Timcampy and Urcanpy zipped through the air, chasing each other while their human friends worked on their respective tasks while leaning against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Allen was finishing up his day’s record and Nea was composing. The quiet was broken by the beating of the golems’ wings, the scratch of quill pen against paper, and the rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock.
Occasionally, Nea would hum a few bars from whatever piece he was thinking up to test the sound. It was very distracting for Allen, who kept pausing to hear his companion’s voice and wishing Nea would sing a full piece. He loved hearing Nea sing, but he needed to focus and do his recording right. Bookman would have his ass if he slipped.
Allen gave up trying to write and dropped his head to Nea’s shoulder. His friend had a little more than half of one of the two circles surrounding a coat of arms he didn’t immediately recognize. “So what’s it sound like so far?.”
Nea finished the current bar he was working on before whistling the song’s melody.
“A lullaby?” Allen blinked.
“Mother used to sing it to Mana and me when we were kids,” Nea replied. “She made words for, but I haven’t worked them in yet.”
“…This piece is different.”
Nea stared hard at the score in his hands, “…Its the Ark’s control song.”
Allen started, sitting up straight, trying to wrap his head around the implications of Adam having taught a human the Ark’s control song. And couldn’t just then. He needed time to absorb it.
He leaned a little harder against Nea, disrupting the intense focus on the score. “I’m surprised its taking you so long to put down.”
“The original version is written for an organ,” Nea said. A sigh left him. The an agonized groan left his mouth and Allen flailed to support himself when Nea bent double over his lap as if in deep physical pain. “I’m trying to rewrite it for an upright piano. Putting all of the Ark’s controls into a simpler device is a pain! And I’m still not sure if I’ve encoded language fluently enough, because the lyrics are going to take nearly all the slack.”
Timcanpy and Urcanpy suddenly dropped onto their heads. Allen whipped Urcanpy off by the tail while Nea merely glowered at the golden golem. The golems were like little kids sometimes.
Allen rubbed Nea’s shoulders comfortingly, “Maybe just singing the song aloud will help? I’m curious to what the lyrics are. I don’t think I’ve got anything like that recorded yet.”
“Yes.” Nea straightened. He paused and then looked over at what Allen was writing. The Bookman apprentice was writing in his usual weird shorthand which made no sense to him. “How far are you?”
“I’m about halfway through the day,” Allen replied. He elbowed Nea lightly. “Sing, Nea. I want to be able to record you serenading me.”
Nea stuck out his tongue playfully. “Or serenading an empty room. I’m still not sure I believe you and Bookman ever write a word about yourselves in there.”
“If we don’t, then just think - this is a personal memory just between the two of us,” Allen said brightly. He batted Urcanpy away when the black golem tried to sneak up on him for revenge in being thrown. Timcanpy flew off to check his darkly-colored twin when he didn’t immediately bounced back up from where he’d landed.
”This,” Nea paused dramatically to give him a Look, “is why everyone thinks we bed each other.”
“I thought it was because they’ve actually caught us in bed,” Allen grinned, laughter echoing out from behind his words. They’d both been clothed, but it hadn’t stopped Katerina from sitting them down to have a talk, even when they tried to reassure her nothing physical was taking place.
“Well…maybe that was more the nail in the coffin,” Nea concluded, rolling his eyes.
Allen’s grin softened, “They’re envious over nothing, Nea.”
“Nothing, hm,” Nea sighed.
Allen felt a part of him cringe. Nea insisted he understood Allen’s position as Bookman’s apprentice, but sometimes…sometimes Allen wondered if he should step down. Not because of Nea’s reactions to reminder what they had would eventually end - but because Allen was coming to realize he dreaded loosing this. He’d been in relationships before - been in romances, even, in the past on other assignments. But leaving those others (and he was always careful to avoid creating problems for himself and the one he became involved with) hadn’t been as painful as the simple thought he would have to leave Nea .
To distract himself, Allen gave Nea another nudge, “Sing, Nea!”
“Alright, alright! Stop jabbing me, Junior,” Nea growled.
Allen went back to leaning against Nea, smiling while the Noah sang the lullaby his mother wrote for him and his twin brother.
dededos
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