Work Text:
Cat Pose
“I can’t believe Namjoon agreed to this,” Yoongi muttered from his position on his back on the orchestra room floor. He turned his head to his right to see Seokjin grinning back at him, also on his back, right leg bent over his left with a hand on his knee, pulling it towards the ground.
“Good!” he heard Hoseok say from the front of the room. “That’s the Reclining Spinal Twist. Hold that pose and take a few deep breaths in.”
Yoongi half-heartedly crossed one ankle over the other. He was a piano player, for God’s sake. All the stretching he needed was to wiggle his fingers a few times. He rested his fingertips on the floor and started softly tapping out a warmup.
“Participate, Yoongi!” Seokjin hissed from a couple of feet away. Oh, Hoseok had moved on to a new pose. Grudgingly, Yoongi picked himself up until he was resting on his knees, hands splayed in front of him in something called “Cat Pose.” His only solace was that he could see Jimin’s cute butt in his red pants towards the front of the room.
“Yoga is good for you. It centers the mind and body.” Seokjin gently lowered himself onto the floor and stretched back, following Hoseok’s instructions to get into Cobra Pose. “Also, Namjoonie didn’t agree to it. I did. Hobi was so excited when I asked.”
Ah, so it was Seokjin’s fault. That figured.
“You know, hyung, we’re not the only group that uses this room…” Yoongi began as Seokjin lowered his chest back down to the floor, extending his arms over his head.
“Sure, Yoongi. What does that have to do with anything?”
“The wind ensemble practices in here too. Earlier today, in fact.”
Seokjin tucked one arm under his cheek and tilted his head to look at Yoongi. “Okay…”
“So you know who sits where you are right now, right?” Yoongi sat back on his ankles, the beginnings of a smirk crossing his face.
Seokjin just furrowed his eyebrows, so Yoongi answered his own question. “You, my lovely hyung, are currently face down in what the woodwinds have so affectionately named ‘Lake Low Brass.’ You know… ‘cause of all the spit?”
In the split second it took for Seokjin to parse his words and spring up, sprinting towards the bathroom, Yoongi discovered a love for yoga.
-----
Jimin was early enough to practice that most of the chairs and stands were still stacked off to the side, ready to be pulled out. He put his flute case down in the approximate position that his chair would end up in and went to grab it. Once he’d taken care of the chair, he pulled the next stand off of the rack and brought it back to his seat. He flipped the top over, and-
Oh.
It was The Bad Stand™.
It couldn’t support the weight of more than one sheet of music at a time. Not one piece, one sheet. Heaven forbid your part have more than one page. Jimin picked the stand up, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and slipped it back on the rack after removing another, better one.
The next sucker could deal with it.
-----
Whistle
Jungkook could see it, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. There were only 12 measures left. Now 10. Now 8.
There were only three measures left when Jimin noticed.
He and Taehyung were locked in an ill-advised prank war, and after Jimin had moved all the clocks in their apartment forward to make Taehyung think he was late, Taehyung had retaliated. There were only two measures left until the piccolo solo in Ireland, their opener for the season, and Taehyung had somehow bribed the second-chair flute to replace Jimin’s piccolo with what looked like a toy tin whistle.
Jimin’s eyes widened as he picked up the whistle from his stand, and Jungkook could already hear Taehyung laughing from the back of the room. Jungkook watched Jimin for an agonizing four beats, as he stared at the whistle. With only a beat to spare, Jimin shrugged, raised the toy to his lips, and-
Nailed it.
To Jungkook’s surprise (and also Taehyung’s, if the sudden choked-off laugh was anything to go by) Jimin’s fingers flew over the holes like he was used to it. The solo ended, and Jimin kept his eyes on his music. Jungkook realized that his mouth was hanging open, so he closed it, still watching Jimin. Slowly, Jimin looked up and back towards the percussion section, smirking. He stuck his tongue out for a moment before turning his head back.
Jimin met Jungkook’s eye for just a moment, still smirking, and gave him a wink.
