Silence
Fandom - TVXQ/DBSK/Tohoshinki
Pairing - squintandyoucanseeit JaeHo/YunJae and squintsomemore YooSu/JunChun
Warnings - Lawsuit broken!-but-still-hereJaeJoong
I blame the whole JYJ - W/TVXQ - Still juxtaposition for making me cry and then needing to vent and so writing this.
I do not own either JYJ or TVXQ and realize that life is never that simple...but a fan can wish, can hope...
Silence
It’s frustrating, he thinks, the way things like this go unrecognized. There is no name for the ache at the back of his eyes that leaks into his sinuses and drips down to his throat, making him choke on words better left unsaid. So much left unsaid, after years worth of speech and a lifetime of giving voice to the unnamed, he finds it strange that he really, truly, has no words. No song. The orchestra in his heart is silent, and perhaps this is what it is like to…no. The silence is only on his cell phone, his cyworld account, the mail, the interviews, in court. It is not his silence to give, but rather his to bear and to take. His to take until there is nothing left to give but the music.
He knows, too, that it’s not his fault. There is no fault, nowhere to place the rage, to have and hold until all that’s left are the crystallized remains of coagulated sorrow tracking mascara down his face to place bitter-salt kisses on the tip of his tongue, like the words never spoken, and leaving the taste of broken dreams and shattered hearts to roll across his tongue and gag his hope. Kisses like secrets whispered in the dark of the night to an empty house that will never again be home, and he cries out into cold soft feathers and cotton that lets him just breathe into the too quiet evening air.
With him, it’s always been about the music. With him, it’s song. Without him, there’s not even one touch. Without him, he is not moved. The empty left side, of his heart or maybe his dreams, cannot be filled with effort alone, and the melody and harmony falter, tripping over themselves like he does over thin air and open trap doors. Unexpected, graceless, falling into the unknown. The right side tries to pick up the slack, tries to cushion the sudden empty that fills his days and haunts his nights. He keeps looking to the left, and so the right shifts and he knows he has created another rift, the hush between music and song that they cannot afford to voice.
He can’t sleep at night, won’t sleep during the day. With no one to cook for, he doesn’t eat. He’s always been thin, delicate, but now he is fragile, breakable. You’d think he’d lost a lover, but there was no time. No time for him to take, no time to be taken, and now time has run as dry as his eyes staring at that constellation that seems to always be watching and yet does not see. Stars have human hearts. Stars, seemingly vast and benevolent, burning with a cold fire, are simply pinpoints of light in an eternal darkness, too distant to touch. He wonders how far Gemini is from Orion, how many eternities any light would have to cross, and stares at the Dipper, unable to face a vain and boastful queen whose beauty is still unrivalled. She is quiet, Still. He loved her, once. He loves her still.
He loves them both. He’s never stopped.
The music comes, the song soars, and suddenly he’s backstage again and the unnamed ache returns with a vengeance to crack his façade and make him wish he’d thought of one more opportunity to be a man. To speak up. Losing a lover would have been easier, more defined, and therefore determined and identifiable. What do you call it when suddenly your best friend, your light leading you from dark to brilliance, the yin matching yang, the fire to your water and completion of the cycles of all there is on your way to the heavens, isn’t there? When there is no resolution? Bereft of tears, bereft of name, bereft of song and dance and melody and joy, his eye weeps poison. Not enough sleep they tell him. Exhaustion is why he wanders in the dark, stumbling and clumsy, that beautiful queen at his back, supporting him, but unable to give him enough light to see his way.
Blind, he finds his way free of grasping hands and yearning eyes, like water through reeds, tumbling down into one, two, five, seven, more bottles of soju, liquefied burning inside, knowing that if he lets that go now he won’t stop until he’s as vacant as their old home. So he doesn’t. He’s not sure if he should, or even if he can. It’s been years, too long. He’s won, once, in a hollow victory that lasted as long as it will take to post the pictures of his face turned askance after that song, written when his slender fingers clutched desperately to fading fantasy. He is better. Better does not mean good.
Later, when he returns to his home that he has created to suit none but himself, that song on an endless coda screaming in the back of his throat, waiting to be given voice and made real, he will not see the small light of his answering machine flashing a bright spot in the darkness of the left side of his dark and endless space. It won’t be music or song or a single bright flash of sensation too quick to be called pain but too intense to be pleasure. It will break his silence, but the words won’t come. They didn’t exist in the first place. He wonders if any of it did.
Across an ocean, notes fade into the air as a disposable cell is closed and movement sighs, back to the Dipper and head lifted to gaze into that far off light. Seemingly cold and distant, he knows that a star is brilliant and fiery hot, and thinks of homemade soup filled with care and a home that is more than a house where they have been promised a place. The right side of his heart aches, but he keeps it limber, anticipating the day when it might be filled again. He silently promises himself to speak up then, and knows that the benevolent queen will continue to smile on all of her shining sons.
Na dan hansaram geudaeegeman saksakineun seolleime nuni busil, geunaui sesangi doeeo gyeote isseutteni (I cannot believe how just whispering to you made me so nervous, ‘till we can be together in my world.)
At 6:07 that morning, the power goes out. A secret message is lost to the dark.