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XX

“Nah, man! Don’t do this to me!”, Brett groaned and threw himself back on his bed, face down so he wouldn’t have to deal with the world anymore.
“What? Make you aware so you can handle it appropriately?”
“This is stupid!” Brett turned around again. “She doesn’t even know me and has a crush? That’s ridiculous!”
“Oh, you know how fast it can go, right? Maybe she’s aware that we don’t have much time and wants to make the most of it”, Cole meant, his tone way too amused for this kind of situation. 
“She’d be something for you, no?”, Brett sideeyed, earning a quick set of index fingers swinging left and right. 
“Nah, nah, nah! You’re not dodging this by pushing her to me!”
“Come on! She does have nice hair, doesn’t she?”
“So you have checked her out”, Cole added a raised eyebrow to his grin. 
Brett deadpanned quickly before anything could give. “That’s like the only trait I caught. And that she’s smaller than me.”
“Ah, obviously. Doesn’t occur much.”
Brett threw his pillow in Cole’s direction. 
“What has gotten into you?”, he exclaimed indignantly. Brett’s friend was rarely this provocative.
“Maybe had one or two too many.”
Ah, this of course, explained a lot.
“My point is, probably everyone except you has noticed how flirty she is around you. Because you’ve been preoccupied!”
“By this freaking concerto I’m supposed to play and had a meltdown about before the first rehearsal even started! Can you really blame me?”
His stern eyes caught Cole’s, determined to convince him, and at the same time, persuade himself.

Cole let out a breath. “Alright. I have to say, you’ve got some good arguments.”
“Of course I do.”
“Just… let her down gently when it comes to it, okay?”
“Who says she’s gonna act on it? We’re too busy anyway. I’m certainly too busy practicing.”
“And you really wouldn’t be interested in…”
“Cole!”, Brett said steely, “It didn’t even occur to me that she could be interested. That says it all, doesn’t it?”
He hesitated, but eventually admitted, “It does.” 
However, Cole couldn’t help but whisper borderline disgustingly into Brett’s ear when he walked past him to the bathroom, “But she is pretty, isn’t she?”
Unfortunately, that idiot closed the bathroom door sooner than the cushion Brett threw at him with force could hit him.

The next morning, Brett had difficulties discerning what had actually happened yesterday and what had been part of this very weird dream that had bugged him during the night. There had been a concert hall with lots of people clapping and booing during his performance of the Korngold violin concerto. In the back of the hall Eddy was standing there, pointing and laughing at him. While Brett was pretty sure this had been his mind playing games, the part with Cole interrogating him about his whereabouts wasn’t less scary. Luckily, Cole was his usual, pleasant and calm self, gently nudging Brett so they would get some breakfast in before they closed the buffet.

Despite the relatively early hour, they arrived at the Sydney con covered in sweat, courtesy of the merciless sun burning down and heating the concrete to at least a thousand degrees, or so Brett felt. Needless to say, Brett’s mood wasn’t at its peak to put it mildly and when he noticed someone with red, short hair approaching from the corner of his eye, his instincts took over. 
“Quickly gonna go toilet”, he mumbled to Cole and practically ran off the stage despite the additional pearls of sweat already starting to moisten the dark blue shirt he’d put on after his what turned out to be a futile shower.

And it wasn’t a surprise, really, that Brett would nearly run over an equally stressed out Eddy in the hallway just outside the concert hall. 
“Wow!”, Eddy yelled, just so catching Brett who stumbled over his own feet after realizing the upcoming crash way too late.
“Shit!”, Brett called, hung on to whatever was in his reach and brutally grabbed Eddy’s arms, “Fuck! I’m so sorry.”
“Dude, where are you going? Aren’t we about to start?”, Eddy asked bewildered while placing Brett on his feet again.
“Toilet”, Brett panted, propping both hands on his knees to recover from the shock. Running over Eddy, of all people… he had to draw out all his deadpan skills so the taller wouldn’t witness how Brett was mentally slapping himself right now.
“Oh, hurry then. I’ll tell the conductor?”
“Thanks.”
At least, Eddy wasn’t the last to arrive at rehearsals for once because it took Brett some time to get rid of all the redness colouring his cheeks all of a sudden.

The conductors were way too upbeat for Brett’s taste and promptly started with Mahler this morning. Brett was glad. He liked Mahler and the music was made to get lost in its grandeur and epicness. Shortly before they dived into the first movement, Eddy leaned over from the concertmaster’s chair. 
“You alright? You seem off.”
This tone again. So genuine, honest, caring. Brett had to take a few additional breaths and nodded. “Fine. Just hot.”

For the next two hours, he did his best to concentrate on the piece instead of the glances the concertmaster threw at him once in a while, which was a tough task considering the fact that his job was following Eddy’s lead. It wasn’t like he wanted to avoid him in any way. It was just so damn distracting and playing wrong notes as second chair was just not on! Not today! 

When break time rolled around, Brett grabbed Eddy’s hand without further ado and stormed out the hall again. A small part of his brain did register that Cole would definitely have follow-up questions to this, but he couldn’t find it in him to care right now.
“Brett! Hey! Slow down!”
Brett did. After two hallways down and three flights of stairs up. 
“Dude!”, Eddy wheezed, “What the hell?”
“Sorry! I… can’t deal with all these people right now.”
“That’s my line.”
“Knew you wouldn’t complain.”
Eddy half puffed half chuckled. “You’re unbelievable.”
Brett leaned against the cool stone wall and slid down until he sat on the floor with his legs pulled up.
“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”, Eddy carefully asked and mirrored Brett’s position opposite of him, his plain white shirt getting wrinkled in the process.
Did he want to? Wouldn’t he come across as crazy if he’d tell Eddy that the underlying reason for their almost breaking-sound barrier-escape was a girl even smaller than him? Instead, Brett decided to shrug, for now. “Bad morning.”
“Didn’t sleep well?”
“Had a weird ass dream about the audience gutting me during my performance, so yeah.”
“Sounds menacing.”
“What about you? How was your night?”
A slight, almost unnoticeable smile appeared on Eddy’s face. “Haven’t slept this well in a long time.”
“Weird”, Brett commented and laid his head back, “after all the bubble tea.” And after all the ups and downs of emotions Eddy had gone through.
“Maybe it was because of the bubble tea.”
“Maybe”, Brett chuckled, feeling himself relaxing a bit. He’d been right to drag Eddy along, even though it had been a spur of the moment thing, really.
“Hey”, Eddy said, prompting Brett to lay his eyes on his open, soft expression, “I haven’t talked to anyone like we did yesterday for a long time. So, thank you.”
“Oh”, Brett made, surprised to say the least, “Uh, you’re welcome.”
They hadn’t dived in deep last night. For Brett, they had barely scratched the surface. Still, despite the unease some topics might have caused Eddy, the taller had appreciated that time. On one hand, it filled Brett with joy that it hadn’t just been him enjoying himself. On the other hand, it showed him how little interaction Eddy had with other people, which saddened Brett.

Way too soon, their break was over and Brett timed their return so they would make it to their seats the minute Mr. Thames stepped on the podium. Cole glanced at him, question marks basically jumping out his eyes and Brett was grateful he got another two hours to come up with a good explanation for what he’d just pulled because right now, he had no idea what to tell his friend.