A/N: Potentially terrible stab at Shrade fic! Written on the fly for snowflake_challenge on Dreamwidth. You have been warned. Takes place after episode four.

Cayenne's Song

"Twice in one day? You came back quick."

To Shrade, all life is music. Everything has it's own tune, it's own key that plays and makes up the melody of life, the melody of the universe. He's heard it's song all his life. It's song is his life.

He could read a person, know instantly how they were feeling, by the sound resonating from them. Which is why the man currently angsting about his sister's love interest in Shrade's room had never been a mystery to him.

"I just don't trust him!" Cayenne exclaimed grumpily, and he could hear and feel the anger in the sour notes exuding from him.

"He isn't the man from your vision, Cayenne. You know that now. And he's protecting her. I don't know w-"

"I don't care," he ground out over him. "I still don't trust him."

Shrade turned back to his piano and started to play. "Fair enough."

Cayenne sighed loudly and plopped on one of the couches. "You could have dialed it back earlier. I swear, sometimes I think you torment me for your own pleasure."

"It wasn't meant to torment you, Cayenne. It was meant to help you calm down."

Cayenne scoffed at his back. "Then you've got a funny way of calming people down."

Shrade's fingers halted over the keys when he turned with eyebrows raised. "Yes?"

Cayenne just scoffed.

"Why are you really here, friend?" he asked softly. It had been a while since Cayenne's last visit, not including his intrusion earlier in the afternoon.

There was a long silence; he resumed his playing to fill it. He could feel all of Cayenne's emotions at his back; from the over-protectiveness, to Cayenne's fear of failing to protect and the possible loss of his only sister, and, under it all, his feelings for Shrade himself. Cayenne had never admitted to them, and probably never would, but the song of Cayenne's soul spoke volumes. It played with his own in a harmony he'd never known until he'd met Cayenne.

He'd probably never tell him that, either.

The answer he'd asked for never came in the form of words. He merely got a simple "Thanks, Shrade," when he'd finished playing.

Cayenne was gone by the time he turned, but the lighter notes that emanated from him now were music to Shrade's ears.