if there is a road made just for you;

[wingborne]

John shows him his music, because he is proud to play it. Dave brings him an egg, one with speckled markings spread over a pale blue color, because he’s proud to have found it. They agree Dave’s gift is the better one, even though John has been practicing piano for three days straight. His fingers ache to touch something soft, so he touches Dave’s chest in thanks.

“If we put the egg somewhere really hot, will it hatch faster?” he asks.

“Hell if I know.” Dave crouches and watches the small egg. “It’ll hatch when it wants to hatch. Probably flop around like a dead slimy salmon if it’s born too early. Or get all atrophied and twisted up if it’s born too late. It’s a delicate operation, we’re playing stick Jenga with massive meaty manhands.”

“Isn’t it boring to wait?”

“Yeah,” Dave says, an adult at thirteen. “But you can’t rush this shit.”



John’s piano teacher says he has a Gift. A Gift means he has to stay inside and practice the piano and he can’t play baseball with his friends. He is regally unhappy about the decree, because he likes to slam his fingers against the bases and smack his hand against the ball. But he cannot disobey the royal order, because the lonely king wakes up at six every morning, ties the noose of the tie around his neck, and works hard to pay for the piano lessons.

So the heir to the lonely kingdom plays the piano, shoulders slumped under the heavy weight of the Gift.

“My teacher says I could be better,” John says, fingers flying quick over the keys, “She keeps saying I need to give it more feeling. It’s just tapping on keys! How do you give feelings to something like that?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Do you have another box of apple juice?” Dave is his childhood friend. This he knows, even as a child. Dave lives in an apartment on the top floor, with his great, but not good, brother. His living room has the most modern of HD TVs, sensitive controllers, hard-lined consoles, only the best graphics for the best games. So Dave spends most of his time at John’s house playing with his iPod, sitting next to John at the piano bench. He doesn’t have much interest in the piano, so he never really listens. He says he can feel the vibrations, anyway, through the wood, but John thinks he’s full of crap.

“Maybe. In the fridge. Hey,” he calls out, twisting to watching Dave’s characteristic shuffle to raid the refrigerator, “Isn’t there a baseball game today?”

“Hell if I know. Why?” Dave comes back, suckling on the bright yellow box, and pressing along his iPod for the next song.

“Thought you liked watching baseball.”

“Yeah, big fan of those slam dunks and cul-de-sacs. Love watching the big man hassing the ball.” Dave slumps his shoulders, fixated on listening to his hipster bands.

“You don’t like it? You always came to my games.”

Dave shrugs, presses play, and adjusts his large black headphones over his ears. He always sits too close on the bench, close enough to see the light freckles tapering down his cheeks and disappearing behind his collar. He has quiet features, that’s how John would describe them. Sometimes there are loud piano songs, thundering and threatening down, crashing waves upon waves of music notes until his bones shake with feelings. But sometimes there are quiet songs, lightly muted, like a soft whisper tickling his ears, and those were Dave’s features. A quiet nose, muted eyelids, a secret mouth, a subdued chin.

Usually John plays fast songs, jabbing quick and hard to the throat. He likes those songs, and his teacher says he’s best at playing them. But he flips the pages to a softer tune, and starts to play something quiet and kind, because Dave is sitting next to him and listening to some hipster bird song band and the day fades away outside, and he plays. He’s not the best, he thinks, because his fingers lag behind a little too long and he stresses a note too hard, but it’s awkwardness that sloughs off with practice, and he plays through it. He plays the tinkling soft notes, spiraling upward and drifting through the wind, he plays with his fingers deliberate, knuckles sharp and fingers arching deliberate against the keys, color to the monochrome. The notes curl around his memories, around the warmth of Dave leaning against him, stretching out like Dave’s fingers on his iPod, solid like the half-sucked apple juice box. He plays the song with serenity, letting the frail notes waver in the wind before disappearing into air.

It’s not until the end that he’s realized Dave has taken off his headphones, resting them around his neck. Even with the shades attached, he’s staring down at the piano with an unreadable expression, lips tight and brow furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” John reaches out to check the apple juice box resting on his lap. “Out of juice?”

“It’s a good song,” Dave finally says. “The vibrations. They were good.”

“Um, thanks?”

