“You understand nothing. I am not good enough,” Jean forces out. “It is bad enough that I have to embarrass myself by competing. To perform a piece that I am unequipped to play… I am not Kevin or Riko or you. I do not have the understanding, the drama, the… I have been informed so many times that I am incapable of imparting any emotion besides shame or misery. I am just not meant to be a soloist.”
“I am going to kill Professor Moriyama,” Cat says, not for the first time. “You could be a soloist, Jean. I really mean that. I know that it’s terrifying to let them hear you… but you’re never going to know if you don’t try. Has Professor Rhemann steered you wrong yet?”
“He hasn’t steered me at all,” Jean argues. “All he has done is set me useless tasks. At least the Master wasn’t a fool enough to ignore that the only way to get greatness out of anyone is to beat it out of them. The only way to become great is to set the bar impossibly high and make the consequences for failure unfathomable.”
“If you really believe that all of that is true, why do you know Tchaikovsky at all?” Jeremy presses, after the thick uncomfortable cloud begins to dissipate after Jean’s confession. “Why do you practice it when you think no one can hear you?”
“I won’t talk about this with you,” Jean spits, before he is picking up his violin case and storming into the makeshift practice room.
Jean wishes he hated the violin. He wishes that he hated practicing, that he could stuff all of his feelings about it into one neat box and be done with the damned circus of elite classical music.
His fingers ache, the tendons in his wrist unhappy with the tension he had held in them during his private, but he works through his scales and arpeggios. Focusing on making each note as clear in pitch and tone as possible, unable to lean on vibrato to fudge and obfuscate the slight errors, he works his newly assigned passages over and over until he is satisfied.
And then he stares down the first movement of Tchaikovsky. Rhemann has already given him some fingering suggestions, and he has asked Jean to mainly focus this week on getting some of the more technical passages of the first movement in a position to be polished and cleaned for their next private.
Jean has never had the luxury of indulgence. He does as he has been ordered to do to the best of his ability, but he cannot break apart and drill the complex passages of chords and tricky runs that span the entire range of the instrument and the rest without giving into the weakness now.
He knows the opening melody like the back of his own hand. He had heard it whistled and hummed, softly sung by his sister as she made up dance moves to go along with it in their backyard. The strength of Jean’s tone in higher positions on the G string has always been one of his saving graces, and why he is so easily relegated to viola.
It has never felt warm, not like Kevin’s or Jeremy’s tone on the same melodies. But he can hear a soft voice in his ear, gentle hands correcting the positioning of his fingers as she teaches him how to properly plie and arabesque, reminding him to be gentle, Jean-Yves, it should look relaxed and he does his best impression of it.
This is the fundamental problem. Jean feels the warmth in his chest, but it’s immediately encased in an unbreakable coating of cement to stop it from burning him alive from the inside out, hardened and cooled before he can even really feel it.
If Jean ever wants to see his sister again, he needs to win. He needs the money. And if he cannot practice the damn piece without wanting to throw up from the guilt and the memories, he stands no chance.
Jean has to get it together. For Elodie.
——————
“We’ve got a doozy of an assignment today,” Jeremy says, even as he shuffles back and forth between his booted feet to try and stay warm, hiding his face as much as possible in his navy scarf, his obscenely bright red violin case barely able to be worn on his back with the size of his puffy winter coat. “The flu has swept through the Nutcracker pit. We’re subbing in for tonight’s performance, as a favor from Rhemann to the ballet.“ Jean grins, which surprises Jeremy. “Don’t tell me you like the Nutcracker.”
“It isn’t the same in France,” Jean explains. “It is rare for the Paris Ballet to perform it, and certainly never as long of a run as you do here. The music is exquisite. It’s a good ballet.”
“The dancers loathe it,” Jeremy whispers conspiratorially. “Last year, I dated someone in the corps. They would go on and on about how difficult it was on their body, but also how the first act is just all walking around and no dancing.”
Jean shoves down memories of his sister trying to learn the Sugar Plum Fairy variation from a grainy video in their weed-filled, tiny backyard. “The plot doesn’t matter. Tchaikovsky writes a beautiful score. The pas de deux is divine.”
“Did you go to the ballet often in France?” Jeremy asks, even as they head off towards the theater. “Have you played this one before?”
