#its so satisfying when u hear the noise & do the visceral

[devotedlystrangewizard]

its a little funny how my dad kept being like "ooh ur gonna be so good at elden ring u were great at parrying the guardians in botw" and as it turns out.. im pretty decent at parrying in bloodborne!

[deus-ex-knoxina]

classical pianist andrew minyard

okay i KNOW. i know we all love classical pianist kevin day. but LISTEN.

in juvie andrew joins the music program. or, well, he sneaks in when he’s not at exy, and eventually the program directors decide more activities are better than fewer, and if andrew wants to play music and figures he might as well play exy, then they will make it possible for him to do both.

he’s immediately drawn to the drums (because d u h you keep everyone else on track, don’t have to stand up, get to hit things and make loud ass noises)

and he gets pretty good at it but one day he breaks a drumstick over the head of some asshole and the program director decides not to let him play drums anymore :(

in fact, the program director decides not to let him play ANY instrument that could be potentially used as a weapon. this rules out pretty much everything up to and including the harp, but not piano

and hey, andrew’s already demonstrated that he has a good sense of rhythm, so why not, right?

and the piano is andrew’s need to be loud and to get some of his anger out, and he can slam on the keys as much as he wants, he can teach himself the atonal pieces and the twelve-tone pieces and silently appreciate how they are crafted, not just created. they are deliberate. they are intentional. every single note is placed intentionally.

also atonal piano pieces frequently involve some stabbing at the piano so that’s fun too, because like i said. gotta get that aggression out somewhere now that he can’t throw drumsticks at people (he still does they’re just not his drumsticks)

and andrew and his eidetic memory and his speed and rhythm that he got from playing the drums and being in fights and his appreciation for the type of music that is crafted make him a PRODIGY.

he starts learning some older things, classical piano concertos written specifically so their composers could show off, and because andrew is andrew, he learns them flawlessly. he would be insulted by anything less. it’s one thing to fuck with other people when you’re playing with them, it’s another thing entirely to fuck with yourself. and andrew does not fuck with himself.

he starts learning some variations and thinks ‘oh, that’s not that hard, i could do that’, and suddenly he can sit down at the piano and figure out a short melody and improvise twelve melodies on it like he’s fucking wolfgang amadeus mozart

andrew finds himself appreciating what he knows about some composers. mozart, beethoven, tchaikovsky. these are people who have suffered and were never properly recognized until long after their deaths-- recognized as they were. mozart who was a prodigy, who burned bright but couldn’t get anyone to hire him permanently, beethoven who concealed his deafness as long as he could and fought as long as he could only for audiences to think he had made mistakes or couldn’t hear the dissonance of his own music, tchaikovsky who struggled so much in the closet

and andrew is an instigator at heart. he loves causing drama. and he DOES. how can he interpret this sonata in the way that will piss off the most people while still technically being true to what the composer wrote? who says mozart *really* intended the third beat to be weak instead of the strongest one in the whole measure?

andrew being andrew, he wouldn’t have done anything about this. he gets out of juvie and he goes to live with tilda and aaron and then he and aaron go to live with nicky. he would have forgotten about piano, about drums too.

but nicky (and it always comes back to nicky, doesn’t it, all the little accidents that mean that the twins have a shot at a good life) has an idea. it’s a terrible idea but it’s an idea. he’s always been able to sing, he thinks maybe if he teaches himself some piano he can learn to accompany himself, maybe find some hipster bars or coffeeshops and play there, maybe earn a bit of money, maybe just some free drinks.

he buys a cheap electronic keyboard and practices diligently, with some increase in skill, and andrew tries to ignore the keyboard and almost succeeds, almost, but he wants. he wants to do the one thing that successfully kept his interest through juvie, the one thing that he... kind of misses. he can be alone when he’s playing-- nobody interrupts, people leave him alone, and if he plays long enough then they even go away before he’s done and don’t bother applauding or complimenting him or anything at the end. it is mortifying to be known and andrew does not want this. he doesn’t want to play for other people. he plays for himself, and occasionally to piss off other people.

and it’s satisfying, tactically, to play a piece and get everything exactly right. he... enjoys it. that’s a realization that surprises him.