“You don’t usually play like that.” For some reason, Dave is avoiding his gaze. He plays along the length of the headphone wire, twisting them between his fingers. His shoulders jerk when John sips at the juice box, but he keeps carefully still afterwards.

“Oh. Yeah, probably not. I was kinda distracted, thinking about you and baseball and how you always eat out of the fridge.” John finishes with a loud slurp.

“You were thinking about me?”

“I guess. Why?” He crumples up the box in his hands, and watches Dave’s face. When Dave finally turns his eyes towards him, he’s got the look. The intense, fizzling stare, where he wants something, but he can’t say it. His eyes are bright enough to pierce through the shades, and there’s something suddenly adult and ferocious about him.

“I’ll wait,” Dave says, almost urgently. “Even if you take a shitfuck load of time.”

“Wait for what? Me being done with practice? It might take a while.” John props the crumpled cardboard next to his sheet music, reaching to flip through the music notes with his sprawled handwriting on the sides in blue.

“It’ll take a while,” Dave agrees, but he seems happier. It’s hard to tell when Dave is happy, because it’s different than when Dave is amused. When Dave’s amused, he smirks. When he’s happy, he glows, and he glows now. For the rest of the day, his fingers tap out the phantom tune of the first song, happy and patient.



John gets second place in a national piano competition. His teacher is disappointed, because she wanted him to get first. His father is proud, because he got second.

“Tough titties,” Dave says, and it’s hard to tell how he feels about the controversial rankings.

There are some rewards from having a Gift. He gets his picture taken in a local news story, a small 250 word blurb attached about his efforts and triumphs, some small colorful trophies, and a girlfriend who laughs at his jokes and kisses him on the cheek. Dave doesn’t say anything about her, though John wishes that Dave would like her. He can’t imagine dating anybody Dave didn’t like, and he’s anxious to see if he gets along with her. But Dave says things like “she’s fine” and tugs on his headphones again.

He has to practice the piano, but Dave comes over to tutor him in math. John’s terrible at math, at calculating out when trains meet and then hit, destroying each other on impact; or how many apples to buy, because there are apples and oranges galore; or the lengths of the triangles floating in a perfect math world. But Dave, who says he won’t go to college, is good at math. He’s quick and sharp, pointing out the problems and calculating with deathly serious accuracy.

“You should go to college, get into MIT,” John says.

“Maybe,” Dave says, “But the pizza place down the street is hiring.”

In return for the tutoring, John sometimes shows him the music notes he plays during his performances. He maps the music to the paper, and he thinks, half the time, Dave already knows how this works. He doesn’t know why Dave pretends he doesn’t, but he’s grateful that Dave teaches him math, so he’s happy to tap out the tunes on the piano to match them against the hovering symbols. His fingers skim along the ink, and Dave fiddles around in his pockets until it’s time for him to leave.

“I like playing fast songs. They’re fun, and I can play around with them,” John says, “I surprise people a lot, but they like it, and my teacher likes it, which I guess is more important than people liking it.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Dave says. “Is this something you wrote?”

“What? Oh, yeah. That.” John sheepishly takes it, sliding it back underneath the sheath of paper. “Sorry, that was… Sorry.”

“What was it?”

“Aw, shit, you know, it was your birthday, and I got you that totally sick game you wanted? Except this was gonna be my gift, to you, first, except it’s really lame. Like, when you get socks on your birthday. It’s really lame. The game’s better.” John watches as Dave tugs out the paper again, examining it like it’s made of gold. He touches along the edges, staring at it with his unreadable face.

“You wrote it for me?” he asks, subdued.

“Well, yeah. You just always drop everything and come help me with math whenever, so I thought, I’m pretty good with music! Except not that great, but, you know, good enough, so I wrote some stuff down, and it came out like this, and that’s how it went, but it’s really shitty, you shouldn’t look at it—”

“Oh my god,” Dave says, “Shut the fuck up and play this.”

John shrugs, taking the sheet music to the piano. He stretches out his fingers, in the pressed moment before the music starts. There’s a silence, and he can feel the quiet pressing along his shoulders. Dave sits on a stool nearby, legs drawn up like a child, with his hands crossed on his knees. He’s quietly excited, John can tell, in the small movements he makes as he tries to keep himself still.

