FIC: "Body Language"
Pause for a moment.
Take away everything-the guitars, the drums, and the bass.
Leave only the voice there, and allow it to sing its own melody.
This is how I personally felt he sang at his best. With no underlying aggressive sounds in the background, you could hear his voice fully echo across any distance. It was a voice that commanded silence and immediate attention as its strength rang from the very depths of his heart. Gathered from his diaphragm and slowly rising, a controlled whirlwind of air, mixing with the sounds of his voice, and colliding with emotions from all sides-he reached in and exposed it all in a song that instruments could never compete with. It was his song; he allowed for others to hear, but he never truly shared what ran through his mind. You could catch perhaps a glimpse of his mind within his eyes, but his thoughts were for him to cherish, and for everyone else to only guess.
Even we, his band mates and best friends were often led on a wild goose chase when it came to trying to figure him out. We always entered that maze, only to exit right where we started, with the labyrinth inside constantly shifting and changing itself. For over ten years this had been the case, and while the rest of the band had pretty much given up, I never did. I always wanted to see what his drive was to sing. I always wanted to have a taste of the experience as he clawed at himself, beating the agony out of his body as his voice rang out the pain in his lyrics. I wanted to know how he could be in tears one second, and grinning the next amidst the raging burn of the self inflicted marks and the dribbling mixture of saliva and blood at the corner of his mouth.
It was a morbid curiosity that aided in my attraction to him. His beauty on the inside and out had already drawn me to him from the beginning. He always had this sort of shy smile that just barely spread across his face, his eyes opening in the slightest as he did so. He was often aloof but also carefree, usually keeping to himself but not so much that he isolated himself. He was always a very wise man, far beyond his years; he was never afraid to satisfy his curiosities nor did he care what other people thought of his actions. Or at least, that was the image he gave to everyone, including me. If he was affected by the opinions of others, he certainly didn’t show it. He was your well known enigma, to sum it all up.
He always had a shut door when it came to love and romance. Amidst a broken heart that took him a very long time to piece back together, he never really showed a remote interest in anybody. He was always quite sensitive when the topic was brought up though, a reaction that you could only see in his eyes despite his silence. They would darken, turn an almost pupil-less black as his eyelids narrowed dangerously at the mention of it. You would never think that he had a problem with it, that he just didn’t care. But that was one of the few things I noticed about him. It was that even when he didn’t say a word despite the laughter and talk of dreams and hopes, it wasn’t because he didn’t care. If you looked deep enough into his eyes, on the contrary, you would slowly see a freshly glued piece of his slowly mending heart fall right back down onto the ground. The echo of the sound it made as it landed was simply deafening.
Despite how attracted I was to him, I had had little hopes of ever pursuing said attraction. I liked him a lot, and I had dreamt many times of us being together. I had daydreamed of how I would treat him like a king, despite how I would know he would dislike such praise. I thought of how I would make love to him, slowly and sensually, leaving no part of his body untouched by my lips. Vividly playing in my mind were clips of how I would trace every scar and bruise with my tongue, feeling his beating heart pound faster against his ribs as he squirmed and writhed beneath my ministrations. There was often a time where I would be caught in an awkward situation where I would think of these thoughts right when he was there, quickly giving my award winning sheepish grin as he would raise his eyebrows at me before walking away with some comment that usually included the word ‘idiot’ in some way or form. Since I often stared off into a daze, this was common to hear, but regardless, I always hoped that my feelings remained well hidden. Even if at times I thought I had seen him staring at me for long periods at a time, or imagined that his cheeks would heat up in slight pinkish color, I still swallowed my words and feelings. He wasn’t interested in any type of romance after all. Not only that, but even if he was, what was to say he would share these feelings with another man? The chances were pretty much nil, as far as I knew.
So you could imagine my surprise when he confessed his feelings to me one day. I remembered the day vividly; it was cold and raining and we were in Finland. We were traveling on the tour bus and he had been gazing at the window in silence throughout the duration of the drive. The heat to the bus had broken, and there wasn’t enough time in our strict tour schedule to stop to get it fixed, so we all rode with a drafting cold filling the entire vehicle. I had noticed he was shivering despite not complaining, so I had gone into my bag and pulled out a sweatshirt, bringing it over to him. Draped over his shoulders, it had snapped him out of his lost daze, his entire body jumping as he turned his head sharply to look at me, eyes slightly widened as his hand found its way over to a sleeve resting over his chest. There was a silence in the air, the others in the back of the bus, as the only people in front was the driver along with the two of us. We were looking at each other quietly, though there was no rising tension. Instead, he smiled faintly and went to slip it over himself, the sweatshirt much too big for him as it gave him an almost childish look-one that I couldn’t help but laugh at. The sleeves were too long, and the entire thing looked as if it was drowning him within the many folds surrounding his tiny body.
