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canarymemories · 9 months

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lasciare suonare

chapter summary: the first song he writes after those months of silence is something he shows no one.

content warning: he beginning of this chapter delves a little into leo's downward spiral post-checkmate. there is one line where there's referenced self harm, but it's very much blink and you miss it.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 symphony masterpost

here on ao3

for the longest time, music followed leo wherever he went.

a symphony played in his head, the different sections melding flawlessly with each other to create a perfect harmony he’d hurry to scribble down before it left him. whatever he was writing with — pen, marker, pencil — would end up smudged along the side of his hand, a reminder of all that he was creating. the rhythm would rise and fall with the staccato of his heart or syncopated tapping of his feet or hands, whichever moved to keep the beat first.

his life was full of music and leo loved every second of it, whether it was shared with others or stayed a concert for only himself in his head or on paper. steady for as many years as he could remember, a tune would greet him as he woke and he could just as surely rely on another to send him off to sleep as a lullaby.

it was a constant, and a welcome one at that.

or it had been until leo woke one day only to feel like a soloist abandoned by the group, horribly out of tune with no one left to synchronize with. he was left alone with no one to catch him if he fell off beat, missing notes the longer he stood on center stage.

rather than a reliable thrum of a song in his head, a staff of notes behind his eyelids, leo’s world becomes silent for the first time in his life.

he isn’t sure what to do about it. there’s an uncomfortable quiet that grows the longer he skips school, the longer he stays in his room. so he tries to fix it the only way he knows how: by writing music, the one thing that’d never failed him before.

yet it doesn’t help. he can’t even get more than a few measures out after the first few tries.

leo loses count of how many hours he sits in front of blank pages, the clef symbols staring at him. mocking him. he tries to write, he really does, but every time his pen touches the paper, in the midst of writing a measure, whatever inspiration he’d had, if any at all, would float away, leaving him there again.

it leaves him feeling empty, as if a piece of him is missing. and maybe a piece of him really did get lost somewhere along the way, between the broken pieces of chess, backgammon, othello. knights.

he pulls his legs closer to his chest, hands faintly aching and bandaged, as he tries to ignore the crumpled papers around him, ignore the hollow in his chest and the ink smeared on the pages from tears of frustration. who knew something that had been as easy as breathing for him could turn into something that made him feel so hopeless.

there’s times when it feels as if this is where he’ll be stuck for the rest of time, locked in his room with the blinds drawn. he isn’t even sure what day it is anymore, but it’s not like that matters when he’d resigned himself to a life like this, no use to anyone if he couldn’t do the one thing he was good at.

leo buries his face in his knees. a pitiful little noise falling from his lips breaks the silence. he wishes things could go back to how they were once, back when he thought people loved him and his music, not just the latter.

when music chased him just as eagerly as how he chased it in return.

his music had brought people together once, hadn’t it? now it only feels as if it’s destroyed everything he ever cared about.

leo desired to be on stage once.

he wonders if that’ll every come back to him. after he’d gotten the first taste of performing for more than just ruka or their parents, leo had yearned to return to the stage, to stand under the spotlight and receive applause and praise for a live well done.

he wonders if he’ll ever return to those he left behind and hurt so badly before they could turn their backs on him first.

yet no matter how much he dreams to be free from these dragging, neverending days where nothing gets written and he feels further and further away from ever writing again, leo feels helpless.

so, his world remains quiet.

it takes time and a lot of it for the first tendrils of a song make their way through his mind, whispered and incredibly muted. those notes surprise leo so bad that they disappear once he focuses too hard on them.

he’s spent so long now, months maybe — he truthfully isn’t sure — being stuck in this rut, unable to form anything meaningful. the thought of this block that’s haunted him for all this time going away feels odd. the thought of being able to write a song again feels the same if he’s being honest, but leo misses that part of himself. the part that could love somebody so purely and write a song about that feeling without even a second thought.

while he remains the soloist left behind, he’s no longer so out of tune, no longer fighting his way through the measures on his own. it doesn’t feel so hard remembering a song that had been on the tip of his tongue but would never come out right.