But he breaks the silence swiftly, starting with a happy song. It’s the type of song he usually jots down in his free time, on the edges of his math homework, just something upbeat and happy. The notes hit the floor hard, and the music pulls tricks on the ears. It grabs the attention, then twists it around—starts off soft, then plays on loud—the notes tinkle down like a mocking laughter, and he can see Dave squirm from the edges of his eyes, but he’s not done. He’s not done yet, not with the song, not with anything.

His fingers arch a single moment before crashing down upon the keys, and his fingers are thin and flying. He’s fast and quick and loud, the awkwardness from the soft song fading away into a woven web of silk music, a subtle undertone leaping into action, something sweet and happy and light covering the laughing music. The music is soft, that’s how he’d put it—soft, and airy, impossible to capture with ears alone, something wispy that travels deep down his throat and swims its way into his heart, and strikes playfully at his insides. It’s an honest strand, but it trips and falters over the happy strand, and they tumble together throughout the song, pushed only by the insistent rush of music.

He brings down his fingers, silhouette of his form falling on the wall, and with small pools of darkness falling between his knuckles where the light hits and fades. The veins on his hands stand out more, distinct when his fingers lightly trip down the sides, a tickle of colors needling together the happy laughing tones with the airy affectionate whispers. It’s strange, and not very much together. He wrote it, after all. It sounds more confused than anything.

But Dave has that strange half-smile on his face, not a smirk, but the smile like he isn’t certain if he’s allowed to be happy.

“It sucked,” Dave says.

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m not. You’re blinder than an old biddy trying to cross the street.” Dave rubs his palms on his thighs, staring down at the carpet. “You should play that more.”

“You said it sucked.”

“It sucks now.” Dave looks at him by peering over his shades, even when he doesn’t move from the stool. “It’ll get better, later.”

John doesn’t think it’s very likely. Sometimes, when he thinks about Dave, his music gets very confused and twisted. But his teacher says those have the most feelings, so he plays them anyway, through the convoluted twisting of the sounds.

Regardless, Dave stays for another hour, fingers tapping along the math workbook to teach him how to add things he cannot see together.



John might be playing in a recital, which excites him. His teacher says he’s always had it in him, and polishes his certificates with pride. His father says he’s very proud of him, and he spends nights in the rocking chair, watching his only son shine. Dave says the certificates wouldn’t make good rolling paper for joints, and he smokes outside the pizza parlor until they kick him off the stoops.

Dave’s a pizza boy, now, and he seems content. He lives off his own money, even though his brother’s got a porn empire fueling him. But he still spends his days over at John’s house, watching him play the piano with his headphones over his head. They fall into a pattern, etched in their ways.

Every night, Dave comes to his house and shows him the tips he’s earned. John shows him a song he’s played. It’s a show-and-tell, like the time Dave brought back the egg, and they’re both very proud of their own and each other’s work. John thinks Dave makes the best pizza boy, and Dave thinks he makes a somewhat adequate pianist.

“But I think,” John says, “maybe you should go into finances.”

“Pizza boy to financing. Rags to riches. You kidding me?” Dave shakes his head, fingers tightening over his headphones. “Did that girlfriend of yours put that idea in your head?”

“Do you not like her or something? She likes you. She even thinks you are quote unquote cool and everything, okay? She didn’t say anything about your job. You have a problem with her, and I want to know what!” John’s cleaning up from his day’s work, putting away his music notes in distinct order. There’s a wind outside, fierce and blowing. His old tire swing thuds against his older tree, and he defensively clutches at his papers like he can feel the chill crawling from the outside.

“Your girlfriend’s fine.”

“Yeah, fine’s not really saying you like it or not, asshole. You’ve just been really mad at her since day one! It’s really starting to piss me off because you’re just acting really weird, and I don’t get it.”

“Yeah, of course you wouldn’t get it.” Dave tugs on his headphones, slumped against the piano. “I’m not good enough for your attention, huh? College drop-out, working for the pizza place, pay me off with five buckaroos for my sweet, sweet time and the pineapple toppings, isn’t that how it is?”

“No! I don’t think it’s a bad job or anything, fucking asshole! I just think you’d be really good with finances, like, a stock broker or something, and if you were really good at doing pizza, I’d say you should do pizza, but you fucking suck at doing pizza!”