(Later, Taehyung was inconsolable. At least until Jungkook distracted him with a kiss.)
-----
Tambourine
As he raised one hand to flip the page in his score, other hand keeping his baton in the air, Namjoon noticed that something unusual had happened.
Taehyung had a panicked look on his face as he held the tambourine up, and it didn’t take much thinking to realize why he looked worried. He was holding it vertically.
Had it been one of the other percussionists, Namjoon would have hurried to start the next movement in the Nutcracker Suite, but thinking about the amount of trouble Taehyung had given him made him slow his motions, ever so gently turning the page and making sure to look around at the entire orchestra, ostensibly to make sure everyone was watching him.
He noticed Taehyung’s extended arm start to tremble.
Bringing his baton up, he brought the low strings in first, then the woodwinds. There wasn’t enough happening for Taehyung to lower the tambourine without drawing attention to himself, so he kept it in the air. He looked to one side, but when the percussionist on his left noticed his predicament, she just laughed silently at him.
Looking back up towards the front, Taehyung caught Namjoon’s eye, and Namjoon could feel the lopsided smirk as it plastered itself onto his face. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Jungkook’s eyebrows raise as he looked up to see Namjoon grinning.
Slowly, over the course of about forty measures, Namjoon watched Taehyung remedy his situation. First, he slowly pulled his arm in towards himself, wincing at the tiny sound it made when his wrist twitched too much to one side. Once the tambourine was close enough, he turned it so it was pressed to his chest. Slowly, so slowly, he lowered himself into a squat until everything but his brown hair was hidden behind the timpani.
Namjoon looked back down at his score, figuring that was the end of it, but right as he was about to give the next cue, the metallic sound of a tambourine hitting the floor crashed right through the clarinet entrance.
He turned to look at the timpani, trying desperately to hold in a laugh as Taehyung reappeared inch by inch, face redder than a tomato. Jungkook, for his part, looked outright alarmed.
-----
Hoseok and Jungkook got to practice just in time, walking in together after their shared composition class.
“You grab chairs and I’ll grab stands?” Hoseok offered.
“Sure,” Jungkook nodded and headed over to the stacks of chairs. Hoseok pulled the next two stands off of the rack and sat them down to adjust them. One of them worked fine, but when he tried to adjust the other, the entire top part just came off of the rest of it. Rolling his eyes, he replaced The Bad Stand™’s top and carried them over to Jungkook. Looking between the two stands, he considered being a nice hyung…
And then put the awful stand down in front of Jungkook’s chair with a smile. Jungkook, engrossed in a conversation with the clarinet player next to him, didn’t even notice.
-----
Practice Room
Yoongi wasn’t sure what had drawn him to the practice rooms on campus so early in the morning. Usually, he wasn’t even awake at the ungodly hour of 10am.
The need to play had struck, though, so Yoongi had made his way to the music building, cursing the fact that his apartment was so small that he didn’t have room for a proper 88-key piano. He had let himself into the first available practice room, sitting down on the bench and stretching his fingers before placing them on the keys.
He warmed up, hands dancing over the keys as he played through his stretching exercises and his most recent warmup obsession: Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. He knew it was an overplayed cliché, but he loved the way it almost-but-not-quite quoted the Moonlight Sonata.
As he finished, he lifted his foot from the pedal and listened. He could hear that there was a cellist in the room across from his, a trumpet player in the room to his left. Another pianist was in the room to his right, not quite as confident a player as he was. The practice rooms were ostensibly soundproof, but the dilapidated panels on the walls didn’t do much to dampen sounds between rooms.
Yoongi rummaged in his bag for his orchestra folder, pulling out the Mahler piece and flipping to the section where the chromatic runs started. He played, slowly at first, repeating measures until they fell easily under his fingers. When he’d made it about halfway through, he noticed something strange. Whenever he stopped playing, the piano player in the next room over stopped as well. When he resumed, so did the other player.
