Sex in C Major
Chapter 59

But when he straightened, Stefan realised exactly what it was.

Arabic.

He'd grown up near a mosque. He'd lived in a grubby flat opposite an Islamic bookshop for six months. He couldn't read it, but he could recognise it-the curving whorls of a loud, chattering language that clustered round taxis and takeaways all through the main road of Harehills.

Yannis could write in Arabic?

"What does it say?"

"Nothing important," Yannis said, pocketing his keys and fishing out his phone. "Come on. Let's find a cashpoint, then I'll ring for another taxi. I have Darian's credit card."

"But what does that say?" Stefan insisted, following him down the stairs. "Is it-is it something bad?"

A smirk, fleeting and bitter, crossed Yannis' face.

"That depends."

"Depends on what?"

"On your interpretation of Islam."

He wouldn't say anything more. And Stefan, thinking of the swastika sprayed above some Islamic passage opposite his front door, didn't think he needed to know.

****

The final note shimmered away into the dark, and Stefan breathed.

Simply breathed.

Sitting on the piano seat, cello resting heavy and familiar between his legs, he felt at peace. Calm. Home. Nothing was-nothing could be wrong when the deep voice of the cello had been all the sound there was for hours.

Well, not all the sound.

Yannis had played with him. The trunk of sheet music was more accurately three box files, and a collection of music so wide Stefan hadn't known what to do with himself. There were the classical strings, of course. There was a thin sleeve of pop adaptations, although what Yannis considered good pop music left something to be desired. There was a thick folder of Turkish music, never designed for cello or double bass and yet sounded oddly beautiful, the energy and speed challenging to Stefan, so used to the slower, smoother melodies he'd grown up learning. There was a collection for piano, seemingly sorted into adjustable for strings and not, and then a seemingly random bundle of handwritten music that could have been original compositions or not.

And they had played parts of it all.

Yannis' piano was good, but his double bass was better. He learned by ear, Stefan surmised, adapting seamlessly to Stefan's harmony and echoing his notes even when Stefan deviated from the sheets. And he played quietly that night. Unobtrusively. As though the idea was to complement the cello, rather than outweigh it. As though Stefan was to sing, and Yannis merely enable the sound.

Yannis had gone to bed hours ago. And Stefan had played on, sifting through the sheets and finding all the little pieces he'd never heard of. Something with no name on it, fast and foreign-sounding, had kept his interest for nearly an hour, until he felt as though his heart beat in time with it. A slow, sweet melody, somehow haunting and tragic, from the handwritten bundle had brought him near to tears. And yet when he'd turned it over, a tiny piece, not even sixteen bars long, had been full of life and energy and raw, pure happiness.

And so Stefan found two o'clock, with stiff knuckles and sore wrists, the music only brought to an end by the squeaking cry of a strained string, followed-after the attempt to tune it back to life by the coarse twang of it snapping.

The dying note shimmered and vanished, and Stefan breathed.

Slowly, he set the cello aside, leaning it up against the wall. The monstrous bass was a hulking shadow in the corner, and silence washed over him. The dark was comforting. The carpet was warm under his bare toes.

All was, for once, well.

Except for the need to piss.

Upstairs was quiet. Stefan closed the bathroom door for the first time ever, sure that Yannis wouldn't care. There was an odd simplicity in just...closing the door and peeing, without wondering what his master would prefer. Emboldened, Stefan decided to wash his face as well, and brush his teeth, so opened the bathroom cabinet to find a spare brush.

And blinked.

Apparently Daz's hoarding didn't only mean the loft. The cabinet was packed. Spare toothbrushes, four different types of paste, several bottles of beard oil-did men even usethat?-and either Daz was overcautious or one of them had a severe hay fever problem, judging by the number of antihistamine boxes. Sitting proudly on top of them was a paper bag from a pharmacy, made out to Y. S. Hussain and apparently containing two vials of Nebido. It sounded oddly familiar- then Stefan heard a thump and the rapid padding of the cat, and hastily shut the cabinet.

It scratched at the bottom of the door, and he released a breath.

Stupid. How utterly stupid. It was just a cat. It could hardly report him to Daz, could it?

He opened the door, the cat turning and darting off into the bedroom-and Stefan paused. He was exhausted, his muscles aching and his brain dissolving with tiredness between his ears, but he wasn't sure what to do. Yannis had just left his overnight bag outside the bathroom door. Both bedroom doors were open. And was Stefan supposed to sleep in the spare, when Daz wasn't home, or was he still permitted in the other side of what was, for tonight, effectively Yannis' bed? The spare room was the more sensible choice.