“I’m having a great time ‘doing’ pizza, you fucking fart. I’m having a really nice, probably better than you and your girlfriend. I get really fat tips, these nice old ladies, invite me into their black silk beds, rose petals everywhere, perfume from Macy’s and everything up in there—”

“You don’t do that,” John says, furiously.

“What does it matter to you if I did? Maybe I like it, like it way better than your virgin asshole—”

“Hey, shut the fuck up, you don’t know—”

“Maybe if I dressed up nice and got a real job like your girlfriend—”

“I’m not thinking that!”

“You don’t even know what you’re thinking, you just play on the piano all day, you don’t think at all—”

“Dave, you fucking ass—”

But there’s a sharp crack as an old branch falls outside, and Dave, startled, bangs his knee against the piano. The fallboard collapses with a snap, and John yanks back his fingers in time. The cover falls with a sickening thud, and John curls his fingers protectively into his palms.

The pattering of rain has begun to fall against the window, and Dave sits down. John isn’t frightened, though he thinks he should be. His heart is barely racing. He turns to start laughing about it with Dave, because it was stupid, so dumb, he’s sorry, he shouldn’t have been fighting, fix his piano right up—

Dave grabs his fingers and starts kissing them, head bent down. His hands are warm and calloused, and John stares down at him, confused. He’s not mad, but Dave keeps murmuring apologies over and over again, a continuous babbling stream. Dave is rarely ever loud, he’s mostly soft, and he’s soft now. He rubs his fingers together and kisses his blunt nails to length of his fingertips to where his heart beats on his wrist, and John lets him. It’s for Dave’s sake, more than anything. John isn’t feeling shocked. Playing the piano has always been more important to other people than him, which he supposes why he only placed second and not first. But he never thought Dave thought he liked it so much, not until now, when Dave’s face is screwed up like he’s crying without tears.

“It’s okay,” John says, laughing. The kisses feel like tickles, and it’s strangely intimate in the warm glow of a room where the rain falls outside.

“Shit,” Dave says. “Shit, fuck, shit.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay…”

But Dave is inconsolable, even though he doesn’t say it. His breath comes out shaky and he doesn’t touch the piano for the rest of the night, even when John coaxes him to touch the sides again. John tells him he can sleep on the bed, but Dave stays on the couch, still frantically wrapped up in himself and burying his face into his knees. John covers him with a blanket, and falls asleep at the foot of the couch, because he’s been shamed by something he cannot see.



Dave says he’s uncomfortable in large crowds, which John is half-sure is a lie. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. But he thinks that he wants to know, not because it offends him, but he wants to know everything about Dave. He wants to know his lies and truths and everything in between. But he doesn’t push it, and even with the lights shining bright down on his eyes, he thinks he can make out Dave’s form in the back of the crowd.

His footsteps resonate in the quiet hall, the nicely-dressed audience sitting in plush seats staring up at him. He thinks it’d be funny if he farted now. His father would appreciate the joke. But he doesn’t fart, and sits down in front of a piano that glimmers in front of him. The lights are hot enough to make him sweat underneath his starched collar, but he isn’t nervous. His fingers are still, his sheet music is in place, and he stares at his reflection in the dark piano.

He’d broken up with his girlfriend, amicably. She seemed happy to be without him as with him, and they still talked with ease. Dave didn’t say anything at the news, though he finely seemed to warm up to her. John is happy, though, because Dave is going back to school, and he will be a stock broker one day. Rose had told him to be patient with Dave, who, she said, tries very hard. He doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know much about anything except the music he’s always played.

So he plays.

In front of his audience, at his recital, he plays. He’s grown up from simple tunes and complex messes of feelings, because he’s older now. He knows more. He lets his fingers fly downwards against the keys, listening to the notes resonate within his bones, because Dave has taught him to listen to vibrations. It starts with a simple melody, and he plays along quite charmingly. They’re small playful notes, perfectly adjusted his joking repertoire, and they laugh amongst the audience before there is a pause. It is only a small pause, but he can feel the audience hold their breath, he can feel his own heart quiet down for a beat, he can feel Dave’s eyes watching him, like he’s always been watching him, at long baseball games and longer piano practices, and his fingers crash down on the keys, if only to break the monotony.

