Chapter Text
Shane was never more at ease than when he was sitting at a piano. Growing up, he seemed to struggle to comprehend a lot of things that most of his peers did not. The exception was music. Shane had been playing piano since he was 3 years old, on account of his mother and her family consisting of very passionate pianists, and he was deeply passionate about it himself.
When his mother had first started teaching him, she probably imagined him performing in grand concert halls one day, much like her grandmother had. He’s sure she definitely never expected Shane (her quiet, polite, socially awkward son) to join a punk band with the friends he had made at the performing arts school he enrolled in when he was 18.
That’s where Shane finds himself now – in one of his school’s rehearsal rooms, sitting at an electric piano, warming up by playing random scales and improvising some chord progressions, with his friends and bandmates scattered around the room. They were practising for a gig they have in 3 days. Or, they were meant to be practising. So far, they have been there for almost 15 minutes, and Shane and Hayden, their lead guitarist, were the only ones to have actually started warming up or tuning their instruments. The other three members were chatting and watching something on one of their phones.
Hayden looked over at Shane with a huff, and Shane just shrugged in response. Their bandmates’ attention spans were pretty bad, but usually not when it came to rehearsal. All 5 of them cared very deeply for their band (which they had called 'Hat Trick'. A bit goofy, perhaps, but hockey was one of the first things they had bonded over when they first met, and the name just kind of stuck), and were very dedicated to its success. They had only had a handful of gigs in the year since they formed, their goal was to be able to make a living off of their music, and to travel the world together. But, mostly they just enjoyed playing together. Typically for their practice sessions, they each give everyone a warm greeting, tune their instruments, jam together for a few minutes as warm up (usually just improvising, or playing songs they all like and are very familiar with), and then get into fine tuning their original stuff. That, or Shane and/or Helena, their bassist and one of their lead vocalists, will show the others a new song they have written that they want to add to the setlist.
While Shane and Helena were usually the ones to write songs for their band, all of them pitched in to alter certain parts to their liking. It helped to produce a sound that was uniquely theirs, and Shane loved that he could hear the influence of all his bandmates in each of their songs.
Shane watched with an amused smirk as Hayden loudly cleared his voice at the rest of the band. JJ, their drummer, Sander, their other lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, and Helena looked up from the phone they were staring at. Shane couldn’t pinpoint the emotions on their faces, but if he were to guess, they looked almost disheartened. Shane felt apprehensive looking at them.
“...What? What’s wrong?” Shane questioned, the worried frown etched on his face. What could they have possibly seen to kill their mood so badly? Without a word, JJ brought his phone over to Shane and Hayden.
They looked down at the screen as the video started. The video showed a dimly lit stage in a dark, grungy-looking club. There was a small and passionate crowd cheering at the subjects of the video. A band - a punk band. One that sounds fairly similar to their own, with one glaring distinction; instead of having a pianist, they had a violinist. Shane was quite intrigued by the inclusion of such a unique instrument in the genre. Piano wasn’t particularly common in punk either, and Shane loves how it adds to their unique sound. It seems this band had a similar idea with the violin.
From what Shane could see in the video, they had 5 members, just like they did in Hat Trick. He tried to analyse them all as much as he could, but the video being so dark made it hard.
Shane’s eyes briefly focused on each member of the band, but they kept gravitating back to one in particular - their lead singer. The man looked to be around Shane’s age. He was tall, lean, and lithe, something he very obviously liked to show off, if his shirtless-ness was any indication. The man was sweat-soaked, and with the way he was throwing himself into his performance (waving his arms around, spinning, stomping his feet), Shane understood why. His hair was blonde and curly, and matted to his forehead. He demanded the attention of the entire room, even his bandmates.
All 5 of them were complete naturals, and undoubtedly very skilled at their respective instruments. Shane couldn’t really make out the lyrics, and he wondered whether that was because of poor video quality, being in a different language, or the fact that Shane just seems so hyper-fixated on this performer for whatever reason.
Shane watched in a daze as the singer bent forward and winked at a woman in the front row, causing her to hide her giddy smile behind her hand, as her friends around her cheered loudly and shook her shoulders in excitement. The man continued to smile cheekily as he righted himself, before the video ended abruptly.
Shane, still caught in a daze, almost missed Hayden’s comment.