He started to play again, softer, listening for the other person through the wall he was facing. It sounded like they were picking out the string part by ear to play along with him. Quirking up an eyebrow, Yoongi pulled out Candide Overture, turning to the end and starting to play. It took a few moments, but the other player began playing the flute solo, high up on the keyboard.
He played a few more things from their current set list, listening to his neighbor play along. Either it was someone in the orchestra, or just someone with a huge musical repertoire. He tucked away his orchestra music, laid his hands on the keyboard, and started to play again.
It look less than a minute for Jimin to appear at the door to his practice room, knocking rapidly. Yoongi grinned and Jimin took that as his cue to come in.
“Hyungie, what are you playing?” he asked, resting his hands on Yoongi’s shoulders as he played. “I went through everything we’re playing this semester, and it doesn’t sound familiar at all.”
“Just something I’ve been working on,” Yoongi replied.
“I like it a lot!” Jimin leaned forward, pressing his lips to the back of Yoongi’s neck before moving forward to rest his chin on his shoulder, arms around his chest.
“Good,” Yoongi said, feeling his face flush. “It’s for you.”
He could feel Jimin freeze, his breath hitching for a moment. “Really?”
Yoongi nodded. “It’s not done, but—”
Jimin cut him off by pulling his chin to the side for a kiss. Yoongi didn’t notice that he’d stopped playing until one of Jimin’s hands came up to rest on top of his own and pressed down.
D flat major.
“Your favorite key,” Yoongi leaned back long enough to whisper. “Love you.”
“Love you too, hyung.”
The tender moment was broken a few seconds later as the trumpet player started practicing pedal tones.
-----
Triangle
“Orchestra chimes coming through!” Seokjin yelled as Jungkook cringed at his volume. “If you don’t move yourselves out of the way, I will not be held responsible for your injuries.”
Together, they carefully lifted the chimes over the threshold and placed them on the ramp outside the door. Namjoon, who had been sitting on the steps next to the ramp, jumped up and held out his hands to help.
“Kim Namjoon, sit your pretty little ass back down this instant!” Jungkook cringed again, but Namjoon did as he was told, sitting back down and resting his elbow on his knee, his chin on his hand. Jungkook had never seen Namjoon pout before. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but Seokjin was already pulling the chimes down the ramp, and Jungkook had to catch himself before he fell.
Hoseok, who was coming back from the trailer, having helped load one of the timpani in, saw Jungkook’s face and grinned. “Namjoon’s not allowed to help load the trailer,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Not after last time.”
“What happened last time?” Jungkook asked, but Hoseok had already passed by and was bouncing up the steps.
He and Seokjin arrived at the trailer, where Taehyung was directing several of the other orchestra members, pointing out where various instruments and equipment needed to go. Jungkook helped Seokjin lift the chimes into the trailer, locking the wheels. At Taehyung’s instructions, they strapped the chimes to one of the walls, ensuring they wouldn’t fall over in transit.
The orchestra had been requested to play at an alumni benefit concert at a location just off campus, so they had to load all of the percussion equipment into a trailer, instead of just pushing it down the hallway into the concert hall like normal. The only thing they didn’t have to bring was the piano, which Yoongi had grumbled about (“Damn piano probably won’t play worth anything,” he’d said. Seokjin had grinned evilly and said “I bet it’s an upright, too.” Yoongi had paled at the thought.).
As Jungkook and Seokjin headed back into the music building, he tried to ask Seokjin what had happened last time Namjoon had helped load the trailer. Before he could get the words out, though, Seokjin had stopped on the step below where Namjoon was sitting and planted a kiss on his forehead. Jungkook decided it was best to leave them be.
He stepped back into the rehearsal room and found Jimin trying to heft all three bags of cymbals onto his shoulders. “Here, let me take one of those,” he said, and Jimin handed him the biggest one with a grateful smile. They walked back into the hallway, and Jungkook tried again. “Hey, Jimin-hyung.”
“Yes?”
“Why isn’t Namjoon allowed to help us load the trailer?”
Jimin’s face changed in an instant. He tried to hold in the laugh, but his resolve only lasted a second. Jungkook sprang forward to catch the cymbal bag as it slipped from Jimin’s right shoulder when he leaned forward, bent almost double in laughter.