He glared at me, looking obviously embarrassed. He had pulled the hood over his head and had shoved his hands into the pockets of the sweatshirt before murmuring a quiet ‘thank you’ against the drawstrings, his eyes looking back out the window. I stood there in that moment after, before eventually sitting down next to him, watching him watch the rain streaking the foggy window as the roads passed by quickly. Even through the fog, I could see the reflection of his expression on his face. He looked thoughtful and uneasy, though his eyes were not clear enough for me to see through the obscurity of the fog. It was mere seconds after that did he turn to face me-and not just a simple turn of the head either. It was a complete turn of his body so that he was not only looking at me, but he was facing me as well. It was then did everything else simply fade away in the background, the only focus in my mind being on him. He looked like he had so much to say, but with no idea of how to say it. I remembered blinking and tilting my head, before offering a grin and opening my mouth in order to say something. I wanted to say anything to simply make him comfortable. But he beat me in the race for words.
“You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?” He questioned, startling me to the very core of my body that any and all words that were ready to be said had fled, leaving me in a helpless state of deer-caught-in-headlights. His voice was low and quiet, enough that only I would hear, his eyes darting to the bus driver who was occupied with driving before looking back at me. His lips quirked into a tiny smirk when he saw my expression, not giving me a chance to defend myself before he replied, “I thought so.”
I didn’t know what to say. My lips were slightly parted, my eyes wide, and as much as my mind wanted to deny everything-my head constantly whirring ‘deny deny deny!’ my heart refused to allow for myself to lie-especially to his face. I had felt really embarrassed on top of completely surprised. My entire being right then and there was preparing for an emergency ridicule and rejection, as I simply bowed my head so that my hair would shield the fear in my eyes. I was simply conceding, and silently confessing, while waiting for my punishment in return.
“You weren’t really secretive about it, you know,” he began, his voice still low as he shifted his gaze between me and the window, while bringing a finger to idly draw on the fogged surface. “You were constantly looking at me with those curious eyes of yours. I could feel them upon me every time, even if I never reacted to it. I’m sure you thought of me too, your mind envisioning so much that you probably desired or needed. I was surprised to see how obvious you were; I thought you would have been more subtle than the typical fan girl silently professing her undying want to marry me…”
“Um… Kyo-I-” I found myself beginning to speak, before I was cut off, my heart aching, and my mind slowly shutting itself down to a simple numbness to minimize the damage. However, the way I was cut off, was what kept me from going completely numb. I had felt warmth pressing against my lips, bringing my eyes to lift themselves open widely, as I felt his lips kissing my own. I was completely bewildered, unsure of how to reply to this other than melting into this. It had been brief, but it had lit up a fire within me that I had never felt before in my life. Amidst the cold, I felt warm. And when we drew back, it was when I really looked at him, briefly so before my eyes looked right above him-right at the window.
I’m attracted to you as well.
Those were the words that were scrawled in his typical handwriting, the asshole taking advantage of my vulnerable state as he spoke in such a cold accusing voice to me. He had done it purposely-this man who was a genius of reading expressions that you would think he could read minds. I should have known and been prepared for such a hit like that. I had underestimated him then, but upon noticing how meek he was following that kiss, I had a feeling that he felt that he was going to be slammed down for his actions. He wasn’t looking at me, head buried in the hood of the sweatshirt with those oversized sleeves pretty much covering everything but his eyes. He was silent, and I was almost certain he was expecting me to get up and walk away in pure anger or disgust. With all these thoughts running through my mind, a part of me wanted to do this, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. However, despite how much of an asshole he was, that asshole was the man I always was fond of. His sarcastic, sharp comments and his acid-filled defenses which hid a much more sensitive man who wore his heart on his sleeve was what I had always loved about him. He probably didn’t think it was such, but I knew this was his own way of expressing himself with a silent prayer to not be hurt in the same process. I knew, and I could see it so obviously written there, too.
I pressed him up against the window, his eyes staring up at me with almost an almost childish look as I grinned, my hand pressed against his scrawled message as I concealed it with a slide of my palm down the foggy surface, my other hand pressed to the seats in front of us and I leaned down to seal our mutual attraction to one another just as silently as he had done so. It was warm, lingering, and perfect; I really couldn’t ask for a better moment than that, our eyes looking directly at each other before they both fell shut. I felt his arms around my neck as we held onto each other for as long as possible, eventually drawing back with a breathy sigh as I soon smirked once his eyes opened.