the first song he writes after those months of silence is something he shows no one.

compared to his normal work — can he even call it that anymore when he hasn’t composed in so long? — it’s clumsy. for a self proclaimed genius, the song feels more like a beginner wrote it. of course, leo wouldn’t call it bad. it’s just… a bit messy is all.

when he puts his pen down after writing a finishing fermata over the last half note, leo stares at the music in front of him. it’s almost as if he doesn’t recognize it despite having been working on it for, at the very least, a few hours by now. his curtains no longer cover the windows and the sun had long set, though he hadn’t noticed at the time.

without warning and without trying, he begins to cry.

the past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind to say the least, from running into eichi and keito by pure chance to stepping back onto the stage for the first time in far too long thanks to madara’s gentle insistence.

he’d missed it.

he’d missed it so much .

not just performing or the applause or the wide smiles from those in the audience. he’d missed it all so bad that he’d forgotten at some point that he’d ever enjoyed that kind of thing in the first place.

leo’s hands cover his face though he’s alone in his room. the door’s cracked open, but it’s late enough that no one but him would be awake. “i did it,” he whispers.

he sniffles, wiping away the tears that seem to just keep falling with the heels of his palms. leo peers out from behind his hands as if the song would’ve disappeared in the brief moment he’d taken his eyes off of it.

unsurprisingly, the papers remain on his desk where he left them. there’s a few wet marks at the bottom from his tears, thankfully happy this time.

leo carefully grabs the song and holds it up in front of him. the notes remain just as he’d written them, meaning that as much as this moment felt like a dream, it’s not.

his lips pull up into a smile without him noticing at first. spinning in his chair, another tear rolls down leo’s cheek. what a sight he must be, smiling so wide while crying, but leo doesn’t care.

he’d written a song again. finally, finally written one again and it’s real and in his hands.

“i did it!”

------------------

leo knows that the other knights have been planning a surprise for him.

he isn’t exactly sure what, but between hushed whispers and quickly hidden somethings whenever he happens to walk into one of their conversations, he knows there’s definitely something going on.

so, when he wakes up to nazuna’s bunny shifting in the bedding left out for him, leo springs up with maybe a little too much enthusiasm for someone who’s only slept for a few hours. if the papers scattered around his bed and now on the floor mean anything, he’d fallen asleep in the middle of writing a song.

of course, his sudden jolt up startles the rabbit, the poor little thing scampering around.

“oh, sorry,” he says, careful as he gets out of bed to crouch in front of where the rabbit’s hidden himself. “i didn’t mean to scare you, i’m just excited! it’s my birthday, y’know?”

all he gets in response is a little nose wiggle.

“hm, you’re right. i guess you wouldn’t know that.” leo hums, reaching his hand out to the bunny, stopping in front of his nose, which once again wiggles slightly as he stays tucked within his little hutch. just as nazuna showed him, leo gives the bunny a few light pets to the top of his head then stands.

the other two beds in the dorm are empty. leo thinks he’d registered that it was just him and the rabbit to some extent, but that at least explains why it’s so quiet in the room. still, it’s a little odd that neither of them are there seeing as it’s still golden week, but then again, natsume doesn’t even return to the dorm some days and leo’s pretty sure nazuna said something the other day about spending time with ra*bits.

or he thinks he remembers nazuna saying that. either way, he decides, it doesn’t matter much.

the only thing is that without either of his dormmates, he has no real way to gauge what time it is. the sunlight coming in through the windows also helps him none, so he stars to search for his phone. luckily it doesn’t take long to spot it as he moves his blanket around.

grabbing it from where it sits poking out from under his bed, leo finds that it’s a bit later than he thought it was. that meant he’d slept longer than he thought he had, though it’s still the middle of the morning.

his notifications are filled with birthday messages and well wishes which only make him laugh a little, pleased at them all.

now that he’s seen the time, leo’s sure he has plenty to finish the song he’d been working on last night; the agency party anzu planned wouldn’t be until later and per knights tradition, their own small gathering is still a couple hours out.

looking forward to finding out what they’ve been hiding helps his inspiration return, so he hastily hops back onto his bed in search of his pencil, which he finds a lot easier than his phone. despite this, he doesn’t get very far back into the song when there’s a knock at the door.

leo ignores it at first, at least aware of it, but he makes no move to answer as he’s in the middle of a crescendoed section and he wants to get the build up perfect before he’s interrupted.

the knock returns, this time with a voice accompanying it. “leo-san, are you here?”

that catches his attention.

reluctantly, leo leaves the piece on his bed and opens his door. “suo, what’re you doing here?”