Jungkook stared at Jimin, wondering for just a second whether he’d gone mad. “Hyung?” he asked timidly, and Jimin stood back up, wiping tears of mirth from his cheeks.
“Sorry, Kookie. It wasn’t really that funny, but I pictured the look on Namjoon’s face after last time. I’ve never seen someone look so sorry in my life.” Jimin lifted the cymbal bag from Jungkook’s hand and hoisted it back on his shoulder, turning towards the door.
“So what happened?” Jungkook asked, but Jimin was already several steps ahead of him, still laughing quietly to himself.
Thirty minutes later, Jungkook dropped himself onto the step next to Namjoon, whose head rested on his arms, crossed over his knees. Jungkook stretched his legs out and stared out towards the trailer, where Seokjin and Taehyung were doing the final checks to make sure they had everything and that it was all strapped in correctly.
“I broke a triangle.”
“What?” Namjoon had spoken so quietly, face still buried in his arms, that Jungkook was sure he must have misheard him.
“Last time we had to load the trailer, I broke a triangle.” Namjoon raised his head to look at Jungkook, a sad smile perking up the corners of his lips.
Jungkook considered this for a moment. “How?”
“I don’t know. I just had it in my hands, carrying it to Taehyung, and…” Namjoon trailed off, turning to stare at the trailer. “It wasn’t just last time, either. The time before, the mallet bag strap came unsewn, and the time before that, the vibraphone’s foot pedal just dropped off.”
As Namjoon spoke, Jungkook could feel his expression becoming more and more incredulous. When Namjoon finally turned to look at him, he attempted to school his face into something more neutral.
“It’s okay, you can laugh.” Namjoon chuckled to himself. “They started calling me the ‘God of Destruction’ and after the triangle incident, Seokjin banned me from helping load the trailer.” Namjoon stood, offering a hand to help Jungkook to his feet. “I’m over it… mostly.”
Seokjin and Taehyung seemed to have made their final checks, because Taehyung pulled the door down and latched it, while Seokjin dropped the checklist into the driver’s seat of the truck that he would use to tow the equipment to the concert venue.
“I’ll be honest, Namjoon-hyung. I’m surprised you haven’t broken your baton yet.” Jungkook said as Seokjin and Taehyung approached.
“I-“
“Oh, he has,” Seokjin interrupted. “This is his sixth one this year already.”
Jungkook pursed his lips in an attempt to keep from laughing, but Taehyung had no such qualms, grabbing Jungkook’s shoulder and cracking up loudly as Namjoon sank down onto the steps again and buried his face in his hands.
-----
As soon as Jungkook picked up his stand to move it over a couple of inches, the hex nut on the bottom of the stand gave up, and the feet dropped to the floor with a loud clang.
Jimin looked over at the sound with a sympathetic expression on his face, but Jungkook noticed that he also pulled his own stand a little closer, as though he was afraid Jungkook might take it.
With a sigh, he picked up the stand, the feet, and the hex nut, though he had to search for the nut, as it had rolled and ended up between the feet of their bassoon player. Jungkook headed for the music library connected to the rehearsal room, looking for the toolkit he thought he’d seen stashed away there.
He didn’t find the tool kit, but he did find Yoongi, who was sorting through piles of music, muttering about “who takes just the fucking piano part, seriously?”
“Hyung…”
“What do you want?” Yoongi looked up.
“Will you fix this stand?”
“No.” Yoongi looked back down.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Jungkook stared at the top of Yoongi’s head, thinking. Then he turned slightly to the right and called “Oh, hey, Jimin-hyung!”
Yoongi looked up, but instead of Jimin, he found Jungkook giving him his best puppy-dog eyes. “Please fix the stand? There aren’t any more left.”
With a long sigh, Yoongi put the pile of music back down on the table and held out his hands. Jungkook deposited the stand parts in them with a smile before skipping back out into the rehearsal space. He could hear a stream of curses coming from Yoongi, but as he picked up the stand in front of Seokjin’s spot, the curses came to a stop and he could hear Yoongi start cackling evilly.