The notes fly out, quick and fast, darting against his heart. They rise up together, building a musical staircase, ascending so quickly his fingers can barely keep up with the sound, it seems like the sound slips out faster than he can play the keys, and still, the notes spiral onwards, and he thinks about Dave. It’s his secret cheat, whenever his teacher says to put more feeling in it, and he doesn’t know how, so he thinks about Dave and she says that works. He thinks about the way he smiles, the strange little unused smile, and the musical notes try to compose his face from the soft expressions to loud thumping of his heart and the quick spitfire of his metaphors became jabs against the piano. He maps Dave onto his song, and he plays on.

He plays the way Dave looks when he sits down on the piano bench, the rustling of his smooth hair when he plays with his games. These notes come out softer and softer, barely a whisper, they are fragile notes that twinkle before disappearing, an affectionate soothing tone that washes upon his heart. His fingers are dancing along the keys, but in a slow waltz, a dizzying spread where his fingers spin around each other to press along the keys to send the deep resonating tone out to the world. The song is swirling around Dave’s quiet laugh, and there’s a moment when the song breaks, because John is thinking about that night when Dave kissed his fingers and looked like he was going to cry, and that strange feeling inside him. The piano takes each note deliberately, sending them one by one to the sky.

But his feelings are getting in the way, like before, tripping up the strands, making knots in the weave, and he finally tries to focus on them to smooth it out. This is a song, he tries to tell it, this is a song, and it is about Dave. He’s agitated, and the notes speed up, fumbling into each other until they wind up in a small tangled pile, each note coming out jerky and angry, loud and deep, and he tries to think about what’s wrong, about why Dave makes his music so much better. He thinks about Dave’s kisses to his fingers, and how Dave listens to him about his careers even when he says he wasn’t. He thinks about Dave as his childhood friend who has always listened to him, and waited for him, about Dave’s presence in his house, spreading the glow in the rooms. Each note is strung out longer and longer, more fragile to the touch, quivering in the air with bated breath as they run out incessantly, and the egg finally cracks underneath the hot light of the stage.

The realization happens to his music, first, as it becomes lighter. The notes begin to swirl again, but not with the laughter. It’s with another feeling, and John watches his fingers deepen on the keys, each press like a tiny hop, and he’s out of breath by watching his own music spring to life, every delicate key flexing into vivid reality, the tinkling notes overlaid with the deeper foundation, and they come together into the playing of his heart, and he’s finally playing the piano for the first time in years.

He closes his eyes and lets the notes flow, playing the piano notes into the air, each note dripping into each other, and no matter how the lighter notes flirted in the air, his hand kept moving to something underneath, a certainty, a happiness. He arches his back, and plays the piano to the end, where the last note lingers and whispers something, before it, too, disappears into the resonating silence.

The audience stands up, applauds, but John is already running out the stage, because he’s never cared for second place, not even when he wins first. He runs out the back, bursting into the cold air that chills him in his stiff suit. The night has recently rained, and he can see the water spill along the cobbled steps, the light pouring like lit ink down the reflections. But it is not raining now, and he runs down the streets because his skin is like fire, like ice, and he sees Dave with his hands in his pockets, already making his way back to his apartment.

“Dave!” He’s out of breath, and he has to stop to try and find it again. Dave hears him, though, and turns around. He thinks, even in the darkness, he can see Dave’s surprised expression, and his heart swells like the music it has always been playing him.

“Dave,” he says again, spreading open his arms, “I love you!”

He’s proud. He’s proud, and happy, and in love, he thinks, he’s been in love since the first song he’s played him, and he’s happy to finally realize it. He’s showing this to Dave like when they traded music for eggs, and he’s proud to finally show him something worthwhile and good.

Dave is smiling back, hands still jammed in his pockets and a trail of breath vanishing from his mouth. He is proud, too, and John laughs in surprise.

“Fucking finally,” Dave says, and John is running down the street to hug him around his neck, and Dave is laughing in his strange quiet way. John kisses him, and laughs again, because he has played the piano and the song was good. Dave laughs because the egg has cracked, and it was good. John plays another song on Dave’s ribs, over his sweatshirt, because he thinks too many words to get out. He doesn’t know very much about putting feelings into songs.

But he knows Dave can always hear it.