“You’re not exactly Mr. Secrets yourself…”
That earned me a bruising punch to my chest. But on the flip side, I also got to see him truly blush. And it wasn’t the last time that I felt those lips against my own or those cheeks burn bright red. There would be many more times.
However, it never got me any closer to unraveling the enigma that stood before me. We were both much closer and nearly attached to the hip. Our relationship was quiet and kept behind closed doors. But despite the intimacy we gained, there were no keys, clues, nor hints on how to climb into that head of his. There was simply no way inside, and while at the beginning it was frustrating, as time went on, I realized I didn’t really mind it.
It was something I knew that made him nervous. He never outwardly said it, and I never called him out on it either, and it made him somewhat more relaxed around me. Despite the fact that I had to guess most of his feelings and hope that I was right, it gradually grew much easier for me to understand. And it was then did I also realize that without even pushing the issue, I had already found myself a way into his mind and what he was thinking. It was so complex yet so simple; but with my continued efforts in understanding him, I was also unraveling that mystery, a mystery that former lovers of this man had never even bothered to attempt to understand. It was almost always assumed that he was a heartless man with no care for anyone, when it was quite the opposite. He had a heart, and he did indeed care, but he just had no way to truly express it in a manner that it would be understood. Instead, he used his actions and written words to properly express it. He was a man whose first language was what he was born into; it was the language of the body. And it was his prime way of letting everyone know just exactly how he felt. It was exactly how he communicated.
And whether it was on stage, where I strummed my guitar, looking at him as razors slashed across his bare skin as blood freely flowed from him, or if it was in a studio, where he would wipe his eyes as he drew back from the microphone and slid the headphones down his ears, it was all the same. He may be a vocalist, and he may scream and cry all his sorrows away with the music aiding him in the background, but if you took that all away and left it with just him there, you would still be able to understand him to the limit that he would allow you to understand. And if he grinned and stood there before you despite the pain he obviously suffered to demand your attention and to open your mind, then congratulations. You’ve figured out exactly what he was trying to say.
And it was just the way that I would always prefer it-and how I would prefer him.
Bring it all back now-the guitars, the drums and the bass.
Resume playing once more.
And truly listen.
Take away everything-the guitars, the drums, and the bass.
Leave only the voice there, and allow it to sing its own melody.
This is how I personally felt he sang at his best. With no underlying aggressive sounds in the background, you could hear his voice fully echo across any distance. It was a voice that commanded silence and immediate attention as its strength rang from the very depths of his heart. Gathered from his diaphragm and slowly rising, a controlled whirlwind of air, mixing with the sounds of his voice, and colliding with emotions from all sides-he reached in and exposed it all in a song that instruments could never compete with. It was his song; he allowed for others to hear, but he never truly shared what ran through his mind. You could catch perhaps a glimpse of his mind within his eyes, but his thoughts were for him to cherish, and for everyone else to only guess.
Even we, his band mates and best friends were often led on a wild goose chase when it came to trying to figure him out. We always entered that maze, only to exit right where we started, with the labyrinth inside constantly shifting and changing itself. For over ten years this had been the case, and while the rest of the band had pretty much given up, I never did. I always wanted to see what his drive was to sing. I always wanted to have a taste of the experience as he clawed at himself, beating the agony out of his body as his voice rang out the pain in his lyrics. I wanted to know how he could be in tears one second, and grinning the next amidst the raging burn of the self inflicted marks and the dribbling mixture of saliva and blood at the corner of his mouth.
It was a morbid curiosity that aided in my attraction to him. His beauty on the inside and out had already drawn me to him from the beginning. He always had this sort of shy smile that just barely spread across his face, his eyes opening in the slightest as he did so. He was often aloof but also carefree, usually keeping to himself but not so much that he isolated himself. He was always a very wise man, far beyond his years; he was never afraid to satisfy his curiosities nor did he care what other people thought of his actions. Or at least, that was the image he gave to everyone, including me. If he was affected by the opinions of others, he certainly didn’t show it. He was your well known enigma, to sum it all up.
He always had a shut door when it came to love and romance. Amidst a broken heart that took him a very long time to piece back together, he never really showed a remote interest in anybody. He was always quite sensitive when the topic was brought up though, a reaction that you could only see in his eyes despite his silence. They would darken, turn an almost pupil-less black as his eyelids narrowed dangerously at the mention of it. You would never think that he had a problem with it, that he just didn’t care. But that was one of the few things I noticed about him. It was that even when he didn’t say a word despite the laughter and talk of dreams and hopes, it wasn’t because he didn’t care. If you looked deep enough into his eyes, on the contrary, you would slowly see a freshly glued piece of his slowly mending heart fall right back down onto the ground. The echo of the sound it made as it landed was simply deafening.