“You know, the kids accused me of sleeping with you to get you to put the Bottessini concerto in the program.” Seokjin said as he rested his head on Namjoon’s bare chest.
Seokjin could almost hear him roll his eyes. “Did you tell them that it’s my favorite piece, not yours?”
“And have them think that you wouldn’t change the set list if I wanted you to?”
“...Dammit, Jinnie.”
“Hey, they made assumptions. Just because it’s a bass concerto doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.”
“Exactly-” Namjoon began, but Seokjin tilted his head up for a kiss, cutting him off. They stayed there for a moment, lips pressed lazily together, until Seokjin tilted his head back and took a breath.
“Besides, I slept with you so you would put Clair de Lune in the program.”
Namjoon groaned as Seokjin laughed, but after a few seconds, a low chuckle built in his chest, and soon he was laughing too.
-----
Choir
Jimin couldn’t believe how stoic the eight members of the chamber choir looked. They were dressed casually enough, in jeans, t-shirts, and blouses, but they stood, posture impeccable, holding their music notebooks in front of them.
When Namjoon asked them to change things, increasing a crescendo here, cutting off earlier there, they nodded and scribbled quickly on their music. When they had finished three run-throughs, and Namjoon told them they were done, they filed out of the room, looking for all the world like they were gliding instead of walking.
Jimin could see that the other members of the orchestra were just as unnerved by the choir members. He’d been surprised when Namjoon had informed them that they would be collaborating with the choir for the spring concert. Even within the music school, there were unspoken divisions, and the orchestra and chamber choir hadn’t worked together before.
For the next three weeks, they kept up the same routine. The choir members would arrive at the beginning of the rehearsal, keep to themselves until it was time to sing, do their parts, and then leave, all without speaking to the orchestra members.
The day of the concert arrived, and the choir members looked just as proper in their concert black backstage, and even more intimidating than usual. Everything went well, and Jimin had to admit that ending the concert with their collaborative song, Eric Whitacre’s Sleep, had been a good choice.
They were all packing their instruments away after the concert when Jimin decided he felt brave. Despite their standoffish behavior, he had enjoyed having the choir members working with them, so he approached one of the sopranos (Minji, he thought her name was), and asked if they wanted to join them for the afterparty at a local bar.
“Really?” Minji asked. She looked at the other singers, who nodded. “We’d love to!”
And that’s how the chamber choir members ended up at the bar with Jimin, Yoongi, Jungkook, Taehyung, Namjoon, Seokjin, Hoseok (and Iseul), as well as most of the brass section.
Jimin was marveling at the line of shot glasses in front of the altos, who had introduced themselves as Seunghee and Hyunjae. There were at least five empty shots each in front of them, and they still seemed to be just a little tipsy. Jimin took a sip from his beer and grinned as the girls clinked their glasses together and took another shot.
“Wanna dance?” asked Hyunjae.
“Sure,” Jimin said as he slid out of the booth. Hyunjae grabbed Seunghee’s and Jimin’s hands in each of hers and pulled them to the center of the dance floor. Shaking their hips to the song the DJ was playing, Hyunjae and Seunghee’s energy was infectious, and Jimin found himself with his hands up, having a great time.
Once they’d had their fill of dancing, they headed back to the table and rejoined the conversation, Jimin settling in next to Yoongi. Jimin noticed that Hyunjae had slid her arm around Seunghee’s shoulders and grinned.
One of the tenors, Changseon, was locked in a battle of terrible jokes with Seokjin.
“Why couldn’t the string quartet find their composer?”
“Why?”
“He was Haydn.”
“Why didn’t Handel go shopping?”
“Why?”
“Because he was Baroque.”
“How can you tell a singer is at your door?”
“How?”
“Because they can’t find the key and they don’t know when to come in.”
“What do a lawsuit and a double bass have in common?”
“What?”
“Everyone is relieved when the case is closed.”
