ROUND 1: ENTRY 1: Decode
Title Decode
Rated: G
Word Count: 1100
Pairing;Warnings: None.
Summary: Communication can’t be pinned down to simply words, Nick learns.
Nick doesn’t like being touched.
And at eleven, he doesn’t like talking much, either.
He’s a gangly thing, all awkward angles that fold back into themselves. The only time he doesn’t seem as if his limbs don’t belong to him is when he’s dancing, or when he as a weapon in his hand. Then it all strikes down to a focused point, economy of grace, movement. The intensity of a laser beam, more precise than a surgeon’s scalpel.
The rest of the time, he moves as little as possible and is in a sour mood, aware of the imperfections -- however fleeting, momentary -- of a growing body catapulting from coltish limbs of youth to the thicker, longer ones of adulthood. It’s an awful transitory period, neither there nor here, and he’s hitting it ahead of time like he does everything else. Precociously.
Entering Year 7, he’s as tall as any Year 10, will soon be able to see eye to eye with Alan, who looks at him with a complex mixture of pride and mirth. New clothes start appearing in Nick’s closet; not threadbare for once, almost new, and a size too big. A silent promise from his brother that the tricky business of growing isn’t going to stop any time soon.
He’s still got that touch with the girls, though, even if he sometimes bangs his hip against the edge of a desk. In that he’s precocious as well, appreciating the sweet smells they’ve taken to dabbing behind their ears, the inconspicuous bra-straps that are peeking under shirts.
In some ways, Nick decides, puberty is a good thing.
The one thing that doesn’t falter in the transmutation is his voice. It doesn’t break or drop, it simply goes down lower every week by notch, until sometimes he feels that his voice almost vibrates darkly in his throat when he does speak.
Going from Primary to Secondary doesn’t disrupt his life much. People are people, he’s learned, and they’re all insipidly tame. Learn the rhythms and it’s child’s play to slip into the music of mundane life. More so markedly in the rigidness of school, where cliques may change names according to the decade, but at the core nothing moves, nothing advances.
The only blip comes in the form of a slim Indian girl who speaks even less than he does, and it takes him several days to realize that she’s mute. Not because he’s unobservant, but because he had simply thought her to be a friendless loner, a loser, and hadn’t had a reason to talk, as there was no one around her to listen.
He realizes his error when he’s waiting outside one day for Alan to come out of class. The sky is overcast and parents are picking up their kids rather than to let them walk home in a deluge. The Indian girl is characteristically subdued with her nose in a book when a beat-up delivery sedan with rust marks pulls up to the sidewalk and the driver calls her name.
Nick merely watches. Not out of intrigue but alertness. His classmate stands up, stuffs her book into a satchel and run-walks to the sedan like she can’t wait to get the hell away from the school. He shares the sentiment.
The door closes, a seatbelt is pulled across her chest -- and as the man who might be her father or her brother, hard to tell from this angle, speaks to her. She nods and her hands sweep into a dance of movements that remind Nick of an Irish jig, lively flutters of fingers like the light taps of feet. Her lips are still as death on her face, and it all clicks together into place for him.
In reaction he touches his throat; that’s the way Alan finds him a minute later after the sedan is gone.
Communication through movement is a concept he grasps. The first impression is right, it’s a dance, but he doesn’t know the steps, can’t begin to tell you what the message is.
From that day on he watches a little closer, and comes to realize that Alan also speaks another language that isn‘t one of the dead ones, subtler than the Indian girl’s hands, coded in mystery. It’s the way he has different smiles. There’s the polite one he reserves for adults that try to poke around their home life, the sheepish one he wears when a girl he likes is in the room, and the quiet, mouth-closed one he reserves only for Nick, like he knows that if he shows the curve of teeth in a full blown grin, Nick will notice and shy away.
It’s the shrugs, the half-motions with his head, the delicate pauses that say a thousand words that are printed in-too-tiny text for Nick. He only knows enough to perceive there is meaning behind those gestures, but it’s exhausting to try to analyze them. Never mind that the rest of the world does them too, the veiled looks and ease with which they communicate in tiny, unconscious ways, perceiving messages from a stiffened back or a hiked eyebrow.
The simple gesture are easy. Girls, for example, when they come to him, are as difficult to comprehend as knowing the sun comes up and the sun goes down. So are the aggressive ones, the angry flattening of a mouth, the flexing of muscles underneath skin as a precursor to violence.
Alan though. Alan should come with his own Rosetta Stone. But Alan is also the person that Nick trusts in the entire world and he’s learning, bit by bit, what each gesture means. Some leave him mystified, like why Alan still wants to hold his hand sometimes, for no reason at all, or why he doesn’t like the little games Nick uses girls for.
In the end, he has a lot to thank the mute girl for. He might not understand all the nuances of these silent signals, but he’s learned enough, and even adopted some of them, if only for the sake of fitting in better, as his father would have wanted. It’s an imperfect mimicry initially but his attempts improve, and so do his abilities to read people, their intentions -- not simply reading an opponent during the heat of battle but outside of it.
“Is he autistic?” He’s heard people ask Alan, had to look it up in a dictionary and painstakingly make out the words. As he grows older, learns to impersonate better, he doesn’t hear anyone ask that again.
At sixteen he still doesn’t like being touched, but he talks a lot more. He’s downright a smartass.
But he still hasn’t decoded the strange, slow looks Alan sometimes gives him.