“He seems like an asshole.” Hayden scoffed, and Shane snapped back into the room, mentally trying to shake the smile of the singer from his mind. The others all nod in agreement, and Shane joins in.
He wouldn’t say the man seemed like an asshole at all. He was very obviously confident, passionate about his music, and flirty, but there was no way to know if he was an asshole based on the short clip. It barely showed a minute of the man’s life. Shane can’t deny (in his head at least) that he was intrigued by the man. How effortlessly he carried himself and put himself out there. Shane always felt wound tight. Like putting himself out there and failing for others to see may just be the worst thing that could happen. He struggled with just playing in the background on a small stage, in front of just 30 people. This man made that same-sized crowd look 4 times larger, just with how much energy he projected through his performance. Shane couldn’t understand why his friends thought the man was an asshole, but he kept quiet about it. No one really understands why he thinks the way he does, and so he had learned at a young age that it was better to say nothing at all.
“Who are they?” Shane asks instead, looking at JJ expectantly.
“Another up-and-coming band from Ottawa. I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet comparing us to them.” JJ huffed in annoyance. Shane assumed it was because he didn’t want to be compared to anyone. JJ cared more about their sound being unique than any of them.
“They call themselves ‘Blue Hydrangeas’.” He said with a slight sneer. 'Blue Hydrangeas' seemed like an odd name for a punk band in Shane’s mind, although he figured anywhere besides hockey-obsessed Montreal, 'Hat Trick' would also be a strange name for a punk band. Hayden, Sander, and Helena all scoffed at the name. Shane kept quiet this time.
“That’s a little insulting, comparing us to them.” Hayden scoffed, like he was offended.
“They’re good. We’re being compared to a band that sounds good.” Shane placated, trying to find a silver lining that they’ll all accept, so they can finally move on to rehearsing.
“I mean being compared to someone that behaves like that. It’s gross.” Shane shrugged, and looked down at his lap. The air in the room fell silent and awkward for a moment, before JJ, Sander, and Helena finally moved to set up their equipment.
They played a couple of their usual warm-up songs, before running through their whole setlist in one go, only taking brief moments in between each song so Sander could catch his breath and have a drink.
Their setlist at the moment included all of their original songs (they only had 7 of them at the moment), as well as a couple of covers of some of their favourite songs. Today, they were trying to perfect the latest addition to their set, 'Teenage Kicks' by The Undertones, which they had chosen to put first. The others figured a well-known song first in the setlist would help engage their audience, which makes sense to Shane.
They work for a little under 2 hours, and Shane feels distracted the whole time. It isn’t clear to him why his thoughts linger on the video for so long, nor why he made a conscious decision to remember the band’s name, so he can look them up himself when he gets home later.
They all worked on tightening their performance. Shane can hear the improvements his bandmates have made over the session, and he thinks that the others have probably noticed that he’s not at his best, but they don’t mention anything to him.
When they finish for the day, Sander and JJ invite them all out for drinks, but Shane turns them down. He rarely stayed out late or drank, and this evening, all he wanted to do was have some quiet time alone in his apartment.
Later that evening, after Shane has consumed his bland, macrobiotic dinner, and finished his nightly rituals, he finds himself sitting up in bed and scrolling through his phone. He doesn’t use his phone much at all, and probably wouldn’t even bother using it if JJ and Sander weren’t so insistent on the band engaging with people online as a way to spread their music.
He had tried to keep himself occupied with other things since he got home, and he wasn’t sure why he was delaying the inevitable. It’s nothing weird, right? He’s just checking out another cool band.
He logs into his scarcely used Instagram account, where Shane noted JJ had found the clip from earlier. He searches for 'Blue Hydrangeas' in the search bar. There was a bit of scrolling through pictures of flowers, until he found what he was looking for – the very same clip he had watched from JJ’s phone earlier in the day.
From there, he found the band’s official account, and paused momentarily at the blue button, which read 'Follow Back'. Shane was surprised to see that this band was apparently already familiar with him. His personal account, not his band’s account, consisted of very few posts. He mostly posted videos of him playing piano, or them all playing at one of their gigs. He followed the account back, and was thrilled to see the personal accounts of all of their members in the band account’s bio. He followed them all as well, now able to get a better look at each of them, after hardly being able to make them out in the dark video.