so he takes some chances. when nicky is at work and aaron is in his room, andrew starts to play. he hopes aaron will interpret it as nicky magically improving, or maybe nicky playing some inspiration-- because nicky is learning, and andrew does not make a single mistake. he plays slowly, at first, re-learning and also learning for the first time an instrument other than the old upright piano he learned to play on, but he plays perfectly.

aaron never mentions it and andrew grows bolder. he plays whenever nicky isn’t home, and when aaron isn’t home either he plays loudly. he remembers everything he ever learned, and soon he’s finding new recordings, listening to them, playing them by ear, and then playing his game and composing variations-- only he wouldn’t call it composing because that’s not what it is to him, it’s just a game. how much can he fuck up this melody while still letting it retain its true character? it’s amusing to him in a dark way. how much does he fuck it up before it’s not the same anymore? i never said it was healthy for him

playing piano, like being gay, is a secret andrew keeps control over. he chooses who, and when, to reveal it to. nicky takes the keyboard to college when they all go, for exy, because andrew minyard is smarter and more capable than he will ever truly let on, and has managed to master goalkeeping as well, with the bare minimum of effort. at this point, the keyboard is a hobby for nicky, not a money-making scheme, but he brings it. why not? andrew is secretly pleased.

the first person he tells-- the first person who wasn’t at juvie with him, because even after all of that time he’s still viscerally uncomfortable with random people hearing him play-- is bee. the second is kevin. or, well, he doesn’t *tell* kevin. he wanders over to the piano while kevin is talking and whips out a scarlatti sonata in double time, banging on the keys, flawless and yet somehow sardonic and brutal in the way that manic andrew is. he drowns kevin out, because kevin stops talking. he is... shocked.

but kevin is not stupid. he knows that andrew does not give up secrets lightly, and he knows that this is a secret, because he knows this is nicky’s keyboard, and nicky would have told him if andrew played. if he had known.

so this is a secret andrew is trusting him with, and if anything kevin is amazed because what does it mean for their deal, if there is already something andrew cares about? or is this like goalkeeping, where he’s good at it because he had no choice but to practice but at the same time refuses to put in effort?

kevin can’t make himself believe that these flawless, energetic piano pieces at the speed of light are the result of not caring. he wonders if andrew chooses the fluttering, embellished, complicated pieces because they provide enough things for him to focus on. and he wonders how that’s different from a game of exy, but he also knows he might never understand.

renee is the third person he tells. he offers, actually, to teach her. underneath the medication he recognizes someone who has something they want to cling to, but who hasn’t really figured out a whole... person, to wipe away who they used to be. renee applies herself diligently and plays duets with him. they still fight, but sometimes they play.

after he comes off of his medication, andrew can’t make himself touch that stupid keyboard for weeks. he wonders what will happen if he does. it’s neil that causes him to snap out of it, accidentally. neil doesn’t know andrew plays. nobody except renee and bee know that andrew’s music isn’t dominated by heavy metal and screamo. but neil has never played piano and is intrigued by it, in the way that you’re intrigued by something you know people care about, and you can’t fathom why. it’s a mystery to him. he’s bugging andrew in the monsters’ suite one day and winds up turning on the keyboard and plunking out some notes just to see what it feels like, and to neil, it feels like nothing. there’s no exhilaration. it’s about as exciting as typing a few letters on his phone.

but neil can get under andrew’s skin like almost no one else, and when neil shrugs and turns away from the keyboard, andrew finds himself sighing, standing, crossing the room, and saying, ‘not like that.’ and neil says, ‘oh? then like how?’, and it’s a challenge, and andrew knows it’s a challenge. and he meets that challenge head on.

neil doesn’t know he’s in love but he’s a little bit closer to finding out, seeing how andrew looks when he cares about something despite not wanting to. and andrew is surprised, because he’s given up another secret to a pipe dream, but somehow, he doesn’t regret it.

