lovescream
Screech scream grind to a halt, totter on the edge, go over with your heart in your throat and screams in your ears.
So this is how it sounds at the end of the world.
You wake to swirling smoke fumes, blood running slow sticky rivulets down the side of his face, to a tilted world with his cheek pressed to the freezing asphalt. Where. How. In the half light of burning rubber and twisted metal, you can make out Changmin pinned to the ground, tearing eyes widened at him and mouth forming a silent O that reshapes itself every so often with every breath he draws.
Breathing.
Alive.
Yes.
I am not alone.
Snow still drifts down in midnight patterns, white puffs that settle on open wounds heavy enough to make you inhale the winter air with a shaky hiss. Funny how snow can fall so quiet.
It’s only when the paramedics come with their flashing red blue lights, careful hands hoisting you off the ground and into the starched unfamiliarity of sterile sheets that you realize that the man beside you is moving his lips, that Changmin isn’t just breathing, he’s screaming; tears seeping over ugly burns as they try to untangle limbs from deformed car husks.
And you can’t hear it.
---------
You wake, even if you doesn’t want to, wake to the stark sound of nothing.
Help.
Touching the sides of your head, your ears, hands falling away when it hits you that no, you can’t hear anything, can’t hear anything at all.
Why.
Trashing, whimper slipping past your lips, no you can’t hear that either, not the sound of Yoochun’s voice, glass cracking, crashing to the floor when you knock a vase of wilted flowers off your bedside table.
No.
Yoochun holds you down with his one good arm while the nurses stick needles into your arm, lips moving always moving but never actually saying anything.
“Help me,” you can feel yourself say, feel the necessary parts of your throat your tongue move.
“Help me to hear again.”
You can’t hear it but you’re sure Yoochun is crying with his back turned, that or the drugs they’re giving you are blurring definite lines, making Yoochun’s shoulders shiver and dissolve into messy piles of silent colors that fade to white to grey to black.
“Please.”
-------
A few months down the line and you think Yes perhaps I am alone after all, cocooned in a transparent bubble of silence that no one will ever get through. Yoochun knows where to find you on bad nights, curled outside on the balcony with your back to the wall, staring up at the sky and faraway clouds that play tag with moonlight, ipod in hand.
The volume is turned to the highest it can go but still there’s nothing but your own thump thump heart thump beat. You sing along to the tracks, count beats and notes but it doesn’t feel the same. But of course. Earphones shiver in the warmth of your hands, tinny noise that Yoochun pretends not to notice.
He slides the notepad they all carry around with them now at you, open invitation that you toy with for a moment before grasping the pen, scrawl what at him in ugly writing.
Come inside. It’s cold.
But I’m not.
Liar.
He smokes with you some nights and you watch the smoke swirl up to nothing, hazes up the skyline before night wind blows it all away and you can breathe again. Changmin joins you sometimes, slinks to your side and you talk to him, a man who can’t hear, a boy who refuses to speak. Corrective surgery takes away the very worst but scars still stand out in ethereal patches; discolored marks under night non-light.
“Talk to me,” you say when no one else is listening and he just smiles, doodles stick figures on the page of his note pad.
-------
Some days, you lay your hands on the table and you think you can feel everything go on in this silent little house. The way wood shakes under your skin when Jaejoong slams the door, Yunho opening it a moment later, limping after the latter. You imagine how their voices would sound like Why do you do this? Do what, tell me what I’m doing Yunho, tell me what I’m supposed to do. Why are you so bitter? Because, because you deny everything, because you lie and you think I don’t know but I do and it hurts to see you hurt and- Jaejoong.
A raise in tone, words dipping under their own weight, front door flying open.
Jaejoong makes it back within the hour and. You forget like everyone sometimes does, the fact that he can’t see anything but blurred shadows out of his left eye and he startles when you approach from that side.
“Sorry,” you say and feel the words push themselves out of your throat.
He opens his mouth to reply and you wonder what had been on the tip of his tongue, It’s okay, Junsu you idiot, where’s Yunho the possibilities stretch on and on until Jaejoong just shrugs his shoulders, an awkward smile that has a sorry tagged on the ends.
Forgetting like everyone sometimes does.
--------
Further down the line, they discard notebooks for conversations they can’t look away from, hurried classes that Yoochun forces on you and the rest.
Pass me the pen.
Come and li-…look through this a moment.
No one really forgets that much anymore now, Jaejoong learning not to shout for you from the kitchen, Yunho tapping you on the shoulder instead when he wants something. Late night conversations sprawled on the living room floor in the dark get flipped around, dining room light bright enough for you to see everyone’s faces and everyone’s words.
The nights it’s too dark to see his lips move, he takes to spelling secrets on your palm, you whispering them back to him in a voice that could’ve been shouting for all you knew.
W-h-e-r-e d-o w-e g-o f-r-o-m h-e-r-e
“Where indeed, Chun-ah?”
It takes forever and a day to say the simplest things, I l-o-v-e y-o-u pressed into your skin when you lie with your head pressed to his chest, fingers drawing hearts and words and feelings. You miss his voice.
-------------
It’s 7am and there isn’t anywhere to rush to, no one to meet, nothing to do. He’s drowsy in your arms, hands bumbling through the proper signs and words too slurred with sleep for you to grasp properly.
Sleep why here
It’s still early enough for the sunlight to feel cold on your face, Yoochun repeating the letters s-l-e-e-p into your palm when you turn your face from him.
“I’ve always wanted to do this.”
w-h-a-t
“Just because I can’t hear it anymore doesn’t mean I don’t mean it any less.”
Yoochun drops a head on your shoulder and you close your eyes, scream love from the top of the building, the bottom of your heart. Even if you can’t hear it, even if you never will again, at least the rest of the world will know.