First was their drummer, a man named Wyatt Hayes. His profile was a complete contrast to Shane’s, consisting almost entirely of comics, figurines, trading cards, and cosplaying. Shane was a bit surprised that it seemed music wasn’t this man’s entire life, especially with how well he was playing in the occasional video he had posted of him at his kit. Shane felt like he rarely had time for anything outside of music and school, let alone for another hobby to take up his life so wholly. He also wondered how the man multitasked his hobbies like this, unless he viewed music as more of a job, and not a hobby. The man seemed happy in the videos of him playing as well though. Shane doesn’t know how the man can stay interested in more than one thing at a time.
Shane had always seen his band as a hobby more than anything; he certainly wouldn’t continue to do it if he didn’t enjoy it as much as he did. Shane had always thrown his everything into each of his hobbies, with music being the oldest and most persistent. In the past, he had even had to force himself to lose interest in other hobbies and focus on music. When he was a kid, he got really into hockey. He had even joined a team in his old neighbourhood in Ottawa when he was 13, and dedicated his entire life to it for almost a year. It was after heart-to-heart with his mom, where she expressed concern over his complete lack of interest in music and piano, after she had been teaching him almost his entire life. She said she felt like he was abandoning ties to his family and heritage for a dangerous hobby that likely would not amount to much, with how competitive hockey was in Canada. Shane took that to heart, of course. He quit hockey the next day. His coach and his team tried very hard to get him to stay, even to the point of some of his teammates admitting he was their best player (something they would have never said otherwise). Shane didn’t know how to explain it in a way that they would understand, so he didn’t explain at all. He just left. He recommitted to piano, and although it hurt his heart to give up playing the sport he had adored so much, playing the keys again felt like coming home.
Shane still played hockey sometimes with his friends and some of the players from their school’s team, the Cyclones. None of them ever really tried, it was very casual, and was usually just them skating around and passing a puck around. In Shane’s freshman year, the captain of their team, Gilbert Comeau, suggested that Shane try out for the team, before complimenting him on how fast and agile he was on the ice. Shane declined awkwardly at the time, and Comeau had shrugged while telling him to think about it. Shane did think about it, he thought about it often, and every time he would get angry at himself. He couldn’t understand why he can’t prioritise more than one thing at a time.
Shane loves music, he really does. And a big part of that for him is how it connects him to his family, and Japan. Piano is a safe and consistent thing that Shane knows will always connect him to his family, even the ones that he only saw once every year or two. Every member of his family in Japan played piano, his great grandmother had even made a career out of playing in concert halls. Shane’s mom used to tell him sometimes about the few times she had seen her grandmother performing live. She spoke about it as if it was a blessing. Unfortunately, Shane’s great grandmother had passed away years before he was born, and so he was never fortunate enough to hear it live for himself. His family had some old records of her playing that they play every time the family gets together in Japan for gatherings, so he had heard it before. Even through the small hisses and crackles of the old technology, Shane could hear the talent and passion. Although Shane had never had the pleasure of meeting the woman, who he was told was always vibrant, joyful, and full of life, he hoped that he’d one day be able to make her proud with his music.
Next was a woman – an undoubtedly beautiful woman; Shane guessed she was around 19, like he was. Besides the band’s lead singer, this was the member of their band that had caught Shane’s attention most. Her profile showcased just how phenomenal she was at playing her violin. It was like the instrument and the bow were extensions of herself, and her passion for playing protruded out of her body, and encased the violin until it was a part of her. Much like their singer, she also seemed to throw her entire body into playing. She did lots of swaying, and dancing while playing, even in the clips where she was playing classical pieces by herself. The name at the top of the profile read 'Svetlana Vetrova', but the rest of her bio was in a different alphabet, so unfortunately Shane couldn’t read it. He wasn’t very familiar with languages outside of English, French, Japanese, and the small amount of Flemish he had picked up from Sander, but if he had to guess, based on her name as well, it was Russian.
Thirdly was their bass player, and undeniably the youngest member of their band, looking no older than 16. His account only said his name was Bood. The boy looked quite out of place amongst the older and more mature members of the band. Despite being younger, however, he seemed very familiar with performing. In all the clips Shane could see, the boy was very at ease when playing, his shoulders and arms relaxed as his fingers drummed effortlessly across the strings. Unlike Svetlana and their singer, the boy instead kept his body very still when playing, almost as if he was just too relaxed to do anything besides race his fingers up and down the neck of his guitar. Besides videos of him playing with and without his band, he also had lots of photos and videos of what seemed to be his family and friends. The boy looked happy, which made Shane relieved for him.