“I’ve subbed into the pit before for several ballets,” Jean confesses. Stuart Hartford runs the entire machina of the city ballet and the attached massive training program, and Jean is free labor, at least on paper. “I am familiar with most of the standard repertoire this company performs.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Rhemann,” Jeremy says conspiratorially. “I think he just wanted you to experience some holiday cheer.”
“He is a nuisance,” Jean mutters. “He has insisted that I perform Tchaikovsky. We are running out of time to prepare it, and he doesn’t seem at all perturbed that I’m going to make a fool out of myself.”
“He asked me to sit in on your rehearsal with the pianist next week, if that’s okay,” Jeremy says. “If you want my opinion.”
“Of course,” Jean says, as if it’s a foregone conclusion. “I need someone with a harsher ear than Professor Rhemann. Or at least someone who will tell me when I am making horrific mistakes.”
“Have you considered that there aren’t horrific mistakes, and that’s why there haven’t been harsh corrections?” Jeremy asks, as they finally step into the back entrance of the theater. “Oh, thank fuck it’s warm in here. I thought my toes were going to freeze.”
“California idiot,” Jean says with a dramatic eye roll. “This isn’t even the worst of it. Get better shoes.”
Here’s the secret that Jean can never admit: he loves the time he spends with Jeremy. He loves doing stupid things because it means that he gets to see Jeremy smile and laugh, and it’s worth all of the embarrassment and wasted time. He loves seeing what Jeremy loves, and he loves the fond look in those brown eyes when Jean lets go of all of his learned fear and rigidity and approaches a middle school theater class with the same intensity as he does his violin practice.
Jeremy just kisses him, and suddenly both of their lips are much warmer than they have any right to be. Jean’s chest is much warmer than it has any right to be. He can blame it on the warm air gushing out of the theater, or Jeremy’s body heat, but deep down Jean knows that it’s the incurable affection and fondness that Jeremy has inflicted onto him.
The warmth in his chest doesn’t go away, not until they’re through the pas de deux. It’s an honor, sitting thigh to thigh in the cramped, dark, pit and choking on the smoke from the fog machine just to get to spend time with someone as talented and bright as Jeremy.
The way Jeremy plays Tchaikovsky is the same way it feels when his arms are around Jean. It is pure, golden light and gentle warmth, the perfect coziness and safety that Jean has craved his entire life.
Jean thinks he knows why this is his assignment of the week from Rhemann. It’s something he can cling to, something to remember, to smoothen out his sharp edges and crack open the thick protective shell Jean has worn during the entire rehearsal process. It’s something to emulate, something good and easy and untainted that he can try to funnel into his phrasing and his playing.
He still savors every second of the ballet. In a kinder world, Elodie would be on the stage behind him.
Jean almost indulges himself and imagines it before reality firmly shuts that box in his brain for him. Hoping and wishing will do nothing to give Elodie what she deserves. The only thing that can help her is a perfect performance.
He owes her his best effort. He cannot allow himself to be distracted.
——————
“I know you know that wasn’t right,” Rhemann says, over the increasingly terrible sounding runs at the end of the first movement. “Stop. Stop.”
“I know it was wrong,” Jean says quietly, flexing his hand to try and fix the ache in his bones and his tendons. “I will do it again.” He thinks he has said the same phrase fifty times in the last hour. Nothing is working for him today. His hands feel foreign, completely separate entities from his brain, and it’s leading to sloppy intonation and a skipping bow and a performance that feels more forced than any other emotion.
Jean’s hands are actively fighting him. He has drilled this piece into them, and yet they do him the extreme disrespect of seemingly forgetting it every time he tries to engage them. All of his energy is going into forcing his brain to work ten times as hard to compensate, anticipating every note and every bow change before it occurs, just to save himself from the mortifying failure of disappointing Professor Rhemann so close to the competition.
His fingers trip themselves up in the same spot as the last time, and Jean cannot help his noise of frustration as he abandons the plan of just trying to hack through the movement in one go to dissect the run.
Five times in a row, the same mistake happens. He needs to perform it ten times correctly now as penance for his mistake.
Six. That’s twelve times, now.
Again.
Seven. Fourteen.
Again—
“Stop,” Rhemann orders, his voice more forceful than Jean has ever heard it. “Put your violin in its case.”
“No. I need to be better than this. It is not good enough. If you will not fix it—”
“We will fix it, but not like this,” Rhemann says. “Put it down or I am stopping the lesson.” It is rare for Rhemann to put his foot down, and Jean has never known how to disobey a direct order. He wonders if this is when this strange teacher finally snaps, finally realizes that the only way to get anything good out of Jean is to force it out with bruises and blood.
