'tis the season (to love you)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

What do you do when everything you've ever known is crumbling down all around you, stone-walls of Jericho tumbling at the sound of the trumpets, a blaring tune of realization, a reckoning all on their own? What do you do when you've missed something so integral, so necessary to the very architecture of yourself, and you've only just found it, foundations shaking in the aftermath? What do you do then?

This is what Brett does: he locks himself in the bathroom, knees pulled up to his chest as he sits on the cold tiles, and tries his best not to cry like a fucking baby. He is not succeeding at all.

(Let's go back in time a bit, cast a little more light on the matter. This revelation has been a decade in the making.)

• • •

History is a whirlwind of memories. When you look at things through the rose-stained glass, the final piece of a puzzle long left incomplete, you see them in a new light. You realize what you've been missing all this time.

Brett is ten when he first meets Eddy Chen. He's stressing over algebra, chewing at the end of his pencil when someone taps him on the shoulder and asks to borrow an eraser and please not the one you're biting, please. He doesn't know it yet, but the gangly boy with the mullet sitting next to him in maths tutoring is about to become the cornerstone of his life, the axis upon which his world spins.

They say goodbye to each other on Friday afternoon. They meet again on Saturday morning, standing on opposite sides of the room for music classes. Even then, Eddy grins wide at the sight of him, waving his spindly arm in the air like a windmill in greeting. Even then, Brett realizes there just might be a little bit of destiny where the two of them are concerned. He decides he doesn't give a fuck about destiny or fate or whatever, as long as he can keep this kid near him for the rest of his life.

They grow up together. They both forsake the traditional paths their parents set out for them; they both agree to support each other's dreams no matter what happens. Nana is younger, here in his memories: smuggling CDs and sheet music for them from her workplace, baking them oatmeal cookies and cinnamon buns as a reward whenever they manage to impress her with their playing. On summer nights spent at each other's houses, they sleep together on the same bed, sweat-sticky under the blankets. On winter mornings spent without classes to hamper their practice time, they whittle their free days away playing video games and performing bedroom concertos with Belle. They spend birthdays together, school breaks together, holidays together. Here, they become inseparable.

When Brett is accepted into the Conservatorium of Music, Eddy makes plans to follow in his footsteps. In this first year alone at uni, Brett throws himself into practicing with reckless abandon, not giving time for anything but his violin because he's in wait. All he cares about is getting better while he's biding his time, waiting until Eddy can join him. Brett throws the other man a party when he finally enters the Con a year later, introduces him to all his friends so they won't ever have to maintain separate social circles.

They discover a little bit more of who they are and who they will come to be, in uni. They broaden their horizons with new music pieces, new friends, new romantic entanglements. Every new partner takes a little slice away from their shared time, but they always end up coming back to each other: magnetic north and south, twin planets spinning within their shared gravity.

Eddy takes care of Brett during morning hangovers, writes him study notes for theory exams, buys him bubble tea on sweltering Brisbane afternoons. Brett drags Eddy out to parties, gifts him new strings everytime he snaps one, teaches him how to come out of his shell.