“did you not see my messages ?”

leo simply blinks at him. “no.”

tsukasa sighs. “i don’t know why i expected anything different,” he says. “well, i’ve come to escort you to your party .”

“wait, i thought that wasn’t ‘till later.”

“i’ve been sent to retrieve you early.”

leo doesn’t quite buy it, narrowing his eyes. tsukasa has never been a good liar, but he sees no reason to continue questioning him. he’d been looking forward to his birthday to see whatever this surprise is and if they’ve sent tsukasa to bring him, then it has to be something big, right?

“okay! lemme get ready first though,” he says. leo only catches it out of the corner of his eye as he turns back into his room, but he’s pretty sure tsukasa’s shoulders lose some of the tension in them. he motions for tsukasa to follow him. “here, you can look at this, it’s not done yet.”

tsukasa takes the song offered to him, placing himself awkwardly on the edge of leo’s unmade bed. “is it a new knights song?”

leo shrugs as he looks through his clothes. “could be, i think it’ll fit.”

tsukasa doesn’t reply, most likely looking it over as leo continues looking.

ever the stickler when it came to fashion, izumi had taken him shopping when they were in florence, saying that if the two of them happened to be out together, it would be best for their outfits not to clash.

leo doesn’t really see the issue, but he went along with it anyway even though he knows any shopping trip with izumi is him picking out far too many things to send leo off to a dressing room to try them all on. in the end, they — more izumi than leo, but he did at least take leo’s opinion into account — managed to narrow down their choices to one outfit that izumi said to consider as a birthday gift.

and if that’s the case, then there’s no better time to wear it than now, right?

speaking of izumi, he’d most definitely nag leo if he shows up with unbrushed hair, so leo makes sure to do that next. he’s been lectured about his unkempt hair plenty of times, but still, it’s really not his fault when he gets inspired and sucked into his next composition to remember do those kinds of things.

the flipping of pages fills the air.

“i think so too. we can discuss it more later,” tsukasa agrees once he’s finished looking through the unfinished composition. “are you ready to go, leo-san?”

just having finished retying his hair, leo says, “mmhm! ready, suo.”

tsukasa returns the song neatly stacked back to the bed as he stands. “then, let’s set off. i don’t wish to leave the others waiting for long.”

leo nods in agreement, more than eager to see whatever they had planned for him. he sets his hands on tsukasa’s shoulders and pushes him towards the door. ignoring tsukasa’s protests at being handled in such a way, leo says, “bye, bunny,” glancing back at the play area where the rabbit lay sleeping as he shuts the door behind them.

leo waits until they step out of the dorm building to ask, “what’s the surprise?”

tsukasa splutters slightly. “what surprise ?”

knowing that tsukasa has more likely than not been sworn to secrecy, leo figures he won’t give anything up. he’ll try his luck a little more anyway. “y’know, the thing you guys would hide whenever i showed up.”

tsukasa very clearly is avoiding his gaze when leo looks over at him. “i’m afraid i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

leo can’t help but laugh at that. “you really are bad at lying, suo!”

that earns him an offended gasp. “the point of a surprise , leo-san, is that it stays a secret ,” he defends.

“so, does that mean there is one?” leo presses.