“What is my contrition?” Jean asks hollowly, every cell in his body screaming at him to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness.
“Breathe,” Rhemann says. “In through the nose, hold for four counts, then out the mouth. I am making both of us a cup of tea.”
“This is a waste of—”
“Breathe,” is all he’ll grace Jean’s protests with, and he stands there observing until he is satisfied enough with Jean’s progress to retreat to his galley kitchen to prepare tea. “When your fight or flight response has shut off, take a seat on the couch.”
“We are wasting time,” Jean growls, but the man doesn’t even dignify that with a response. He just puts a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of Jean, neatly centered on a coaster, and he brings his own to his arm chair.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on today?” Rhemann asks plainly, only after Jean has taken a few sips.
“I apologize for my—”
“Not about your playing. Up here,” he says, tapping his index finger against his temple a few times. “I am frankly shocked it’s taken you this long to have an off day in studio. What’s more concerning is how you’re reacting.”
“It is unacceptable. I apologize for wasting your time,” Jean corrects immediately. “My attitude is unacceptable.”
“Breathe,” Rhemann orders again. “I am not mad at you, or upset with you. I just want to understand.”
“You should be. I am making stupid, silly mistakes that a middle schooler wouldn’t. It is disgraceful,” Jean forces out. “If I do not correct the error, it will take.”
“Forcing it isn’t helping,” Rhemann says calmly. “I think we’re done for today.”
“No. I need to be better than I am if I stand a chance at winning,” Jean dismisses.
“What do you think about, when you’re playing?” Rhemann asks, after letting the silence sit for an uncomfortable, long moment.
“What do you mean? I am thinking about the next phrase, the difficult run, focusing on my bow technique, or my tone, or the five thousand other things I need to do to play it correctly…” Jean lists off.
“Who has your favorite recording of Tchaikovsky?” Rhemann asks, because it’s clear that coming at it from the original angle will not get him anywhere.
“Perlman,” Jean answers without hesitation.
“And what do you feel when you listen to him play it? Not what you think about his technique or phrasing, but feel,” Rhemann clarifies.
Jean swallows the lump in his throat, trying desperately to keep the chained box in his head labelled with his sister’s name shut when it rattles and quakes with the strength of fight of what’s inside. He has trusted Rhemann with a lot—he has done every single one of his infernal experiments, and he has agreed to perform Tchaikovsky, and Jean realizes that he doesn’t have to hold this part of himself separate. It would have been a weakness, back in the Master’s studio. The points where he and Rhemann have faltered are when Jean has refused to tell him crucial pieces of information—old breaks or swollen tendons or something about what Rhemann is doing that Jean cannot separate from his past. He cannot allow them to falter right now, not when so much is at stake.
“I think about my sister,” Jean starts with, his voice hoarse. “She is three years younger than me, but I have not seen her for many years. Tchaikovksy is her favorite concerto. I think about her and I—” Jean’s voice cracks. “I feel…” But he just shakes his head, unable to force the words out.
“Take your time,” Rhemann says, as gentle as he always is. Jean has never deserved any of it.
“If I win…” Jean’s voice breaks again. He has not even told Jeremy this truth. He has not even told Cat. “If I win… I will have enough money to get her out of there. She is a ballerina, and she will train at the school. If I am good enough.”
Rhemann sits with what Jean says for a long moment before he leans forward. “One more experiment: play the opening, just the first page. Think of your sister and just play. I don’t care if your bow skips or a note isn’t perfect. Just try and feel it.”
Jean can barely swallow around the hard lump in the back of his throat, but his trembling hands pick up his violin and he gives himself two breaths to try and ground himself, and he bends his knees just to feel the weight of his body pressing down through his feet onto the floor.
One more inhale, and he lets the box burst open.
His hands know the melody and the notes, and they can be trusted on their own. There is no part of himself that can hide anymore, and it is terrifying. But Jean has not gotten this far, has not gotten this close, by letting fear, even when it isn’t fear but abject terror, stop him.
He plays, and he can see nothing but the coast of Marseille and Elodie flitting around their garden like a fairy and everything that he had been ripped away from. He doesn’t even hear himself. He couldn’t report to Rhemann if he played a single note in tune. But his hands continue to move and for the first time he wonders if setting the crushing, omnipresent expanse of his love for his sister free is the answer to save her after so many years of knowing in his soul that it needed to be hidden to be kept safe.
