Work Text:
When he listens to Maria Anna play, it's like the world around him disappears. Like he's taken to a different place full of fantasy and longing and possibility.
He remembers watching her performance for the Queen of France, thinking it was her brother, recognizing the genius and feeling the jealousy consume him. It left him burning with want. Wanting to be able to write like that, wanting to play like that, wanting to be the person who could infuse to much emotion into his music. Recognizing his own limitations and raging against the injustice of seeing such brilliance be wasted on a man who didn't deserve it.
Learning that it was never her brother, that it had always been her had turned his world upside down, and the wanting has changed.
He doesn't want to be her, now. He just wants her.
He watches her fingers dance across the keys, gentle at first, and then passionate and with purpose. The music swells through the air, filling every hidden corner of the room, floor to ceiling, every crack and nook. Filling him, too, down to the depths of his very soul, and for a moment he's somewhere else – a garden in spring, basking in the sunlight, Maria Anna reaching for him with flowers in her hair, her laughter ringing through the air.
The music stops and the illusion dissipates.
He blinks, and realizes that she's finished playing and has turned to him, eyebrow raised. "How long have you been standing there?"
There's teasing in her voice, and he flushes, like he was caught doing something he shouldn't have. "Just a few minutes. That was—" Breathtaking, ingenious, virtuosic. "—good. Is it something new?"
"Yes, Countess Greiner asked me to write a minuet for her New Year's celebration." It seems like Antonio can't quite stop his face from reflecting his opinion of the Countess, because Maria Anna laughs. "Don't look like that. It's easy money."
That doesn't make it better, he think.
"You should be out there on the biggest stage in Europe, playing for kings and emperors, celebrated by the masses. It should be you traveling the world instead of your brother." He bites his tongue, too late. He's never been good at holding back with his opinions.
Maria Anna steps towards him. Her hand curves around his cheek, her palm soft and warm against his skin, the touch comforting – as if out of the two of them, he's the one who deserves comforting. As if he's the one robbed off his future. It doesn't feel like so long ago that he sneaked into the Burgtheater to watch her perform her opera for the Emperor. He remembers her joy on the stage, and the way the audience went wild, and how he thought that he could have everything she wanted now, everything she deserved. How for one glorious night, everything seemed possible.
"Perhaps I should be," she agrees, "but that's not the world we live in."
He doesn't know how she can say that without sounding bitter or resigned. He doesn't know how she can be content with leading a private little life away from the lights of the stages and the cheers from the audience when she should be the Mozart who's basking in applause. If he were her, with her skills and her brilliance and her imagination, he wouldn't be able to stand the injustice of it.
"I'm sorry," he offers, but it feels inadequate.
"It's not your fault, Antonio. It's just what it is."
"You never wanted want to marry and becomes—"
She doesn't let him finish. "I didn't want to my father to marry me off to a stranger I didn't love. That's not the same thing. You know that. We've talked about this so many times."
She's right. It's a familiar old argument, but he never quite feels his doubts that he's trapping her in a life she never wanted and the guilt over it ease, and she never stops trying to convince him that she's happy.
Her hand tightens against his cheek and she rises up on her tiptoes to kiss him, fierce and with the same passion that she kissed him with the first night she came to him, too many secrets and fights and years ago. It feels like it was in another lifetime. It feels as if it was yesterday.
He pulls her towards him and hoists her up, her skirts bunching up as she wraps her legs around his waist. They never stop kissing when he carries her to the piano and sits her down on top of it. She doesn't even chide him for it, the way she normally would. There's a sweet flush on her cheeks and her breath is coming fast, and her fingers are as talented working the buttons of his jacket open than they are on the keys.
"Are the children—"
"Fast asleep," he assures her, seeking out her mouth for another kiss. "It's just you and me."
Her smile is wicked, promising. And when she sprawls out on the piano, wanton and unrestrained and as beautiful as the first day he saw her on the streets outside Signore Avenarius's shop, for a moment he forgets that he's never going to be able to give her the life she wanted for herself.
For a moment, it's just him and her and the music they can make between them with only their bodies as instruments, and that's enough.
End