“i’m not answering that.”

leo gives an amused hum to that.

tsukasa levels him with a tired stare. “please, no more questions . you’ll find out soon enough.”

content enough with that, leo nods and stays quiet even once they reach the building and step into the elevator to go up to newdi’s floor. while on the elevator, tsukasa takes out his phone and types out something that leo can’t make out from the corner of his eyes, trying to make it not obvious that he’s trying to cheat his way into knowing early.

the elevator dings once it reaches the correct floor and leo asks, “is it the same room as normal?” likely thanks to tsumugi doing the boring administrative work in the agency and taking into account leo’s multiple complaints about getting lost in the building, most knights meetings between the five of them tend to be in the same conference room.

“yes,” tsukasa replies, his phone dinging in his hand. “but we’ll have to wait a moment .”

the elevator doors open and leo considers his options. he could do as tsukasa said and wait, but he’d been waiting for way too long now. he wanted to see what they’d been keeping from him, so as they step out onto the floor, leo runs off down the hall in the direction of their conference room.

“leo-san!” tsukasa yells after him.

leo, of course, doesn’t stop. he instead bursts into the room and says, “hi, guys!”

rather than getting an equally enthusiastic greeting, he finds three pairs of eyes on him as tsukasa catches up.

“kasa-kun, i thought you said you could distract him,” izumi says.

tsukasa purses his lips. “i thought i could,” he objects. “but he knew we were planning something, so he ran ahead of me.”

“don’t blame our darling child, secchan,” ritsu cuts in from where he’s setting up what looks like a cake at the end of the table. per usual fashion, the decorations on it are a bit grotesque, but in a fun way. “we all know how free spirited tsukipi is.”

“is that what we’re calling it?” izumi mutters.

arashi waves her hand dismissively, ignoring izumi as she says, “well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? we’re pretty much done setting things up, so it doesn’t hurt to start things a little early.”

leo, though he doesn’t really get what they’re setting up for in the first place since the birthdays they spend together are hardly planned things, nods eagerly. “exactly, naru gets it!”

that gets him an eye roll from izumi.

ritsu, apparently pleased with the placement of his cake, joins izumi and arashi. “i’m all done, so we can start now. i think tsukipi might jump at us if we don’t get to it soon.”

leo bounces on the balls of his feet. “see, i knew you guys were planning something!”

ritsu smiles at that. “you could put it like that.” his gaze shifts to tsukasa and gives him a brief nod.

tsukasa leaves leo’s side and pulls a chair out from the table, turning it so the back is now to the table. “sit, leo-san,” tsukasa says.

leo eyes him curiously but does so anyway. whatever it is they’d been planning has been going on for at least two weeks since that’s when he started noticing them hiding things, so to say he’s excited to be only moments away from seeing what they’d been up to is a bit of an understatement.

tsukasa joins the others as they move to stand in front of leo. arashi looks over ritsu’s shoulder as he searches on his phone for something.

izumi’s eyes catch his. “we spent a long time on this, so you better like it, leo-kun.”

“i’ll love anything you guys give me,” he replies easily.

arashi giggles, glancing up at him. “izumi-chan’s just prickly ‘cause he’s the one who suggested we do this in the first place.”

at that, izumi conveniently looks over to ritsu when leo’s gaze falls on him once more. “can you just start it already?”

ritsu looks up from his phone, an amused little smile pulling at his lips. though rather than the teasing the normally accompanies that look, he simply says, “yeah, yeah, secchan. i just wanted to make sure it was the finished version.”

“then are we ready to begin ?” tsukasa asks on arashi’s other side.

“mmhm.” ritsu nods. he presses something on his phone then hands it to leo. “here, hold this for me.”

leo accepts the phone as the four of them align themselves in front of him. it takes a few seconds, but notes played on piano make their way from ritsu’s phone. the song doesn’t sound familiar, though leo can recognize the playing style as ritsu’s. he taps the screen only for the track remain untitled.

it’s not until the begin singing that he realizes that they’ve written him a song.

for a brief couple of seconds, all he can think of is that they wrote him a song for his birthday. the joy he feels at that is something he could never hope to put into words. a wide smile makes its way across his face as the performance continues.

while the song itself seems finished when it comes to the score and the lyrics — he very easily recognizes the latter as being written by izumi, though he can’t tell if he’s imagining ruka’s influence in certain lines or not — the choreography seems like it was thrown together last minute. it’s nowhere near as polished as their normal dancing, but leo figures it would be hard to schedule practice for this without him noticing around their normal practice.