At the end of the first page, he cannot bear to look at this strange teacher. He cannot bear it if it’s not the answer, if it’s not what he wanted, if it makes it all sound worse.
Rhemann’s hand is a sudden and heavy weight on Jean’s shoulder, and he cannot help his flinch. “Son, look at me.” Dragging his eyes up is almost an insurmountable task, but Jean manages it anyways. “That was the best you have ever sounded. I could feel it.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Jean forces out, his voice coming out uneven, harsh, and forced. “Don’t do that.”
“I have never lied to you,” Rhemann says, his words deliberately slow, so that each of them holds the weight he thinks they deserve. “You play like that next week? You’ll blow them all away. I’ve been doing this a long time, son, and I know talent when I see it. You’ve always had that. But your power is your heart. I’ve seen how big your heart is, even though you’ve done your best to hide it away. It’s always shining through the cracks, and it’s magic when you let it out.”
Jean barely remembers to put down his violin, a loaner worth thousands of dollars more than he could ever hope to repay, before he shatters.
He has wanted to break since he first stepped foot in this godforsaken country. But he has endured and endured and endured, and he just cannot do it anymore. He cannot do it when there was kindness the whole time. There always was, and Jean will never know why he never got to experience it until so recently, why it was hidden and secluded away from him for so many long, terrible years.
There was kindness the whole time, but Jean wasn’t built for it. He wasn’t built for it and so he has no idea what to do with it now that it’s finally being given to him.
Rhemann just offers him more kindness, when he wraps his arms around him.
——————
“If it weren’t for the pills, my heart would be beating out of my chest,” Jean confesses, staring at his hands to make sure they are not visibly shaking. The beta blockers have done nothing to quell the raging monster of anxiety in his chest, but he sees why Riko uses them like a crutch for every audition and performance and why Jean was never permitted to—despite the all-consuming fear, his hands are steady. The Master would just beat Jean black and blue if his hands shook on stage, and that fear was always enough to help Jean get himself back in line.
It is another thing that is unfathomable to Jean—being in a studio where they are talked about so openly. Professor Rhemann had been explicitly clear that they were only for high-nerves situations, but they are a useful tool that it is good to understand.
And so the experiment, as this entire process has been, is the concerto competition.
“How are you feeling?” Rhemann asks, as Jean idly drills his most troublesome run for the fiftieth time in a row. “Your pianist should be here by now.”
It’s at that moment that RIko swaggers into the warm up room. Despite all the claims about random audition order, it somehow ended up that the final three are just that—three, then two, then one. “I never thought I’d see the day where you got arrogant enough to think you could hack it as a soloist, Three...”
“You’re not allowed in here,” Rhemann says gruffly, and from Kevin’s corner he can see Wymack rising to join the situation as Riko, the Master, and the mousy pianist trembling in fear behind them muscle their way into the room. Jeremy is also on his feet, stepping in front of Jean like that is enough to save him. “You’ve been given your own warm up room. Go use it.”
“This is the warm up room for the competition. We can all remain civil,” the Master says, but Wymack just crosses his arms.
“I’ll remind you that you’re on probation, Professor Moriyama,” he says coldly. “And that you’re not allowed to be within two hundred feet of Kevin. So either go to your designated room, or I will call the cops.”
“I can stay in here,” Riko says. “I think I want to listen in on my competition, if you can call it that… a violist and a cripple…”
“Stay in here a second longer and I’ll punch you in the face,” Jeremy threatens, even with a smile on his face. “No. Don’t say anything. I don’t want or require a response.”
There are a tense few seconds where the Master stares at them all, disgust not even bothering to disguise itself on his wrinkled face. “Riko, come.”
“I wouldn’t count on your pianist arriving. She was very easily bribed,” Riko says, before he slinks out the door.
There is nothing on this earth that could stop Jean’s panic attack at that revelation. Not even Jeremy’s hands in his own, not even the smell of his cologne, not even if he was on the sea in France with his sister and he never met the Moriyama family.
Jean is so fucked. He can’t go in there without a pianist. He is going to be laughed out of the room. They were going to laugh him out of the room anyway. Jean is not good enough to be a soloist. He is not good enough for his scholarship; he is not good enough for his place in Rhemann’s studio; he is not good enough to save his sister. He isn’t good enough.