[kinglazrus]

The Haunting of Danny Fenton

Chapter Four: Fear the Reaper

Word count: 2494 | [ffn] [ao3] | [previous] [next]

Valerie makes it through dinner, somehow. It’s just her, Maddie, and Jack seated around the Fenton’s modest table in their cozy kitchen. Tucker left some time while Valerie was upstairs. Danny stays in his room the whole time, sleeping, or so his parents say. She helps clean up, because that’s the polite thing to do, and Maddie points out the frozen meals she’s prepared for the week ahead.

Danny needs hearty foods, she tells Valerie, but nothing too dense. If he doesn't have the appetite for it, make sure he eats at least one full meal. Otherwise, he subsists off smoothies chock full of vitamins and protein. Valerie feels more like a babysitter than a bodyguard as Maddie gives her a rundown of life at Fenton Works and Danny's daily routine.

Much to Valerie's relief, they leave the boring discussion behind soon enough and move on to what really matters—the Shade.

“We'll set up the fence tonight and leave it there for the week." Maddie passes Valerie one of two black boxes. "It's not very complex, so if Danny wants to move it, you can."

"Why would he move it?" Valerie hefts the box in her arms, surprised by its weight. It's not very large, fitting neatly under her arm, but still substantial enough that she needs two hands to properly secure it.

Jack, emerging from the basement door with two long extension cords on his arms, answers for Maddie. "It gets pretty boring being stuck in the same spot night after night, don't you think?"

Valerie, who sleeps at night and therefore prefers being in the same room the entire time—because waking up somewhere else would be incredibly disorienting—does not know how to respond to Jack's statement beyond a quiet, "Huh?"

Ignoring her noise of confusion, or simply not hearing it, Jack walks to the bottom of the stairs and calls Danny's name.

"Shouldn't we let him sleep?" Valerie asks. If it were her, and she had a choice in the matter, she would much rather be unconscious when the Shade shows itself.

Maddie glances over her shoulder toward the front door.

Outside, the setting sun paints the clouds in pink and orange hues, cool purple shadows cutting through the streaks of colour. It's a beautiful sight, the sky behind the clouds a gradient of darkening blue, turning gold in the distance. It's the kind of sunset Valerie admires from her hoverboard, flying high over the city. Dusk has always been her favourite time of day, and she takes in the rich, colourful sight with a content smile.

Maddie watches the sky with dread in her eyes. "Danny won't be sleeping now. It will start soon."

Danny's bedroom door groans as it opens. The sound, low and despondent, reminds Valerie of the oppressive aura she endured earlier. Logically, she knows the door's whine is born from poorly oiled hinges, but she can't shake the notion that the house itself is moaning in anguish, grieving for Danny and his haunting.

Danny lingers beyond the doorway, in the shadows of his room, the hall's dim light barely touching his toes. With one hand, he grips the doorframe, his thumb stroking the stop in a gesture Valerie would almost call comforting, a sort of soothing caress. His lips move, barely, but he speaks too quietly to hear.

Valerie watches this and thinks it's the weirdest damn thing she's ever seen.

Danny's hand falls to his side. "My room's fine tonight. I need my computer." He retreats further into his room.

"You heard him," Jack say, smiling over his shoulder.

Jack goes up the stairs first, Maddie right after him, with Valerie trailing behind. When they reach Danny's room, Valerie raises her eyebrows at the setup. His desk is in the middle of the room, a foot of space on every side, while all other furniture is shoved back against the wall. Danny's already sitting down, legs crossed on his chair, a tumbler dotted with condensation sitting beside his keyboard and a bowl of trail mix resting in his lap.

Weirder still, the light is off, and his curtains are drawn, leaving the soft glow of his computer screen to be the only light source. Neither Maddie nor Jack seem to mind this, making no moves toward the light switch on the wall.

"Got everything you need?" Maddie sidles around Danny's desk and sets the box she's holding, identical to the one in Valerie's arms, down on the floor.

"Snack, smoothie, extra water bottle in the drawer. Textbook's are beside my chair. Pillow and blankets under the desk," Danny says.

Squinting, Valerie sees the aforementioned pile of bedding stuffed in front of his chair.

"Bathroom?" Jack asks as he dumps the extension cords on Danny's bed. He starts unravelling them with practiced ease, watching his son for an answer.

"Already went."