Despite how attracted I was to him, I had had little hopes of ever pursuing said attraction. I liked him a lot, and I had dreamt many times of us being together. I had daydreamed of how I would treat him like a king, despite how I would know he would dislike such praise. I thought of how I would make love to him, slowly and sensually, leaving no part of his body untouched by my lips. Vividly playing in my mind were clips of how I would trace every scar and bruise with my tongue, feeling his beating heart pound faster against his ribs as he squirmed and writhed beneath my ministrations. There was often a time where I would be caught in an awkward situation where I would think of these thoughts right when he was there, quickly giving my award winning sheepish grin as he would raise his eyebrows at me before walking away with some comment that usually included the word ‘idiot’ in some way or form. Since I often stared off into a daze, this was common to hear, but regardless, I always hoped that my feelings remained well hidden. Even if at times I thought I had seen him staring at me for long periods at a time, or imagined that his cheeks would heat up in slight pinkish color, I still swallowed my words and feelings. He wasn’t interested in any type of romance after all. Not only that, but even if he was, what was to say he would share these feelings with another man? The chances were pretty much nil, as far as I knew.
So you could imagine my surprise when he confessed his feelings to me one day. I remembered the day vividly; it was cold and raining and we were in Finland. We were traveling on the tour bus and he had been gazing at the window in silence throughout the duration of the drive. The heat to the bus had broken, and there wasn’t enough time in our strict tour schedule to stop to get it fixed, so we all rode with a drafting cold filling the entire vehicle. I had noticed he was shivering despite not complaining, so I had gone into my bag and pulled out a sweatshirt, bringing it over to him. Draped over his shoulders, it had snapped him out of his lost daze, his entire body jumping as he turned his head sharply to look at me, eyes slightly widened as his hand found its way over to a sleeve resting over his chest. There was a silence in the air, the others in the back of the bus, as the only people in front was the driver along with the two of us. We were looking at each other quietly, though there was no rising tension. Instead, he smiled faintly and went to slip it over himself, the sweatshirt much too big for him as it gave him an almost childish look-one that I couldn’t help but laugh at. The sleeves were too long, and the entire thing looked as if it was drowning him within the many folds surrounding his tiny body.
He glared at me, looking obviously embarrassed. He had pulled the hood over his head and had shoved his hands into the pockets of the sweatshirt before murmuring a quiet ‘thank you’ against the drawstrings, his eyes looking back out the window. I stood there in that moment after, before eventually sitting down next to him, watching him watch the rain streaking the foggy window as the roads passed by quickly. Even through the fog, I could see the reflection of his expression on his face. He looked thoughtful and uneasy, though his eyes were not clear enough for me to see through the obscurity of the fog. It was mere seconds after that did he turn to face me-and not just a simple turn of the head either. It was a complete turn of his body so that he was not only looking at me, but he was facing me as well. It was then did everything else simply fade away in the background, the only focus in my mind being on him. He looked like he had so much to say, but with no idea of how to say it. I remembered blinking and tilting my head, before offering a grin and opening my mouth in order to say something. I wanted to say anything to simply make him comfortable. But he beat me in the race for words.
“You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?” He questioned, startling me to the very core of my body that any and all words that were ready to be said had fled, leaving me in a helpless state of deer-caught-in-headlights. His voice was low and quiet, enough that only I would hear, his eyes darting to the bus driver who was occupied with driving before looking back at me. His lips quirked into a tiny smirk when he saw my expression, not giving me a chance to defend myself before he replied, “I thought so.”
I didn’t know what to say. My lips were slightly parted, my eyes wide, and as much as my mind wanted to deny everything-my head constantly whirring ‘deny deny deny!’ my heart refused to allow for myself to lie-especially to his face. I had felt really embarrassed on top of completely surprised. My entire being right then and there was preparing for an emergency ridicule and rejection, as I simply bowed my head so that my hair would shield the fear in my eyes. I was simply conceding, and silently confessing, while waiting for my punishment in return.