Seokjin and Changseon laughed as Namjoon and Jiyoung, one of the basses, looked at each other with identical, long-suffering expressions.
As Hoseok and Yoongi talked to Secheol, Jimin leaned closer to Hyunjae, liquid courage running through his veins.
“You know, I thought you guys were really stuck-up.”
Hyunjae laughed, the movement shaking Seunghee. “We thought you guys were stuck-up, too. No one ever said anything to us during rehearsals.”
“You all just looked so… proper.”
“Well, we have to project a certain ‘look’ onstage, which you don’t really have to do. We have to stand there, no instruments to hide behind.”
“We don’t hide behind our instruments!” Jimin began, but Hyunjae cut him off.
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Hyunjae said. “It’s just that we’re taught to look proper. There’s like, an entire class on stage presence as a vocal major.”
“She’s right,” Seunghee cut in. “We practice looking like what we’re doing isn’t difficult, even if it is.”
Jimin nodded, thinking hard through the fog of alcohol clouding his brain.
“So in reality, you guys are just as…”
“Crazy as you?” Hyunjae offered. “Yeah, we’d have to be, to be vocal majors.”
Jimin nodded. “We should hang out more.”
“Hell yeah, we should,” Seokjin said. “I need an appreciative ear to bounce my humor off of.”
“What do you call a cow that can play a musical instrument?” Changseon asked.
“A moo-sician!” Seokjin replied.
Everyone at the table groaned in unison.
-----
Will You?
Namjoon didn’t think anything of it when he found the first sticky note in his score during a regular rehearsal. It was small, light pink, and had a heart drawn on it, so he figured that Seokjin must have slipped it in at some point. He unstuck it before turning the page and pressed it onto the metal of his stand.
A couple of pages later, he found another one. This one just said “hey.” Nothing else, no drawings or doodles. He stuck it next to the heart. As he looked back up at the orchestra, he noticed that Seokjin was grinning to himself as he looked at his music. The next page had a bigger note that read “Namjoonie.”
Rolling his eyes and smiling, Namjoon kept directing as he added the sticky note to the other two. A few pages later, he found yet another note. “Will.” Then another. “You.”
Namjoon flipped to the next page of the score, looking for the next sticky note, before he realized that he had stopped actually following the music. Flipping back to where the orchestra was, he resolved to stay focused. But…
Will I? he wondered. Will I what?
It took eighteen more pages of the score for Namjoon to find another note. When he flipped the page, he felt his grip on his baton loosen. There, on the next page, were two large sticky notes, covered in stupid little doodles of hearts, that read “marry me?”
Namjoon’s mouth fell open in shock. When he finally raised his gaze up, he found Seokjin, fingers still dancing across the strings of his bass, smiling at him beatifically.
Sitting just close enough to see Namjoon’s stand, Jimin stopped playing with a gasp.
“Hyung!” Jimin’s exclamation was loud enough to make the orchestra grind to a halt. Seokjin’s grin melted off his face as he flushed bright red. Clearly, he hadn’t planned on this becoming a scene. “Well, are you going to tell him yes?”
The other orchestra members looked around, baffled, but Namjoon looked back at Seokjin and nodded.
“Oh my God! Namjoon-hyung and Seokjin-hyung are gonna get married!” Jimin’s voice rose higher and higher. A hush fell over the orchestra for a moment, everyone looking for confirmation as Namjoon felt a blush rise to his cheeks. He nodded again, at the room in general, and to his surprise, the orchestra burst into applause and cheers. Even Yoongi was clapping half-heartedly, the smile on his face betraying his true feelings.
“Okay, okay, settle down, let’s get back to work” Namjoon said, but people had already begun standing, gathering around Seokjin and around his own stand, talking excitedly and congratulating him. During a break in the stream of excited players, Namjoon was able to overhear Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook talking excitedly.
“Does that mean Seokjin-hyung is like… double in charge?” Jungkook asked.
“Absolutely,” Taehyung replied.
“What does that even mean?” Namjoon asked no one in particular.