He has never been enough.
“Breathe,” Jeremy orders, pulling Jean to sit on the floor before he can pass out and concuss himself. “We will figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”
“He can’t compete without accompaniment,” Kevin says harshly, even as his own teacher is trying to get him to ignore the developing drama. “Do not send him in there alone.”
“Do not engage, Kevin,” Wymack orders, a hand on his shoulder turning him around. “Bubble.”
“I can’t do this,” Jean forces out. “I won’t embarrass myself. I won’t.” He is too focused on trying to force air in and out of his uncooperative lungs to notice that the angry, short pianist always just feet from Kevin has made his way across the room.
It has always been a mystery why Minyard agrees to play piano for Kevin when he’s the most gifted composer in recent memory. It’s even more of a mystery why he’s still in school at all, considering his blatant distaste for everything about the classical music world.
“Tchaikovsky, right?” he says, his voice as uninterested and dull as ever.
“Andrew, would you—” Jeremy immediately starts begging, but he silences when Andrew holds up his palm, his cold gaze fixed only on Jean.
“If you call Neil back,” Andrew bargains. “And this is a one time thing. I’m not at your beck and call.”
“What does the maggot want with me now?” Jean asks, but he finds that his breath is already coming easier, the frigidity and blatant aggression from Neil’s pet composer predictable enough to be soothing.
“Do you want to talk, or do you want to rehearse? You get one run through,” Andrew says, clearly bored, which means that not even he knows what Josten is up to.
“Thank you,” Jean forces out, and he pulls himself to his feet. “I can’t—”
“No repayment,” Andrew says, and then he’s taking a seat on the bench in front of the one piano in the warm up room. But Andrew is only a few notes into the opening phrase before the assistant is calling Jean back.
“Five minutes,” Rhemann tries to bargain, but Engle just shrugs. She has never been notable enough to enter Jean’s attention in the Master’s studio, and he can guess that she is actively part of this sabotage.
“They’re running behind as it is. I’ve been told it’s now or never,” she says cooly. “So what’s it going to be?”
“I won’t be a problem,” Andrew says. “If you can get through it while actively in a panic attack, let’s get it over with.”
Jean nods stiffly, and he starts to walk out of the room before a hand catches him on the shoulder. He’s expecting it to be Jeremy when he’s whirled around, but by the weight of it he knows it cannot be. Which means it’s Rhemann, who is staring at him with warm eyes and a smile that betrays the serious expression on his face.
“Let yourself feel it,” he says. “Forget about all of this bullshit. Just play, kid. Just let it rip, and there’s no way that you don’t shine.”
Jean has to swallow the lump in his throat, and he allows the funeral march in his ears to drown out the praise that he has done nothing to deserve during the entire long walk down the hallway to the auditorium.
But his hands don’t shake.
It’s fundamentally insane, what he is about to do. Everything about this is insane—he is playing a piece that he is not suited for with a pianist he has never rehearsed with, and there is nothing that he can do to change it. Jean is so fucked that it isn’t even funny.
The lights are so bright in the auditorium, the audience dark enough to obscure the panel of faculty members tasked with judging the competition.
It doesn’t matter who they are. They all know that Jean will never be good enough; they have all known it since the day he stepped foot on campus.
There is a reason that Jean Moreau is not allowed to be heard alone.
When it really comes down to it, everything is about Elodie. This is his last chance to save her, to give her the life that she deserves. To bring her somewhere safe, somewhere where she can train, somewhere where she can lay her head down at night without fear.
Jean is doomed to fail. There is no way that he can save her. Not with this piece, not with his incurable inadequacy.
What he can do is play for her.
Jean loves his sister more than anything else on this planet. Most days, the pain of having to condense and compress the infinite expanse of it small enough so that it can be shoved and locked somewhere safe makes it hard to breathe—he has to keep it hidden so that it can stay safe, but the pressure is always threatening to burst the chains of the box, to implode and crush him from the inside out.
When he hears the opening melody of the most beautiful first movement in the violin repertoire, Jean lets it explode. He knows this concerto like the veins on his palm, and there is nothing that he can do but disappear into the moment.
Jean’s saving grace has always been his unconventional technique, the way his large hands and grossly long fingers can stretch and walk up the fingerboard where most other violinists have to shift positions. His left hand nimbly crawls up and down and up and down, but his heart and his mind are in France.
