Hope was pretty sure the mysterious boy who had called her "an angel" that morning was not only homeless, but also a musical genius.
[Evan/Hope][Missing scene][Fluffy]
First posted to AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/33402193
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Summary
Hope was pretty sure the mysterious boy who had called her "an angel" that morning was not only homeless, but also a musical genius.
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Author's Notes
I'm loosely interpreting Evan's comment to Louis about having played guitar for 6 months to mean his time busking, and exclude his time at Juilliard. I'm also setting the events of this fic in autumn even though there are visual cues that it's winter, for the sake of sticking to my headcanon timeline.
Title is from the lyrics of Raise It Up by IMPACT Repertory Theatre ft. Jamia Simone Nash.
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The search for the musical prodigy Hope had been excitedly telling Reverend J about ended when they walked into the chapel, conversation cut short by loud organ music.
The air reverberated with majestic chords. The copper pipes were alive with sound. And there he was, sitting at the instrument, high up in the gallery.
Apparently, the boy had spent the morning while Hope was at school going through dusty and dog-eared music theory books tucked away on the messy shelf in the piano room, before scribbling down genius-looking compositions on every scrap of paper he could find, all within hours of learning First Grade piano scales.
(Hope didn't think he was lying when he'd said that morning that he wasn't familiar with written scales; he didn't seem like a dishonest person to her at all.)
Reverend J had to speak into Hope's ear for her to even hear him. "Let's go upstairs and say hi to him," he suggested. Hope was relieved that the Reverend was smiling; she didn't want the boy to get in trouble just 'cause she told on him for staying overnight in the children's ministry dorm without asking permission from their daycare supervisor Mrs Coleman.
"Slow down, Hope," Reverend J laughed as she climbed the fire escape staircase two steps at a time. "He'll still be there." But she was just so excited.
She and the Reverend stood by the doorway to the gallery, transfixed and awed, listening to him experiment with stepwise melodies in various scales, always resolving them in three descending chords before changing key. That went on for probably five minutes, before the progression of exalted chords came to its grand conclusion.
The boy stood up from his seat as quietly as possible, making sure not to let the stool's feet drag on the wooden floor, yet the movement sounded large in the silence left behind. That was when he finally noticed Hope and Reverend J. "Hello," he said. "Is it...okay for me to be here?"