“You weren’t really secretive about it, you know,” he began, his voice still low as he shifted his gaze between me and the window, while bringing a finger to idly draw on the fogged surface. “You were constantly looking at me with those curious eyes of yours. I could feel them upon me every time, even if I never reacted to it. I’m sure you thought of me too, your mind envisioning so much that you probably desired or needed. I was surprised to see how obvious you were; I thought you would have been more subtle than the typical fan girl silently professing her undying want to marry me…”
“Um… Kyo-I-” I found myself beginning to speak, before I was cut off, my heart aching, and my mind slowly shutting itself down to a simple numbness to minimize the damage. However, the way I was cut off, was what kept me from going completely numb. I had felt warmth pressing against my lips, bringing my eyes to lift themselves open widely, as I felt his lips kissing my own. I was completely bewildered, unsure of how to reply to this other than melting into this. It had been brief, but it had lit up a fire within me that I had never felt before in my life. Amidst the cold, I felt warm. And when we drew back, it was when I really looked at him, briefly so before my eyes looked right above him-right at the window.
I’m attracted to you as well.
Those were the words that were scrawled in his typical handwriting, the asshole taking advantage of my vulnerable state as he spoke in such a cold accusing voice to me. He had done it purposely-this man who was a genius of reading expressions that you would think he could read minds. I should have known and been prepared for such a hit like that. I had underestimated him then, but upon noticing how meek he was following that kiss, I had a feeling that he felt that he was going to be slammed down for his actions. He wasn’t looking at me, head buried in the hood of the sweatshirt with those oversized sleeves pretty much covering everything but his eyes. He was silent, and I was almost certain he was expecting me to get up and walk away in pure anger or disgust. With all these thoughts running through my mind, a part of me wanted to do this, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. However, despite how much of an asshole he was, that asshole was the man I always was fond of. His sarcastic, sharp comments and his acid-filled defenses which hid a much more sensitive man who wore his heart on his sleeve was what I had always loved about him. He probably didn’t think it was such, but I knew this was his own way of expressing himself with a silent prayer to not be hurt in the same process. I knew, and I could see it so obviously written there, too.
I pressed him up against the window, his eyes staring up at me with almost an almost childish look as I grinned, my hand pressed against his scrawled message as I concealed it with a slide of my palm down the foggy surface, my other hand pressed to the seats in front of us and I leaned down to seal our mutual attraction to one another just as silently as he had done so. It was warm, lingering, and perfect; I really couldn’t ask for a better moment than that, our eyes looking directly at each other before they both fell shut. I felt his arms around my neck as we held onto each other for as long as possible, eventually drawing back with a breathy sigh as I soon smirked once his eyes opened.
“You’re not exactly Mr. Secrets yourself…”
That earned me a bruising punch to my chest. But on the flip side, I also got to see him truly blush. And it wasn’t the last time that I felt those lips against my own or those cheeks burn bright red. There would be many more times.
However, it never got me any closer to unraveling the enigma that stood before me. We were both much closer and nearly attached to the hip. Our relationship was quiet and kept behind closed doors. But despite the intimacy we gained, there were no keys, clues, nor hints on how to climb into that head of his. There was simply no way inside, and while at the beginning it was frustrating, as time went on, I realized I didn’t really mind it.
It was something I knew that made him nervous. He never outwardly said it, and I never called him out on it either, and it made him somewhat more relaxed around me. Despite the fact that I had to guess most of his feelings and hope that I was right, it gradually grew much easier for me to understand. And it was then did I also realize that without even pushing the issue, I had already found myself a way into his mind and what he was thinking. It was so complex yet so simple; but with my continued efforts in understanding him, I was also unraveling that mystery, a mystery that former lovers of this man had never even bothered to attempt to understand. It was almost always assumed that he was a heartless man with no care for anyone, when it was quite the opposite. He had a heart, and he did indeed care, but he just had no way to truly express it in a manner that it would be understood. Instead, he used his actions and written words to properly express it. He was a man whose first language was what he was born into; it was the language of the body. And it was his prime way of letting everyone know just exactly how he felt. It was exactly how he communicated.
And whether it was on stage, where I strummed my guitar, looking at him as razors slashed across his bare skin as blood freely flowed from him, or if it was in a studio, where he would wipe his eyes as he drew back from the microphone and slid the headphones down his ears, it was all the same. He may be a vocalist, and he may scream and cry all his sorrows away with the music aiding him in the background, but if you took that all away and left it with just him there, you would still be able to understand him to the limit that he would allow you to understand. And if he grinned and stood there before you despite the pain he obviously suffered to demand your attention and to open your mind, then congratulations. You’ve figured out exactly what he was trying to say.
And it was just the way that I would always prefer it-and how I would prefer him.
Bring it all back now-the guitars, the drums and the bass.
Resume playing once more.
And truly listen.