Drabble: Madam

[amproof]

Prompt: Hotel bar in the middle of the night, Matt finds a piano. Adam finds Matt. Bring out Matt's sense of humor if possible!

[mollying]

i'm writing this, i'll have it done in a minute!

[mollying]

this got waaay longer than i meant it to be, and doesn't really qualify as a drabble any more. so i'm sorry if that annoys you. :(

---

Matt never knows how to describe how playing in a new place makes him feel, but the best analogy he can think of is being somewhere where everyone speaks a language which you understand but don’t like as much as your own, and being quite annoyed about it, and then suddenly, unexpectedly finding someone who speaks your native tongue. He thinks that he could be anywhere, in the worst situation possible, and finding a piano and being able to play would still make him feel at home.

Of course, this isn’t something which he talks about very much. He wouldn’t know how to explain it, and he wouldn’t really have anyone to explain it to. (Danny wouldn’t understand at all, and would bluntly say so; Anoop would understand on an intellectual level but not on a personal one; Kris would pretend to understand, to make him feel better, but would change the subject as quickly as he could.)

It’s just such a release, playing. This must be what junkies feel like when they get a hit: everything softening, and everything bad or confusing or scary becoming bearable or being forgotten.

It creates a good atmosphere, as well, doing what he’s doing now – sitting in a strange lounge in a strange hotel, at ten minutes past midnight, running his fingers up and down the keys. Through the wide glass windows he can see how dark it is outside, and he watches the few people who are still out walking down the street. One of them, a tall dark-haired woman, looks towards the window and sees him; he holds her gaze, still playing, as she walks past. Then he looks down at the keys again, and closes his eyes to get lost in the music.

“You’re really fucking amazing at piano, do you know that?”

Matt stops playing and opens his eyes. “Uh, thanks.”

“No, I mean it,” Adam says. “Like, I can’t play for shit, so I think everyone’s good, but you’re incredible.”

This, Matt privately notes, is the Adam he likes best – casual, just-out-of-bed, no make-up Adam, with unstyled hair falling forwards onto his face, talking without censoring himself or trying to come across a certain way. It’s another thing which he couldn’t really explain to anyone, although he’s fairly sure that Kris feels the same way.

“I bet you could play, if you tried it properly,” he says, and then, when Adam shakes his head. “Hey, why not? I’d teach you.”

“My brother tried to teach me once. He ended up throwing the music at me and storming out of the room. Granted, he was in a bad mood anyway, but he never mentioned teaching me again.”

“Dude.” Matt gives Adam his best ‘I am not impressed by your feeble excuses’ look. “I got asked to teach this friend I had in college to play, right? And this guy was a fucking disaster, okay. He couldn’t remember which keys were which, and this is after I’ve been telling him it every week for however long, and after I’ve given him a sheet with full-on diagrams and explanations and shit. He had the attention span of, like, I don’t know. A toenail. But I kept on making him try it, and he got the hang of piano enough to play a piece in the Christmas show. That’s how good a teacher I am.”

He doesn’t tell Adam that the piece in question was the most basic version of Silent Night in existence, and that, even then, the friend managed to screw a couple of notes up. It’s all about believing in yourself (as some drunk guy decided to come up and inform him a couple of weeks ago, when he was playing on the piano in whichever hotel they were staying in then).

“I don’t know...” Adam says, uncertainly. He wants to try, though, Matt can tell.

“Come on! The worst that can happen is that you screw up royally, and I laugh at you, and then come morning all the others hear about just how terrible you really are.”

“Oh, great. Thanks for that.”

Matt grins. “Aww, I wouldn’t do that to you. No, but, seriously, have a go. For me.”

Adam bites his lip. “You promise not to laugh?”

“I promise.” Matt makes a show of holding up his fingers, showing that they aren’t crossed.

“Okay, then,” Adam says, laughing. He sits down on the stool beside Matt and leans against him, comfortably warm. He holds up his hands. “Where do I...?”

Matt reaches out and places Adam’s fingers, one by one, on the right keys.

It’s going to be an interesting night.

[amproof]

You went over drabble length? I'm so angry! Grrr.

But seriously, this was so sweet. I loved it! I was worried that no one would fill it, but all the calls recently for non-Kradam fic made me want something different, too.

Thank you so, so much!

[mollying]

haha idk, you might've been a drabble obsessive who despises longer fic and avoids it like the plague, spitting on her screen whenever she discovers that something advertised as a drabble exceeds five hundred words...

ty, anyway. :) i love madam, more people should write it. & is it okay if i post this on aific?

[roga]

Aw! This is so sweet and charming. It feels like you really captured both Adam and Matt, their personalities and rhythm of speech, and it's too bad this is only a drabble (or, well, a flashfic, really), since I could read a whole fic about the rest of this scenario.

[mollying]

_{clearly the only solution is for you to bid on me and then make me write full-length madam fic}[/s] wait, what?

[amproof]

You should def post it on aific, that way I can bookmark it!