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XXXIX

Mr. Thames was quite happy to see the outcome of Brett and Eddy’s little heart to heart, so when he came back, they did rehearse the first movement of Korngold’s violin concerto. Eddy insisted on going first so Brett could rest and it probably did help Brett to regain energy and play some proper music when it was his turn. He did alright, according to Mr. Thames at least, but Brett was glad he had the fever to blame for his lousy concentration while confusing shreds of thoughts whirling around inside his brain were the real villains here.

Around ten p.m. the conductor ended their intense practice session and Brett was so beat he returned to the hotel immediately, not without Eddy accompanying him to the front door. 
“You sure you don’t need me to come upstairs and tuck you in?”, he winked, handing Brett his violin case he carried back for him. 
“Should be fine. Thanks again for being my butler today. I owe you!”
“A round of bubble tea would suffice as payment.”
“How very generous of you.”
"I'm generosity incarnated, haven’t you noticed?”
“After your congee for sure! Didn’t you say you can’t cook?”, Brett smirked, waggling his eyebrows.
“I really can’t”, Eddy shrugged, “This is like one of the two, three things I can make without burning down the kitchen. Can’t always eat out, right? So I kinda had to learn some basics.”
“I see…”, Brett yawned, which Eddy took as an argument to usher him towards the hotel entrance. “Alright, enough talking now. You go rest! I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Guess so!”

Brett had kind of hoped in the quiet of the hotel room the storm in his head would wear off, but misfortune kept following him till the end of the day. Cole wasn’t here yet, very likely went to have a drink or two with the group and although being exhausted to the bones, Brett couldn’t drift off to sleep as he so desperately wished for. 

Eddy was important to him. There was no denying it. How else could a guy he’d literally just met get him worked up to the point he’d start an argument out of nowhere, hissing at the other like a hurt animal? Why else would Brett show sides of himself he usually never did? He was pretty sure Cole hadn’t seen more than Eddy in the past several years.

Something in him or he did made Brett open, vulnerable. 

And why the hell had Brett been so… down when Eddy had said something about liking him as a friend? That was good news, wasn’t it? Compared to the mood on the first and second day for sure! So why did Brett feel like hiding under his blanket for the rest of the week until the competition, fuck up royally so he’d be sent home and wouldn’t have to deal with anyone anymore? Eddy had been nothing but an angel today, sharing his bed so Brett could rest, cooking him a delicious meal designed for feverish patients, even carrying his violin case to the steps of his hotel! Why then was Brett so torn between wanting to see him right this moment, share every thought with him, hear his opinion and observe the way his features changed depending on the seriousness of the topic and on the other side, keeping a minimum distance of fourty kilometers between them? 

All these emotions and uncertainties were fucking confusing to say the least and the headache was not helping the slightest in that matter. Brett groaned loudly, pulled the thin hotel blanket over his head and rolled up like a hedgehog sporting a nasty belly ache. 

Luckily, sleep was compassionate with Brett’s misery at some point and he dozed off after a slightly painful and mostly annoying forever.

“You talk in your sleep, did you know?”, Cole remarked the next day when the sun was already turning their room into an oven, the AC roaring because of the amount of horsepower it had to provide to cool down the place for a few, ridiculous degrees.
“What?”, Brett mumbled, rubbing his eyes and rustling the blanket, indeed having been unaware of that special trait till now. He felt slightly better than yesterday though, thank god.
“You said something about ‘friend’ and ‘beneficial’. Eddy seemed to have been the star of your dream. You mentioned him several times.”
“I did?”, Brett tried his damndest to deadpan over it but judging by how hot his face got, he wasn’t particularly successful. 
“Yeah, and you kinda sobbed in-between”, Cole looked at Brett flinch, “Something happened in his room yesterday?”
“Why ‘in his room’?”, Brett recoiled, the blanket-pulling-over-his-head-move becoming muscle memory by now, “Could have been anywhere!”
“So, something did happen?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Something did happen”, Cole concluded, tone so neutral and unsurprised it offended Brett a little, “You wanna talk about it? It sounded quite serious during the night.”
“Did you lie awake just to hear me talk?”, Brett retorted. 
“Sure, sweetheart, as if I have nothing else to do”, Brett’s friend fake smiled, “Nah, had my own set of thoughts to ponder upon and couldn’t sleep.”
Brett sat up a bit. Now that Cole mentioned it, his eye bags were hard to ignore indeed. “Oh? What kept you awake?”
A look of deliberation. “Trade intel?”
“Uhm”, Brett made, not sure if he wanted to talk about what had happened yesterday. What was there to say anyway? The little dispute with Eddy had been resolved, no? And what exactly that other thing was, Brett couldn’t even tell himself.
“Don’t need to, if you don’t want to”, Cole noted, very much the nice, considerate friend again Brett knew (and appreciated, if he was being honest), “If you wanna talk, I’m here.”
“I know”, Brett nodded gratefully, “Nothing really happened though, we had a little fight, I guess.”
“Fight? About what?”, Cole frowned while walking over to his suitcase to choose a clean shirt and a pair of shorts. 
“Oh, you know, just me being suspicious of him taking advantage of everyone and that being the only reason why he’s bothering with me”, Brett shrugged deliberately casual, even though the other was busy getting changed anyway. Brett guessed he should get moving too if he wanted to wolf down some breakfast before they had to go to the con.
“WHAT?”, Cole exclaimed, facing Brett with a shock and a not clothed upper body, shirt still in hand, “You accused him of that? After he cared for you for a whole day-”
“Afternoon.”
“Don’t interrupt me, Brett Yang! He freaking gave you his bed, dude!”
“I know, I know! But it was after he made a comment about Mr. Jones and how he just goes with everything that dude does and says because it's an advantage for him to be on good terms with the conductor.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Not such an absurde idea now, right?”, Brett tsked and swung his legs out of bed. 
“Anyway. We nearly couldn’t rehearse because of that. Mr. Thames made us make up again.”
“Oh, of course. I can picture him in front of my inner eye.”
“Right? We apologized and it’s all good. Turns out he isn’t just pretending to be my friend.”

There! This much revealed of yesterday’s events should satisfy Cole’s curiosity! Brett’s friend however, didn’t think so. 
“If it’s all good”, he began in a timbre Brett didn’t like one bit, “why did you dream of him to a point where you repeat his name like a mantra, noisy crying and all included?”
“Pretty sure I didn’t cry”, Brett murmured. 
“Pretty sure you did. So tell me, is it just reliving the ‘horrors’, or is there still something bothering you?”