There is a hand in his, and a mop of curls rests on his shoulder on the train home from Paris.
There is nothing that he can do but try to channel the infinite expanse of what he feels in his chest through his bow as it drags across the strings. He puts all of Elodie’s warmth, all of her misplaced love for him, all of the love Jean has ever been able to feel into the notes and the melodies, and he lets them sing.
Andrew must have been listening to Jean in the warm up room, because he knows exactly where Jean is going to stretch and compress the tempo, and he makes it sound as though Jean and him have rehearsed together hundreds of times.
Jean plays. He plays, and he hopes they can all hear what little fire of hope and warmth he has tended to only in the most secluded and hidden corners of his soul. He hopes that, despite all of the distance the years apart have carved between them and the ocean between them, despite all of the horrible things he has been forced to endure that have carved out every molecule of empathy and heart and goodness inside of him, despite all of the pieces of him that are missing and broken, that the only thing that matters is that he is Elodie Moreau’s brother. He is her older brother, and that’s the only thing that matters in the world. He is still here, and he would do it all again if it meant that she would be safe. He would do it over and over again.
He doesn’t realize that the end is coming until it is staring him in the face, Andrew pushing the tempo of the energetic ending until Jean is barely hanging on.
After the final note’s echo finally dissipates into oblivion in the concert hall, Jean feels his soul fade alongside it. The best of him has always been Elodie, has always been what he has done to try and make things right for his sister.
The hope of it is gone. His best will never hold a candle to Kevin or Riko—he can tell by the silence from the panel that this was as ill-received as he dreaded. There is not a single rustling of paper nor a single word spoken to him before Jean walks off the stage. How could he be so stupid? How could he forget his place so easily? He was foolish and naive and stupid for daring to think that this could ever work.
Will Jeremy and Rhemann allow him to stay, when they realize that Jean’s best is an abject failure?
Will Elodie ever forgive him for leaving her behind?
All he has done is trade one hell for another. And he has likely doomed them both with his stupid, naive, unkillable foolishness.
——————
Jean opens the email on the couch. Cat, Laila, and Jeremy are all there with him, all also constantly refreshing their inboxes on their phones as they wait for the results of the competition.
Jean opens the email on the couch and then promptly locks himself in the tiny bathroom.
He has to read it four times before he convinces himself that he’s not hallucinating, and then he is sobbing.
It isn’t pretty. It’s loud and harsh and ugly and snotty but Jean doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because suddenly, impossibly the years of suffering and pain and work have paid off. Jean has survived the torment and the pain and the darkness with one singular goal: save enough money to buy his sister’s freedom.
Jean has survived off of beans and rice and ramen packets to save every single cent of his stipend, and it was never going to be enough.
But he won. Somehow, he has won. Kevin is second, and Riko isn’t even mentioned at all in the email. Jean won.
He’s going to perform the first movement with the school’s top orchestra. He’s going to perform the whole concerto with the fucking New York Phil. He’s won five thousand fucking dollars, and that’s enough that he can wire it to Hartford and Elodie will be on a plane to him within the week.
It’s enough. It’s finally enough.
Jean is still sobbing hysterically when Cat picks the lock on the bathroom door, and suddenly there are arms around him and his head is tucked beneath his best friend’s chin.
“Please tell me these are happy tears,” she whispers. “Because mine are happy tears. I am so fucking proud of you.”
“They are happy tears,” Jean confesses. “I needed the money, Cat. I really needed this.”
“You beat Kevin fucking Day. You beat Riko Moriyama. Man, I cannot wait to hear you perform this,” Cat continues, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of his head even as Jean cries harder.
“My sister,” he says, and he feels Cat tense just a little. It is the first time he has mentioned his family at all in their several months of sharing the tiny apartment. “I can finally get her out of there.”
“Oh, Jean.” That’s Jeremy, now, standing in the doorway, hesitant to try to cram into the already full space. “What’s her name?”
“Elodie,” Jean says hesitantly, wiping at his eyes as he tries to pull the pieces of himself back together. “She will train at the ballet. It was already decided if I could just get her here.”
“Well, we need to celebrate extra then,” Cat says, still holding him tightly. “Has Rhemann called you yet?”
“The one time he did that it went terribly,” Jeremy explains. “I bet he texted you. It probably starts with a deserved ‘I told you so’, if I had to guess.”