“I don’t know, but it’s definitely true.” Seokjin’s voice surprised him, coming from right beside him. Namjoon leaned into him as Seokjin wrapped an arm around his waist.
“That was very clever, Jin.” Seokjin beamed. “Never do it again.”
“Aww, but Joonie, I was just getting warmed up. I was going to leave a list of some… extracurricular activities in your Satie score. You know, la petite mort? ”
Seokjin danced out of the way just in time to avoid the flick Namjoon had aimed towards his forehead.
-----
Analogies
“Trumpets!” Namjoon called. “If the air isn’t moving fast enough when you come in, you’re going to be late. It’s like trying to jump onto a moving train from a standstill. Don’t catch the train like that!”
Hoseok nodded, picking up his pencil to scribble fast air over the section they’d just played. As he put his pencil down, he noticed Jungkook writing frantically in a notebook before stowing it behind his music and picking up his oboe again.
A few moments later, Namjoon stopped again. “Violins. You’re like a two-year old using a crayon for the first time. I need you to color inside the lines. Play within your neighbor’s sound so that you sound like one violin.”
Again, Hoseok watched Jungkook scribble quickly in the notebook before tucking it behind his music.
The third time, Namjoon was critiquing a crescendo and decrescendo that happened over a couple of measures.
“Okay, so you guys are shepherds, right? You’re leading your sheep smoothly up a hill, that’s your crescendo. But then with your decrescendo, I’m losing all the sound at once. It’s like you kicked your sheep off a cliff instead of guiding them down carefully.”
Most of the band just stared at Namjoon, but Jungkook was still writing in his notebook.
After rehearsal, Hoseok made his way over to Jungkook’s chair, leaning in with his hands on the backrest.
“Were you writing down all of Namjoon’s analogies?”
Jungkook looked a little sheepish. “Yeah. I think I’m going to join the music education program, and I thought they might be helpful. Aren’t his analogies awesome?”
“That’s one word for it. How long have you been doing this?” Hoseok dropped himself into the chair next to Jungkook.
“Pretty much since I got here. I’ve got some favorites.” Jungkook flipped back a few pages in his notebook. “Clarinets, you’ve got to play your part like you’re a 5-star restaurant. They don’t just slam the food down on the table, they put it down gently. You need to play like that and stop throwing my food at me.”
Hoseok nodded. “That one was pretty good.”
“Cellos, watch your articulations. Playing the notes and ignoring the marks around them is like driving down a city street and ignoring the traffic signals. Bad things happen. Oh, and I really liked this one: Horns, give me more dynamic contrast. I want more drama, like ‘your-phone-is-at-6-percent-and-you-can’t-find-your-charger drama.’ That much drama.”
“I wonder where he gets this stuff from.” Hoseok tilted his head in thought.
“Maybe he makes them up?” Jungkook suggested.
“Nope.” Namjoon’s voice came from just in front of them, where he had been leaning against his stand, talking to one of the flute players. “I’m not nearly creative enough for that.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a thin book.
Note-worthy: 1001 Analogies to Amuse and Confuse Your Players
Jungkook looked from the book to Namjoon before slowly reaching out a hand.
“Nuh-uh,” Namjoon said, pulling the book just out of reach. “Privileged information. Conductors only. You’ll get your copy when you graduate.”
“Really?” Jungkook’s eyes widened.
“No.” Namjoon said, holding out the book again. “Yoongi bought it for me as a joke when I was just starting out, but it turns out there’s some really good stuff in there.”
Hoseok could almost see the stars in Jungkook’s eyes as he flipped through the book.
“Namjoon-hyung?”
“Yes?”
“Can I borrow this?”
“Sure, just remember to-“ Namjoon trailed off as Jungkook scampered off, nose already stuck in the book. “I’m never getting that back, am I?”
“Probably not,” Hoseok agreed, clapping Namjoon on the shoulder.
-----
Thursdays this semester were rough on Seokjin. His shift at the library ended at 5:50, which only left him ten minutes to sprint across campus, retrieve his bass from its locker, and grab his stool before practice started.
