When Drin comes home, he loves to crawl tiredly out of his car, stretch, open the door from the garage into the house, and stand for a moment listening. If the other two are home, he will hear music. Always.
It won’t always be anything he expected. It can be recordings of intricate and strange and outright nerve-jarringly unpleasant compositions when Dance is working on sorting out parts for a modern piece. The whole household has suffered through it when guest conductors decided to drag the local concert-goers into the modern machine age to face war and strife and grief, like it or not.
But then there’s evenings when he comes home, tired to the depths of his bones, and Emma is playing what she likes, while Dance is bobbing around in his headphones in front of the computer like a boxer, shuffling around in his socks, making odd percussive noises and playing computer games with his whole body. He can’t just sit down and shoot things.
There’s other nights when Dance is playing music himself. The violin is a sign that work is being a pain for Dance. If he’s practicing that late, it means he’s having trouble and he will be grumpy and preoccupied and fail to eat very much dinner, staring into space, or scribbling notes to himself. He never remembers what he’s told during these staring spasms. It can be quite fun to get him to consent to silly things with a grunt.
Then there’s the nights Drin cherishes. Nights when Dance is not the one cooking dinner, as he so often does. Nights when he’s just sitting in the way as Emma makes dinner. He may have one knee propped higher, bent over his guitar, or it might be the mandolin cradled close in his hands, or the banjo.
It means Dance is being self-indulgent instead of practicing what he’s supposed to be doing as first chair violin.
It’s been muttered that some folks have questions about how he gets away with devoting any time at all to lesser pursuits than being first chair.
Certainly Dance has been known to imply, with a very lordly air, that if they looked as pretty as he does in a black silk suit with a white tie, they might be able to court the person who’s endowed that bloody chair. But they will never, in a million years, be able to make nice with that patron in quite as spectacular a manner as he can.
Of course Dance is right.
It’s totally tacky to show up at charity events with Emma on his other arm and sashay over to Dance and have Dance give him that long, smoldering look. That’s all it takes, these days.
The orchestra gossips still remember what he’s got up in the past. Drin is still not sure that it was wise, but they’ve certainly made it clear to everybody what sort of nice this involves.
Well, it is a very convincing stare.
Of course it was all completely ridiculous on that one ball night, where they got carried away and silly. It was just too much fun, taking turns, each merrily whirling Emma around the dance floor. Then of course Dance and Emma had way too much fun showing off their slinky sly little take on ambushing one another in the tango, like a pair of alley cats.
Once they were done with that, playing to the audience, Dance had the effrontery to toss Emma off to Drin as if he’d got his rocks off, and instantly turn in preference to one of the more formidable patronesses to swing her away into a nice sedate waltz, twinkling at her.
Later on that same night, they both saw Dance happily chuckling when one of the senior attorneys who gave the orchestra lots of pro bono work pinched Dance on the ass, because Dance presented it to be appreciated until the lawyer got the hint.
At these sorts of events, Dance never looks as if it’s an effort to allow various people to touch him or pat him or grab him in startling places. He may say so later on, but at the time, he’s all sparkle and evasive charm and flirty laughter, and very turned on. Most orchestras would sign in blood if they could get a first chair who could back up the flirting performances with solid meat.
If anybody does get extra privileges from him, there’s no evidence of it later on. Dance always gets a hectic flush on his cheekbones. By the end of a really long evening he gets a bit wild. He says too much time pretending to be dignified in public makes him crazy.
It certainly makes him hasty about things. He’s in a hurry with the valet about the car, he’s not shy about hugging Emma breathless when it’s time to leave. He can’t be trusted to behave himself in the parking lot, and clothes go flying once he’s alone with Drin.
Drin thinks about getting Dance out of that suit, in a hurry, in an auditorium closet, with Emma giggling and hissing at them to hurry up, looking firmly away, but stretching her ears. Oh, she’s not indifferent at all. He closes his eyes, and smiles.
It hasn’t been long, less than six months, but he’s already picked up all sorts of memories that come back to him whenever he hears various pieces of music.
The Vivaldi curls around his ears, sounding immensely civilized.
Drin smiles, and inhales deeply of the scent of garlic and Italian herbs from the garden, and the sharp scent of melted Parmesan cheese.
“Oh good, just in time,” Emma says briskly, smacking a silicon oven mitt into his hand as she passes by, “You can take the lasagna pan out of the oven.”
The Vivaldi pauses when Dance has lifted his fingers from the guitar strings. He looks up at them and smiles back at Drin, and sets aside the guitar.
When he stands up and stretches, his shirt falls open. He sees Drin looking at him, and he smiles wider, pushing one hip forward provocatively, and laughing when Drin uses the oven mitt to fend off the vision.
Emma smacks Drin on the butt. “Behave,” she says, and ignores his protest.