[fin]
So this is how it sounds at the end of the world.
You wake to swirling smoke fumes, blood running slow sticky rivulets down the side of his face, to a tilted world with his cheek pressed to the freezing asphalt. Where. How. In the half light of burning rubber and twisted metal, you can make out Changmin pinned to the ground, tearing eyes widened at him and mouth forming a silent O that reshapes itself every so often with every breath he draws.
Breathing.
Alive.
Yes.
I am not alone.
Snow still drifts down in midnight patterns, white puffs that settle on open wounds heavy enough to make you inhale the winter air with a shaky hiss. Funny how snow can fall so quiet.
It’s only when the paramedics come with their flashing red blue lights, careful hands hoisting you off the ground and into the starched unfamiliarity of sterile sheets that you realize that the man beside you is moving his lips, that Changmin isn’t just breathing, he’s screaming; tears seeping over ugly burns as they try to untangle limbs from deformed car husks.
And you can’t hear it.
---------
You wake, even if you doesn’t want to, wake to the stark sound of nothing.
Help.
Touching the sides of your head, your ears, hands falling away when it hits you that no, you can’t hear anything, can’t hear anything at all.
Why.
Trashing, whimper slipping past your lips, no you can’t hear that either, not the sound of Yoochun’s voice, glass cracking, crashing to the floor when you knock a vase of wilted flowers off your bedside table.
No.
Yoochun holds you down with his one good arm while the nurses stick needles into your arm, lips moving always moving but never actually saying anything.
“Help me,” you can feel yourself say, feel the necessary parts of your throat your tongue move.
“Help me to hear again.”
You can’t hear it but you’re sure Yoochun is crying with his back turned, that or the drugs they’re giving you are blurring definite lines, making Yoochun’s shoulders shiver and dissolve into messy piles of silent colors that fade to white to grey to black.
“Please.”
-------
A few months down the line and you think Yes perhaps I am alone after all, cocooned in a transparent bubble of silence that no one will ever get through. Yoochun knows where to find you on bad nights, curled outside on the balcony with your back to the wall, staring up at the sky and faraway clouds that play tag with moonlight, ipod in hand.
The volume is turned to the highest it can go but still there’s nothing but your own thump thump heart thump beat. You sing along to the tracks, count beats and notes but it doesn’t feel the same. But of course. Earphones shiver in the warmth of your hands, tinny noise that Yoochun pretends not to notice.
He slides the notepad they all carry around with them now at you, open invitation that you toy with for a moment before grasping the pen, scrawl what at him in ugly writing.
Come inside. It’s cold.
But I’m not.
Liar.
He smokes with you some nights and you watch the smoke swirl up to nothing, hazes up the skyline before night wind blows it all away and you can breathe again. Changmin joins you sometimes, slinks to your side and you talk to him, a man who can’t hear, a boy who refuses to speak. Corrective surgery takes away the very worst but scars still stand out in ethereal patches; discolored marks under night non-light.
“Talk to me,” you say when no one else is listening and he just smiles, doodles stick figures on the page of his note pad.
-------
Some days, you lay your hands on the table and you think you can feel everything go on in this silent little house. The way wood shakes under your skin when Jaejoong slams the door, Yunho opening it a moment later, limping after the latter. You imagine how their voices would sound like Why do you do this? Do what, tell me what I’m doing Yunho, tell me what I’m supposed to do. Why are you so bitter? Because, because you deny everything, because you lie and you think I don’t know but I do and it hurts to see you hurt and- Jaejoong.
A raise in tone, words dipping under their own weight, front door flying open.
Jaejoong makes it back within the hour and. You forget like everyone sometimes does, the fact that he can’t see anything but blurred shadows out of his left eye and he startles when you approach from that side.
“Sorry,” you say and feel the words push themselves out of your throat.
He opens his mouth to reply and you wonder what had been on the tip of his tongue, It’s okay, Junsu you idiot, where’s Yunho the possibilities stretch on and on until Jaejoong just shrugs his shoulders, an awkward smile that has a sorry tagged on the ends.
Forgetting like everyone sometimes does.
--------
Further down the line, they discard notebooks for conversations they can’t look away from, hurried classes that Yoochun forces on you and the rest.
Pass me the pen.
Come and li-…look through this a moment.
No one really forgets that much anymore now, Jaejoong learning not to shout for you from the kitchen, Yunho tapping you on the shoulder instead when he wants something. Late night conversations sprawled on the living room floor in the dark get flipped around, dining room light bright enough for you to see everyone’s faces and everyone’s words.
The nights it’s too dark to see his lips move, he takes to spelling secrets on your palm, you whispering them back to him in a voice that could’ve been shouting for all you knew.
W-h-e-r-e d-o w-e g-o f-r-o-m h-e-r-e
“Where indeed, Chun-ah?”
It takes forever and a day to say the simplest things, I l-o-v-e y-o-u pressed into your skin when you lie with your head pressed to his chest, fingers drawing hearts and words and feelings. You miss his voice.
-------------
It’s 7am and there isn’t anywhere to rush to, no one to meet, nothing to do. He’s drowsy in your arms, hands bumbling through the proper signs and words too slurred with sleep for you to grasp properly.
Sleep why here
It’s still early enough for the sunlight to feel cold on your face, Yoochun repeating the letters s-l-e-e-p into your palm when you turn your face from him.
“I’ve always wanted to do this.”
w-h-a-t
“Just because I can’t hear it anymore doesn’t mean I don’t mean it any less.”
Yoochun drops a head on your shoulder and you close your eyes, scream love from the top of the building, the bottom of your heart. Even if you can’t hear it, even if you never will again, at least the rest of the world will know.
[fin]