still, he isn’t about to complain; he’d never complain when someone would give him a gift as nice and thoughtful as a song.

the tune itself is charming, pleasant to the ears, but it’s not like he expected anything less from them. after all, he likes to believe the time spent together rubbed off some of his musical genius onto them, but that would be severely discounting the talent each of them has.

leo finds himself swaying along with the beat, trying to capture and absorb as much of this moment as he can, though it’s hard to pay attention to the chords and the lyrics and the choreo all at once in this first listen.

before he knows it, the song is over. it continues on in his head once the recording ends, the four of them coming together and holding their final pose briefly.

“leo-san?” tsukasa says, falling out of order first. there’s a certain edge of worry in his voice that leo doesn’t quite understand until he blinks and his vision goes watery. he doesn’t even know when he started crying; leo just feels so happy. more tears fall.

leo swipes at his eyes, ducking his head down slightly to do so. “how embarrassing,” he mumbles.

“it wasn’t that bad, right?” izumi asks, a tinge of concern leaking in.

he laughs then sniffles. “no, it was perfect,” he says. “i loved it.”

as he looks back up at them, leo sees the concern on arashi’s face fall mostly away as she quietly sighs. “are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.

he nods. “i’m sure,” leo says, though he’s not sure how reassuring that is when more tears fall even as he wills them to stop. “i just wasn’t expecting that. i’m just so happy.” he rubs a few more tears away.

tsukasa, despite the worry clear on his face, looks a bit proud at that. “see, i told you that he wouldn’t expect a song .”

needing to show his appreciation, leo stands, sleeves coming away damp as he wipes at his eyes. the four of them say nothing, simply watch as he nears just for him to hug whoever happens to be the closest, which happens to be arashi. she lets out a quiet noise of surprise, but her arms fall around him easily to return it.

it doesn’t take long for the other three to join in the hug, even if there’s some quiet bickering about it.

leo feels so warm there in the hold of four of his closest friends, protected and comforted by them all at once.

they’d written him a song . he still couldn’t believe it.

“thank you,” he says. a hand brushes over his hair. he can’t tell whose it is, but it doesn’t really matter.

“of course, tsukipi,” ritsu says by his left ear.

leo wants to say so many things, wants to write so many songs now that he’s received one of his own. it’s such a new experience that he isn’t sure what to make of it all yet. he wants to ask what writing it was like, how each step of it went. he’s almost a little upset they didn’t ask him for any advice, but that would’ve ruined the surprise before it even began.

he wants to ask them for an encore and then another and another until he memorizes it all by heart.

even so, leo knows that he’ll have plenty of time to ask all the questions bouncing around in his head and then some, so he settles for saying, “i love you guys so much,” and hopes that’s enough to get the message across.

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end notes: i was between two different titles but decided to go with this one in the end. lasciare suonare means allowing a sound to continue (to "let ring") without dampening it. in the past, leo's sound was dampened, but he was able to move through that into where he is now where his music is allowed to continue on, ringing loud and clear. symphony, the title of this fic, refers to a piece that is typically in four movements.

happy leo day!! being done with posting this feels so weird. leo means a lot to me and i'm glad to have been able to put all of that into words for these past five chapters. thank u for sticking around until the end <33 i was already sappy about this ending on twt so i'll spare you all from that but i hope you liked it.

#my fics #symphony #leo tsukinaga #arashi narukami #izumi sena #ritsu sakuma #tsukasa suou #i really am so attached to this fic it's not even funny #and i am really proud of it #i had these couple of months where i really didn't feel like i would write anything again #everything i wrote i hated and that was if i could get myself to write anything #so to end up writing this nearly a year after that really does make me so 🥹#plus i have a horrible track record with long pieces and chaptered things so to finish this really is such a feat #fr an anything for you leo kind of moment laskhdg #and posting it like this is making me feel all of that i felt when i was originally posting it all over again #happy leo debut day everyone 🎉

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