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“Your orchestration is a riot of noise,” Felix says, his voice a cool contrast to the oppressive Roman heat. He stands in the center of the garden, his posture a rigid line of Prussian discipline, staring at the score with a frown that deepens the crease between his pale brows. “It is undisciplined. Violent. It lacks the grace of a proper structure.”
Hector doesn’t flinch. He leans against a marble pillar, his chest heaving under a linen shirt that clings to the salt of his skin. He watches the way Felix’s slender fingers twitch against the parchment, the precise movements of a man who views music as a garden to be pruned. Hector, conversely, is a forest fire. He steps closer, invading Felix’s space until he can smell the faint, sharp scent of ink and sandalwood emanating from the younger man.
“Tell me how you truly feel, Felix,” Hector murmurs, his voice a low vibration that rattles in his own throat.
Felix looks up, his grey eyes flickering with a mixture of intellectual disdain and an attraction he refuses to name. “You are messy,” Felix breathes, his gaze dropping to the erratic pulse hammering in Hector’s neck. “Rough. You write as if you are trying to tear the instruments apart.”
Hector’s grin is slow and predatory. He reaches out, his thumb brushing the cuff of Felix’s sleeve, a touch that sends a jolt of static electricity through the humid air. “I like you.”
The invitation to the dorm is a formality, a thin veil for the hunger clawing at Hector’s gut. As they climb the stairs of the Villa Medici, the silence between them is heavy, thick with the unspoken. Inside, the room is a chaos of ink-stained drafts and discarded clothes. Felix pauses, his eyes landing on a crumpled letter and a discarded silk scarf—relics of a sudden, jagged parting.
“Who was she?” Felix asks, his voice softening.
“A muse,” Hector says, the word tasting like copper. He thinks of young Giuseppe, the fire and the ambition that had eventually outgrown the narrow walls of Hector’s obsession. “A boy who thought the world was larger than my symphony.”
Felix moves toward the desk, his curiosity piqued by the ink-wet pages of a dramatic overture based on King Lear. He reads a passage, his eyes widening at the raw, bleeding intensity of the chords.
“It is unfinished,” Felix observes, his voice now a mere whisper. He turns back to Hector, his expression shifting from critique to a daring, quiet challenge. “You should finish it. Perhaps you simply need a new muse.”