He was searching in his bag for his rosin when he heard Yoongi’s voice from somewhere above him.
“Here’s a stand, hyung.”
“Thanks, Yoongi-yah.” Yoongi put the stand down in front of Seokjin, looking a little too happy, before heading back to the piano. Seokjin discovered his rosin in an inside pocket of his bag and straightened up. He placed the rosin on the stand and turned to grab his music.
There was an ear-shattering bang as the stand crashed to the floor. Yoongi, the only person at the right angle to see what had happened, cracked up. The Bad Stand™ had struck again.
There were just a couple of minutes left before practice began, so when Seokjin looked over to see if there was another stand he could grab, he was disappointed to see that the cart was empty. He was about to resign himself to grabbing the other stool and using it as a stand when he saw his chance.
Namjoon had just realized he hadn’t passed out the new piece, so he asked Jimin to step into the library and grab it. Trying to act casual, Seokjin picked up the stand and made his way to the front of the room. He waited until Namjoon had turned around to write the practice agenda on the board and very quickly swapped out Jimin’s stand for the one in his hand.
Jungkook caught his eye for a brief moment, and Seokjin raised a finger to his lips.
“Hyung?” Namjoon said from behind him. “What are you doing up here?”
“Oh, uh… just saying hi.”
“Well, hi then. We’re going to get started as soon as Jimin gets back, so you might want to go get ready.”
“Sure, Joonie.” Seokjin leaned in and blew Namjoon a kiss before heading back to his seat. The faint blush that appeared on Namjoon’s cheeks was very gratifying.
In fact, it was almost as gratifying as the sound of Jimin’s music hitting the ground as the stand tilted forward and dumped it in his lap.
-----
Warmup
Jungkook had played in a total of 2,759 rehearsals, 37 concerts, and played in the pit orchestra for 5 separate runs of a Korean-translated The Music Man. Not that anyone was counting.
(He was.)
Still, despite the amount of time he’d spent in rehearsals and concerts, his favorite piece had never changed.
It wasn’t even a piece, actually. For as long as he could remember, he’d loved the sound of an orchestra warming up. He sat back in his seat, closing his eyes and letting the wall of noise wash over him. There was the general sound of people playing, stopping to make minute tuning adjustments, and playing again, but underneath that, he could hear it.
Everyone had their own little thing they liked to play to warm up.
Hoseok played the trumpet solo from Amparito Roca. It was bouncy and fun, which he said got him pumped up. It also gave him equal time to warm up all three fingers.
Seokjin favored Largo, from the New World Symphony. The main theme was usually played by an English horn, but Seokjin just took it down a couple of octaves and let the notes vibrate through him. When Namjoon wasn’t trying to solve some last-minute crisis, he could often be found leaning over the back of Seokjin’s chair, an arm loosely wrapped around his shoulders.
Jimin always broke out the opening solo from Bernstein’s Profanation. It wasn’t unusual for the player next to him to grab her piccolo and play along with him, and every once in a while, Jungkook would join them for the next phrase.
Yoongi, when he could be bothered to actually warm up, since his instrument didn’t need any tuning, could be heard playing his own arrangement of Dies Irae, which he’d written specifically to use the lowest notes on any piano he played it on.
Taehyung always warmed up at the vibraphone, four mallets clutched in his hands and a grin on his face as he played the jazzy part to “Cool,” from West Side Story, a musical he’d only made Jungkook sit through six times. So far, at least.
Jungkook’s own favorite was from Swan Lake. At the very first concert he’d ever been to, the orchestra had played the Swan Theme, and Jungkook had been riveted. He’d decided right then and there that the oboe was his instrument, and it had only taken a little pleading on his part to get his parents to agree to let him take lessons.
He could see Namjoon off to the side, straightening his tie, which he knew meant that it was almost time to begin. He played the first few bars, the melody he had engraved on his heart and then, satisfied, arranged his music on his stand, checked his reed one more time, and waited for the curtains to rise.