"Soundtrack to a Lost Film" Part Three
Title: "Soundtrack to a Lost Film"
Pairing: Tablo/Hyukjae
Author: Linh/ElmersGlue128
Part: three (out of four)
Genre: angst, romance
Rating: PG
Words: 1,124
Summary: This is the soundtrack to Tablo and Hyukjae's story, the happiness and the heartbreak. Press play and listen to Tablo share it with you. There is no girlfriend in this.
Comments: Based off the CD with the same title by Eternal Morning (Tablo and Pe2ny), I used the song titles as inspiration to write something on-going and connected in 4 parts.
P.S. References: Holden Caulfield is the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye, Phở is a Vietnamese food - white rice noodles in a beef broth and thin cuts of meat (VERY lame explanation).
P.S.S. Skeletons in my closet, this has been ignored for so damn long, I figured I should at least get it finished^^ Hmm, this time the writing differs a lot compared to the previous two parts. Perhaps this is the simplicity of love and life? idek...
7. Holden Caulfield
I desperately need a break, you tell me when I wake up. Taking me by the hand, you drag me out of my room and apartment until we are standing on the bustling city streets, I’m wearing a white tennis shoe and a black dress shoe because you refused to let me stop for more than five seconds as you placed that brown box down onto the floor.
Readjusting your beanie and hoodie securely over your head, we’re walking as you explain you have a couple of errands to run but you really don’t want to be doing them all alone. Contently, you tell me about your week and I realize you don’t stutter and blush a flaming red, becoming close to incoherent anymore when you’re with me. You don’t look at me with sparkling eyes filled with overwhelming admiration like you think I can single-handedly save the world from self-destruction and chaos. Maybe you realized I looked ridiculous as Superman, tights and I just don’t jive.
Who the fuck am I anyways? Me? I just don’t want to disappoint you.
Soon we’re in a bookstore but we walk right pass the comics section, pretty much the only place you’d ever be found in here because black-and-white words are not you. I think you’re lost as you wander around seemingly directionless and I follow a step behind because you’re fingering through fiction novels until you pull out a translated copy of Catcher in the Rye. I raise an eyebrow and touch your forehead for a temperature. You cross your arms at my skepticism, you ask dryly Am I that hot?
Very hot I say smiling back and caress your bare stomach underneath your thick sweatshirt before you smack my hand away as a little girl in pigtails totters by and giggles as her mom chases after her. I let it sink in, so who’s the kid now?
You explain it started out with no one believing you can even finish a book without pictures, nudity involved or not, and this book was randomly chosen and, admittedly, you were going to look up a summary online until you started reading. Half-way through with the book, you accidently misplaced it and you need to finish because you hate leaving things behind or being left behind. You’re serious about this, you make sure I know that and I can’t understand…at first.
8. Fingerprints
It’s getting a little late but we’ve finished running all your errands and even stop for some phở because you tell me I’m starting to sound like I’ve caught a cold and you’ve always felt a bit better after eating hot soup. Soon after you’re eagerly slurping up the noodles, broth is splattered all over your chin and white t-shirt.
I’m wiping your mouth off with a napkin when you take a short break from eating to drink some water and you’re still not full. I take notice of your thin, bony limbs and nod my head vigorously in agreement, shoving a new bowl towards you and start feeding you myself. You open your mouth even wider.
When we’re back at the apartment, you have that brown box in your arms again and you carry it onto my desk. Some things are just meant to be, you articulate carefully after a pause and press your lips against my cheek. As I’m staring curiously at this mysterious box, you pull of your jacket and dirty t-shirt and dig through my dresser for something else to wear.
With you distracted, I open the flaps at the top of the box and pull out a black typewriter, crappy and old with chips and faded paint.
It’s the thing we once saw together that I immediately felt like saving from its dusty shelf, abandoned by its previous owner because it’s a long-forgotten junk of an indistinguishable past. The dingy pawn shop was already closed though because it was only after midnight that we’re able to walk hand-in-hand, your pulse beating against mine as our wrists hugged tightly, an insignificantly significant touch of intimacy that lets me know with every cell in my body this is abso-fucking-lutely real, you being here with me.
I forgot I wanted to save it from oblivion, being buried by time. But you remembered. Why?
The surface has been polished impeccably though except for the couple of obvious fingerprints along both sides from you placing it in the box and me taking it out. I grab a piece of tape form my desk and place it over a spot on the typewriter where your fingerprint overlaps with mine.
There, now they’ll be there even when we’re gone. The memory of us.
9. Black Shoe
Before you can put on another shirt, I rip it out of your hands and kiss you hard enough so your back momentarily digs into the edge of the drawer. Unfazed, you follow my lead as we both fall blindly on the bed and you call my name just the way I like it, like you’ll never leave.
I trace random words all over your sweaty chest as our breathing falls into sync and your eyes keep fluttering close even though you incoherently insist you’re still wide awake. Softly, I shush your rambling with a chaste kiss and you’re instantly asleep.
Then I realize I never took my mismatched shoes off when we came inside and one still managed to stay on my foot after all this time. Immaturely, I almost want to wake you up just to show you this until I remember I’m supposed to protect you. Pulling the shoe off, I get back on the bed and pull you close.
I could be writing right now, this is when I always need to write because the abstract words and ideas and images are a cesspool I drown in for hours and days on end. It’s like speed and ecstasy and hard alcohol all at once, it’s exciting like no other high until it makes make sick to my stomach and the contents just spill out all over my life, a stained room of solitude.
But you’re here. I can hold your hands, touch your knuckles with my thumb and rest against you all night long and you won’t disappear.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, isn’t that what they say? I’m a writer, a lyricist. The composition in my mind playing with heightening crescendos and booming bravado against drum beats and guitar riffs that make up the rushed, continuous cycle of life and living amongst the death and decay.
Except right now it’s silence.
Baby, there are no words to describe this moment. You hush my words, you leave me speechless.
I’m a mess without you.