“I do not understand,” Jean says finally. “Kevin is better. I have heard Kevin’s Brahms. That was the right choice.”
“Kevin’s Brahms is phenomenal, but your Tchaikovsky is better,” Jeremy says simply. “It’s magical, Jean. You have to know that.”
“What if it’s not good enough?” Jean whispers. It has finally set in that he is going to have to perform solo, something that he has not done since France. Everyone is going to judge him, and there is no way that he can live up to the legacy that Riko and Kevin and the Master have created. “The Master is going to—”
“The Bastard can throw whatever tantrum he wants. It can’t change the result, now that the whole school has been sent the email,” Jeremy says, before his phone starts to ring in his pocket. “Kevin. I’ll step out, and then I’m ordering from the Thai place that Jean loves but pretends he doesn’t.”
“You don’t have to step out,” Jean says quietly. “Whatever he wants to say, he can say it to my face.”
“You’re on speaker,” Jeremy says as the call connects, before Kevin can say something that Jeremy will regret on his behalf.
“Jean’s there?” Kevin asks, and he takes the silence as the confirmation that it is. “Good.” And then he switches to French, rapid and aggressive and too fast for Jeremy to parse, but the tone doesn’t warrant benefit of the doubt to his old friend. Jean is responding back just as angrily, but before Jeremy can pull his jaw off the floor to intercede, Cat does it for him.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stick to English so we can all understand,” she interjects politely.
“I’m making sure the idiot doesn’t forfeit this,” Kevin explains. “He thinks he will be punished if he goes through with the performances.”
“Oh… good…” Jeremy says awkwardly. “You’re not pissed off that you lost?”
“Oh, I knew that I had lost before I walked in the room. Andrew told me as much,” Kevin dismisses.
“It wasn’t better than your Brahms,” Jean says, chewing on his bottom lip. “You know this was never supposed to happen.”
“It was and it did,” Kevin says bluntly. “You’re too good to be hidden away in an orchestra somewhere, Jean. I’ve always known it, and the Master has always known it, too. Thank fuck Rhemann knows what he’s doing and forced you away from Shoshtakovich.”
“Shoshtakovich and Tchaikovsky were both depressed, alcoholic Russians. They’re not so different,” Jean says, just to avoid the emotional minefield of what preceded it.
“You deserved this, Jean,” Kevin says softly. “I’m sure I’ll have notes after your first rehearsal with the orchestra.”
“I’d be shocked if you didn’t,” Jean replies, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. “I need to talk to Neil. Hopefully, soon you will meet my sister.” He disconnects the call, and he allows Jeremy to wrap him up in his arms.
Just for a second, Jean allows himself to indulge in the joy of it all. There are ten thousand things that he needs to worry about, from the eyes that are going to be on him from the whole school, now that they will all hear him perform, to all of the logistics of getting Elodie across the ocean and enrolled in school, and whatever Neil Josten wants with him.
But just for a second, he lets himself feel it. It is hopelessly indulgent, but the joy of finally succeeding in getting his sister out of that terrible home in Marseilles wipes all thought from his brain. His chest aches with the strain of how happy he feels, the joy just as crushing as the fear. It is filling him from his fingertips to his toes to the ends of his curly hairs, and the sheer relief of the moment drains him of every other emotion.
It’s finally enough. His suffering finally means something, if at the end of it Elodie is unharmed and safe.
“You’re gonna shine,” Jeremy whispers into his hair, and he holds up Jean’s rapidly melting muscles. “Mon étoile. And I cannot wait to meet your sister.”
So much has changed in a year. He feels the sunlight on his face every day, and the arms around him are there to comfort and support, not restrain and hurt. Jean has experienced so much that he never thought was possible—he has taken classes and tried foods that he never knew existed, and he has done it all with people who immediately accepted him and stuck by his side as he has struggled with the most basic aspects of keeping himself alive.
He is not the same violinist that he was when he was evicted from the Nest and forced into Rhemann’s studio. He’s not even the same person.
There’s no telling if Elodie will even recognize him, much less love him, after he left her in that dungeon in Marseilles. He wouldn’t blame her at all if she hated him. He wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to speak to him again.
She will be safe, and that is the only thing that matters.
Whenever he plays Tchaikovsky, it will always be for Elodie. There is simply no other way that he can play it, anymore.
Jean cannot wait to perform it again.