"Are you... are you staying there all night?" Valerie asks. The thought of being stuck in that chair all night has her pursing her lips. It reminds her far too much of high school, languishing for hours in cramped desks with hard, plastic chairs. She always hated high school.

Danny gives her a sidelong glance. The longer he stares, the more Valerie fidgets, and she does not fidget, ever. But Danny's eyes, which appeared dull and hollow before, seem to glow now. Not with vitality, but with an eerie, soulless light that disturbs Valerie so much she can't avert her eyes. She's shaking, and sweating, and it takes her far too long to identify this feeling: fear. Danny cuts the least impressive figure Valerie has ever seen in her life, but right now, she's afraid. Afraid that when he she turns her back, he will still be there. Still watching.

"Valerie, dear, you can set that down over here." Maddie's voice, casual, unknowing, compels Valerie to look away. Maddie crouches by the short side of Danny's desk—Valerie didn't notice her move—and taps the floor beside it.

Valerie jolts into action, eager for a distraction, and drops beside Maddie, holding out the black box. Maddie takes it, placing it on the carpet. For a few seconds, she fusses with it, prodding it, pushing it this way and that, until it sits exactly where she wants it.

"You might want to scoot back a little. The other post is already in position."

Valerie puts a good few inches between her and the 'post.' Apparently satisfied with Valerie's position, Maddie reaches out and bops the top of the box. Valerie recoils when the post bursts open. The sides unfurl, falling flat, and the top caves in, exposing a mass of wires and antennas. Something whirs. A spool at the bottom of the device starts spinning, and a slender cable of dotted lights shoots out. It curves around the back of the desk, stretching out of Valerie's line of sight.

Movement to her right gains her attention, and she sees a second cable of lights unwinding around Danny's chair. The new cable hits the post just as the spool stops spinning, locking into a plug at the end of the first cable. Three sharp beeps ring out.

"Looks good!" Maddie claps her hands. "Jack, can you plug it in?"

"Already on it." Jack plugs one end of his extension cord into the post in front of Maddie and Valerie, takes the other end, and rushes out of the room. The extension cord whips after him, snaking off of Danny's bed and out the door.

Valerie eyes the device dubiously. Maddie called it a fence, but it doesn't look very fence-like to her. Looking at it, it's hard to imagine it stopping anything, much less a Shade. But Valerie knows better than to underestimate the Fentons, and she might as well use this opportunity to learn from her ghost hunting heroes.

"What does this do?" she asks.

"Do you know what GZF is?" Maddie asks.

Valerie's heard of it, tried to read a few articles about it, but overall knows very little. "Vaguely."

"It stands for Ghost Zone Frequency. Think of the electromagnetic spectrum, spanning everything from radio waves, to the visible and invisible spectrum, to gamma rays. The Ghost Zone, which exists on a different plane from us, has its own equivalent spectrum we call GZF. It has its own spectrum because, so far, it can't be properly sensed by human instruments or human eyes," Maddie explains.

"But we can see ectoplasm. And we can see ghosts," Valerie points out.

"You see what you want to see," Danny says.

Valerie nearly flinches, and she hates herself for it. She hates Danny for it. It's not fair that he can drag such a visceral reaction from her just by talking. Even less fair is the fact that she doesn't understand why he sets her on edge so much. At least he isn't looking at her now, instead concentrating on his computer screen.

"What does that mean?" Valerie asks.

"It's pretty straight forward. Your brain can't see it, so it fills in the blanks with what it thinks should be there." Danny's eyes flit away from the screen for a moment, glancing over her before going back. "You ever read anything Lovecraft?"

"Maybe in high school."

"Well, he does this thing when he writes—he describes something as indescribable. And our measly little human brains try to understand what that indescribable thing is, but it can't, because it's indescribable to us. Ghost stuff is like that. But, unlike Lovecraft's monsters, ghosts aren't monsters from another dimension; they're the flipside of our reality. Because of that, our brains are able to perceive ghosts without seeing or hearing them. And since they know something is there, they fill in the blanks. Otherwise, we'd all be twitching balls of anxiety that constantly feel like we're missing something glaringly obvious."

Danny twists, draping his arm over the back of his chair, and regards Valerie with a fervent stare. "Got it?"

