Something Real Read online

  *~*~*

  Evan couldn't quite stop staring at the strange man on his bed. It was odd enough to have a stranger knock on the door and invite himself over, and Sean had done quite a bit more than simply step inside. It was even more peculiar that someone who had heard him pretending he could play unaccompanied Bach—with double stops and four sharps, no less—wanted to hear Evan play more. But what Evan couldn't quite tear his eyes from was all of the color Sean exuded.

  Apart from the uniform everyone on ISC2 wore, there was nothing about Sean that was brown or gray. His skin was the pale pink of Evan's mother's blush cymbidium orchids, spattered all over with rusty red freckles. His eyes, so large they reminded Evan of an anime character, were the deep green of Irish ivy, brilliant against his pale skin and his slightly shaggy hair, which hung around his face in the vivid orange of an Asiatic lily dusted with gold powder. Evan hadn't seen such a variety of colors in such saturation since leaving Earth.

  With one more glance at his colorful guest, Evan turned back to his instrument. It was an electric violin, the kind that consisted of little more than the straight line of a minimal scroll, fingerboard, and bridge tied to the outlined curve of one shoulder and a chin rest. To be honest, he had always kind of hated electric violins. The sound was different, the weight all wrong, the tactile aspects of playing all just a little bit off. Consequently he had avoided them like the plague until he had been forced either to find something that would fit into the single International Space Union duffle bag he was allowed to take from Earth—not to mention something that wouldn't break during travel or suffer from the atmospheric changes the instrument would undergo—or live without a violin at all for as long as he stayed on ISC2. Most people chose the latter; after all, professional musicians weren't exactly at the top of the ISU's recruitment list. They wanted engineers, architects, computer geeks of all shapes and sizes, skilled machinists and mechanics, biologists, a handful of doctors, chemists, that sort of thing. People who could build a space colony's incredibly intricate parts and keep them in working order, who could make sure the inhabitants lived in a safe, healthy environment, people who fulfilled basic, biological needs. Not the ones who made life thoughtful, creative, and beautiful.

  Clearing his throat, Evan asked, "So how long have you been here?"

  "My sister and I hopped the first ship out, so I'm guessing it's been about two and a half years," Sean replied absently, eyes fixed on the instrument in Evan's hand. "Are you going to get on with playing that thing, or what?"

  He frowned briefly. Evan had always felt like a bit of a fraud whenever he picked up the violin. He had absolutely no talent, all the wrong kinds of coordination, and a pretty dreadful ear. But he loved to play. Alone. Where no one could hear how terrible he was. A rush of adrenaline hit suddenly as he met Sean's verdant eyes, bright above the mother-of-pearl smile splitting his cherry blossom lips, and Evan knew this was going to be a disaster. The same symptoms struck every time he had to make a public presentation: his heart started to pound a little harder and a little faster, his fingers grew icy and stiff, his hands began to shake slightly. The same tremble would be reflected in his voice if he tried to speak, which was the worst part when presenting. The cold fingers and unsteady hands were much worse when trying to play the violin, however, because it made it impossible to control where his fingers would land and when, and the shaking always meant his bow started bouncing or grinding against the strings when he tried to pull a smooth, straight stroke. This Sean person would probably be scrambling out of the room as fast as possible once he realized what Evan's version of Bach sounded like.

  On second thought, that wasn't such a bad outcome. Then Evan could have his privacy back. And his bed.

  Facing his makeshift music stand—the top of his dresser and the wall, with a book shoved up against the bottom of the score to keep it from sliding down—Evan took a deep breath and let it out, balancing his weight between his feet, straightening his posture before bringing the violin up to his left shoulder and tucking it beneath his chin. He stared at the notes for a minute, trying to focus on the lines and dots until they became motions again instead of meaningless notation and his brain broke free of the hold of Sean's presence and his distracting colors. Then, with another exhalation, he wiggled his fingers into a semi-respectable bow hold and set the hair on the string, trying to calm the shaking of his right arm. Then he started to play.

  The third partita had always been his favorite, and only partially because it was the only one he could fumble all the way through without a complete train wreck. But with Sean watching avidly, sort of bouncing and squirming along where he sprawled across Evan's comforter, Evan's fingers tangled into knots during the Preludio. The Loure was hideous; the level of control it required from his bow arm was difficult at any time, and when he was nervous, the piece of crap instrument in his hands just groaned and grated with every shake of his hand. By the time he was halfway through the Gavotte en Rondeau, his double stops were so painfully out of tune he couldn't stand it anymore and dropped the violin with a curse. "There. You happy? I played, and I sounded terrible, just like I warned you."

  "Oh, I'm very happy." To Evan's complete surprise and bewilderment, Sean actually sounded like he meant it. When his reply brought Evan's startled eyes to his, Sean was absolutely beaming. "I mean, that was really, truly, just absolutely bloody awful. Thank you."

  Evan couldn't stop himself from asking, "What is wrong with you? You like listening to things that make your ears bleed?"

  Sean laughed. "Nah. I just like listening to things that are real. Colony radio drives me batshit after a while, you know? I miss the human touches, the wrong notes and little improvisations. I haven't heard anybody play a note live since I got here, and my sister's humming around the place doesn't count—she's so bloody tone deaf that she makes your playing sound like Mozart."

  "He was really more of a piano guy," Evan remarked dryly.

  "Well, whatever." Sean waved a hand before dropping it back to the mattress, where it started tapping out patterns silently. "I don't know any famous violin prodigies, I guess. Now if you wanted to talk about computers, on the other hand ..." He grinned when Evan wrinkled his nose in obvious distaste. "So you're definitely not here on the tech support side of things, then, are you? Though I suppose I would have seen you around sometime on the job if you were. I know pretty much every pair of hands that touches my software. And then I chop off every pair of hands that dares to mess it up." He laughed at his own lame joke, but so brightly that Evan smiled a little too. "So what do you do?"

  To his surprise, Evan felt his cheeks heat a little. "Architecture, mostly. Technically I work for the engineering corps, but mostly I do design and drafting."

  "Really?" Sean's russet eyebrows lifted. "Any work I'd be familiar with?"

  "The, umm, light shields were my first big project," Evan admitted shyly.

  Sean whistled. "So you've been working for ISC2 since before it was built."

  He nodded. "I wasn't in on the first stages of planning, but I was brought on once the ISU decided they had enough to work with, had fixed most of ISC1's glaring issues, and managed to raise enough funding to make this really possible."

  "That's pretty—oh shit, is that really the time?" Sean sprang off the bed and bolted for the door so fast Evan almost dropped the violin he'd forgotten was still in his hand. "Mallory's going to kill me for sure. It's the third time this week I've been late for dinner."

  Amused, Evan asked, "What were you doing the other two nights? Listening to some other stranger assault your ears?"

  "Oh, if only I could say I had been." Sean clasped a hand to his heart dramatically, fluttering his eyelashes and grinning. "No, I just got caught up in my work and lost track of time. It happens to me a lot. I open the command prompt and everything else just fades away." He placed his hand flat on the door and waited for it to slide open.

  Evan cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, uh, it was nice to
meet you, I guess?"

  "It surely was," Sean agreed. "Maybe I'll see you around. Otherwise, I might just stop by again the next time I hear you squawking away in here." And then he was gone, dashing down the hallway before the door had even shut with a soft thnick behind him. For a moment, Evan just stood staring at the door; then he shook his head and let out a quiet laugh.

  That night, when Evan got out his colored pencils with the urge to draw an Asiatic lily, it wasn't his mother's flowers he found himself drawing, but Sean's vivid hair and leaf green eyes, the freckles across his cheeks like the spots on the lily's petals.