Rated: G
Word Count: 1100
Pairing;Warnings: None.
Summary: Communication can’t be pinned down to simply words, Nick learns.
Nick doesn’t like being touched.
And at eleven, he doesn’t like talking much, either.
He’s a gangly thing, all awkward angles that fold back into themselves. The only time he doesn’t seem as if his limbs don’t belong to him is when he’s dancing, or when he as a weapon in his hand. Then it all strikes down to a focused point, economy of grace, movement. The intensity of a laser beam, more precise than a surgeon’s scalpel.
The rest of the time, he moves as little as possible and is in a sour mood, aware of the imperfections -- however fleeting, momentary -- of a growing body catapulting from coltish limbs of youth to the thicker, longer ones of adulthood. It’s an awful transitory period, neither there nor here, and he’s hitting it ahead of time like he does everything else. Precociously.
Entering Year 7, he’s as tall as any Year 10, will soon be able to see eye to eye with Alan, who looks at him with a complex mixture of pride and mirth. New clothes start appearing in Nick’s closet; not threadbare for once, almost new, and a size too big. A silent promise from his brother that the tricky business of growing isn’t going to stop any time soon.
He’s still got that touch with the girls, though, even if he sometimes bangs his hip against the edge of a desk. In that he’s precocious as well, appreciating the sweet smells they’ve taken to dabbing behind their ears, the inconspicuous bra-straps that are peeking under shirts.
In some ways, Nick decides, puberty is a good thing.
The one thing that doesn’t falter in the transmutation is his voice. It doesn’t break or drop, it simply goes down lower every week by notch, until sometimes he feels that his voice almost vibrates darkly in his throat when he does speak.
Going from Primary to Secondary doesn’t disrupt his life much. People are people, he’s learned, and they’re all insipidly tame. Learn the rhythms and it’s child’s play to slip into the music of mundane life. More so markedly in the rigidness of school, where cliques may change names according to the decade, but at the core nothing moves, nothing advances.
The only blip comes in the form of a slim Indian girl who speaks even less than he does, and it takes him several days to realize that she’s mute. Not because he’s unobservant, but because he had simply thought her to be a friendless loner, a loser, and hadn’t had a reason to talk, as there was no one around her to listen.
He realizes his error when he’s waiting outside one day for Alan to come out of class. The sky is overcast and parents are picking up their kids rather than to let them walk home in a deluge. The Indian girl is characteristically subdued with her nose in a book when a beat-up delivery sedan with rust marks pulls up to the sidewalk and the driver calls her name.
Nick merely watches. Not out of intrigue but alertness. His classmate stands up, stuffs her book into a satchel and run-walks to the sedan like she can’t wait to get the hell away from the school. He shares the sentiment.
The door closes, a seatbelt is pulled across her chest -- and as the man who might be her father or her brother, hard to tell from this angle, speaks to her. She nods and her hands sweep into a dance of movements that remind Nick of an Irish jig, lively flutters of fingers like the light taps of feet. Her lips are still as death on her face, and it all clicks together into place for him.
In reaction he touches his throat; that’s the way Alan finds him a minute later after the sedan is gone.
Communication through movement is a concept he grasps. The first impression is right, it’s a dance, but he doesn’t know the steps, can’t begin to tell you what the message is.
From that day on he watches a little closer, and comes to realize that Alan also speaks another language that isn‘t one of the dead ones, subtler than the Indian girl’s hands, coded in mystery. It’s the way he has different smiles. There’s the polite one he reserves for adults that try to poke around their home life, the sheepish one he wears when a girl he likes is in the room, and the quiet, mouth-closed one he reserves only for Nick, like he knows that if he shows the curve of teeth in a full blown grin, Nick will notice and shy away.
It’s the shrugs, the half-motions with his head, the delicate pauses that say a thousand words that are printed in-too-tiny text for Nick. He only knows enough to perceive there is meaning behind those gestures, but it’s exhausting to try to analyze them. Never mind that the rest of the world does them too, the veiled looks and ease with which they communicate in tiny, unconscious ways, perceiving messages from a stiffened back or a hiked eyebrow.
The simple gesture are easy. Girls, for example, when they come to him, are as difficult to comprehend as knowing the sun comes up and the sun goes down. So are the aggressive ones, the angry flattening of a mouth, the flexing of muscles underneath skin as a precursor to violence.
Alan though. Alan should come with his own Rosetta Stone. But Alan is also the person that Nick trusts in the entire world and he’s learning, bit by bit, what each gesture means. Some leave him mystified, like why Alan still wants to hold his hand sometimes, for no reason at all, or why he doesn’t like the little games Nick uses girls for.
In the end, he has a lot to thank the mute girl for. He might not understand all the nuances of these silent signals, but he’s learned enough, and even adopted some of them, if only for the sake of fitting in better, as his father would have wanted. It’s an imperfect mimicry initially but his attempts improve, and so do his abilities to read people, their intentions -- not simply reading an opponent during the heat of battle but outside of it.
“Is he autistic?” He’s heard people ask Alan, had to look it up in a dictionary and painstakingly make out the words. As he grows older, learns to impersonate better, he doesn’t hear anyone ask that again.
At sixteen he still doesn’t like being touched, but he talks a lot more. He’s downright a smartass.
But he still hasn’t decoded the strange, slow looks Alan sometimes gives him.