Valerie refuses to look away this time. "Sort of."

"Good enough for me." As Danny turns back to the computer, he twitches. A glower takes over his face. He rolls his shoulder, as if brushing off an unwanted touch. Ever so subtly, he lifts the hand opposite from Maddie and Valerie, cupping it over his ear.

"Danny?" Valerie reaches toward him.

"Shut up. I'm fine. Shut up!" He hurls his last words at the empty space to his right, bearing his teeth.

Valerie marvels at the open air. She can’t see a trace of the Shade, not even a faint shadow. But Danny’s eyes glide across the room, unmistakably tracking something as it moves around them. The hairs on her arm raise as Danny’s gaze roves over her. If she didn’t know any better, she would have blamed it on a chill in the air.

"Remember, sweetie. Don't respond to it." Maddie's voice is calm and even, as though she's said this line a hundred times before. She probably has.

Danny nods, a sharp, jerky movement, and hunches over. Valerie notices his jaw clenching and his toes curling. Despite how pained he appears, his eyes grow brighter still. Maybe Danny is a lot stronger than he looks. How very Fenton of him, to cast Valerie's expectations aside like that.

Jack's voice, a faint boom, drifts through the open door. "Plugging in!"

The cable lights flare to life. Narrow green beacons curve upward, converging over Danny's head He visibly relaxes, some of the tension bleeding out of him.

Valerie stretches her hand out, watching Maddie for any sign she should stop. When she gets none, she holds her hand over the beacons. The lights remain uninterrupted even though she blocks three of them with her palm.

"How does this stop a Shade?" she asks.

Maddie's eyes widen. "Oh, that's right! I never finished answering your question. Through our research, Jack and I discovered Shades exist in a thirty point range on the GZF spectrum. This is a rudimentary blockade design for small quarters. The cables are identical, one beacon for each of the thirty points in the Shade range. They're aimed straight up, but the identical points are attracted to each other, making them curve like so.

"The completed arcs generate an energy signature that stretches out four feet from the point of convergence, although it gets weaker around the edges. All thirty arcs together create a dense space that makes it hard for Shades to move within this area."

Valerie's brain buzzes as Maddie keeps talking. This is rudimentary? There's nothing rudimentary about it.

"But it needs such a narrow field that we can't make the shield any wider. And it isn't perfect. A strong enough Shade could break through it, but thankfully the one haunting Danny doesn't appear to be one of them," Maddie finishes.

Valerie's mouth drops open, but she can't think of a response, instead staring dumbly at the fence.

"Mom, I think you broke her," Danny says, grinning smugly.

"Oh, not again."

Valerie's mouth snaps shut with a clack. She shoots Danny a withering glare, then turns to Maddie. "I'm fine. It's just a lot to process. Guns are more my expertise."

"Danny could teach you a few things while you're here. He likes to pretend he doesn't care about science, but we all know he does." Maddie winks.

"Space science! It's different from ghost science," Danny declares.

Maddie hides her mouth with her hand and whispers loudly, "He loves both."

Danny grumbles under his breath. "I'll show you loving science."

Valerie rolls her eyes and shares a smile with Maddie, both of them laughing quietly at Danny's expense. He stubbornly ignores them, typing away on his computer, but there's a smile on his pale lips.

Valerie prefers Danny like this, smiling and joking. It reminds her that they were supposed to be classmates. If his accident never happened, if he never got his disease, if he wasn't homeschooled, they might have been friends. She doesn't remember meeting him way back during freshman orientation, but now she wishes she did. Their first interaction might have gone better that way. But it's too late for that now.

She wonders which one is the real Danny. The sardonic punster with a bitter glare. The eerie wraith that chills Valerie to her core. Or the happy boy before her now whose grin lights up his face, momentarily gracing him with the warm glow of life his illness and haunting has stolen from him. Maybe they're all him. Humans aren't so simple that she can reduce a person to a few key words and say that's all they are. Taking everything you see at face value is a habit Valerie abhors.

But that only means she can't trust any face Danny puts on, no matter how genuine it appears. He can be all of them and none them. In the end, she doesn't care. She's just here to do her job.