At his age, Shane was nowhere near as happy and relaxed as this kid seemed to be. He didn’t really have friends, and at school, he was always quiet and awkward. He preferred to avoid the attention of anyone else, and just focus on his schoolwork and his music. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he was bullied or anything, but some of the people he went to school with liked to mock him for a lot of things. Most often it was about him being Japanese, or they would throw homophobic and misogynistic insults his way. Stuff like 'homo', 'gay', 'fag', etc. Shane wasn’t even gay, they just called him that because he was polite, and because he never really talked to girls – especially not about dating them or anything. Although he had had a couple of girlfriends during his time at school, they were brief, and he never really found himself interested in them. He was never the one to do the dumping, though. It seemed the girls he would date would get bored or annoyed at his lack of interest, and end things themselves.
Safe to say, Shane had never really been intimate with anyone. Not outside a few polite pecks on the lips. He assumes that he just needs to wait for the right girl. He has yet to meet someone he really likes in a way that isn’t platonic. He tries not to think about how different that is from all the other guys he has been around in the past. They always seem overly interested in girls, almost like they’re putting on a performance as a way to get attention or something. Shane doesn’t believe that all of them were really that interested in girls. Even his friend, JJ, seemed to be a bit too exaggerated when talking about women. He doesn’t do it so often anymore, but when they had first met, 2 years ago, it seemed to be the only thing outside of music that he would talk about. It made no sense to him at all.
Next in the list of band members was their lead guitarist, Dallas Kent. The man had hardly anything on his account about music as well. But instead of it being replaced by stuff dedicated to another hobby, it was all photos and videos of himself. Unless looking at himself was his hobby, Shane thought. There were lots of selfies, videos of him working out, and the very occasional photo of him playing guitar or hanging out with other people, mostly women. There were no videos of him playing guitar on his account, so Shane couldn’t get a gauge of what kind of musician he was. A very self-obsessed one, perhaps.
Lastly was their lead singer, the man who had been playing on a loop in the back of his mind all evening. His name was Ilya Rozanov. The bio on his account was also in Russian. Shane was mildly surprised, having not picked up on any accent in the man’s singing. He supposes, however, that his band’s lead singer was Flemish, and he sang with almost no accent as well.
Ilya Rozanov was beautiful, quite frankly. His confidence oozed from his account, which consisted of a mix of band photos and videos, photos with friends, photos of his different outfits, random things he had taken photos of when he’s out and about (which included a lot of random dogs), and professional modelling photos. Shane shouldn’t be surprised to see the man is a model. The way he carried himself, with ease and grace, had to have come from somewhere. And where else than from being professionally attractive?
Shane scrolled on his account for a long time, much longer than any of the others. He didn’t know anything about fashion, usually opting to just wear casual and comfortable stuff, but he’d say the man dressed very well.
At one point, Shane finds a photo of a bush of flowers. Blue hydrangeas, he recognised, after having to scroll through many photos of them to find the band’s account in the first place. The caption below the photo was in Russian as well, whereas almost all of his other posts had English captions. Shane was curious, but didn’t linger for very long on it.
He kept scrolling before something caught his eye more than anything else. It was a professionally taken photo, if the white stage he was on was any indicator. It was one of his modelling gigs, Shane recognised. The man was wearing a skin-tight, sheer black shirt, with a flowy and open black lace blouse on top, and holding his body in a way that showed off how well-sculpted he was. It was very obvious to Shane how well Ilya took care of his body. Shane wondered briefly if he would look more like that if he had committed to hockey instead of music.
Shane had thought nothing of it, before he took a quick screenshot of the photo, and liking the post. He stared at the photo for a moment longer, before catching a glimpse of the time at the top of his phone’s screen. 00:24? Shane had been scrolling on Instagram for close to an hour? He quickly closed the app at that realisation, and decided it was finally time he went to bed.
Laying in the dark, and every time he closed his eyes, the clip of the man performing and the photo of him showing off his physique flashed through his mind. It was a long time before Shane felt himself drifting off.