[ These days, the time he doesn't spend in Chopin's loop, he spends at the piano back at the palace, getting acquainted with the man's music in a way he hasn't been in his at this point almost thousand year long life. The waltzes. The ballades. Nocturnes. Etudes. He has played a bit of everything at this point, but the piece he keeps returning to is the Variations, Don Giovanni, early work, dedicated to his first lover with whom he spent a summer like Elio's own, with Oliver. It feels eerily familiar, although Elio knows for a fact he's never performed it before and only studied it superficially, back in Rome, his conservatory days. It's one of the most difficult piano pieces he's ever encountered and after a hundred years of playing it on repeat with Chopin as his teacher, he still can't play it perfectly. He can hardly even play it well.
Which means, this is another early evening where the kitchen will just have to make its own food, because he's elsewhere occupied, right?
He hears the door opening and closing, but doesn't look up from his run-through of the second variation, fingers flying over the keys at a pace he would undoubtedly have botched back when he was mortal. Interpretation, Chopin will usually tell him at this point, you have no soul, my Queen and make Elio start over, but today, he thinks, today he feels different, today it's there, that thing Chopin put into these notes. And truly, Elio almost has it, he can feel it, but then he misses a transition and it falls apart between his fingers, so he just stops, would've started over again, if it weren't for the telltale presence of the Devil in the room.
Elio breathes in hard, once, exhales more slowly and then, turns his head, looking over at the other man. Childishly affronted. His hands come to a rest on his thighs, already tapping out the melody of the third variation, like he actually got that far, but in this art form you better be prepared.
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Which means, this is another early evening where the kitchen will just have to make its own food, because he's elsewhere occupied, right?
He hears the door opening and closing, but doesn't look up from his run-through of the second variation, fingers flying over the keys at a pace he would undoubtedly have botched back when he was mortal. Interpretation, Chopin will usually tell him at this point, you have no soul, my Queen and make Elio start over, but today, he thinks, today he feels different, today it's there, that thing Chopin put into these notes. And truly, Elio almost has it, he can feel it, but then he misses a transition and it falls apart between his fingers, so he just stops, would've started over again, if it weren't for the telltale presence of the Devil in the room.
Elio breathes in hard, once, exhales more slowly and then, turns his head, looking over at the other man. Childishly affronted. His hands come to a rest on his thighs, already tapping out the melody of the third variation, like he actually got that far, but in this art form you better be prepared.
With an actual pout and a frown, he says: ]
Make me love the piano again, Lucifer.