fic: Acoustic Silence/Guitar Strings (1/2)
It’s somewhere during autumn that the two of you meet for the first time. You can’t remember much of the first moments, not really - just that he lies on his hospital bed and watches the sunset out of the window, warm colours coating his healthy-looking form. You remember wondering what he was doing there but never really asking.
You yourself were getting your arm fixed up. And damn it had hurt. Broken and dislocated bones weren’t really something to dream of. And it was all your own fucking fault anyway.
Or maybe now, years later, you can remember it. First it just didn’t count - it wasn’t the usual him, the usual Yuuki. That stepped in later.
But now, after everything, you can see him in that young, barely legal man who lied on his bed and watched the sunset with that expression on his face. That nothing-at-all expression which wasn’t nothing-at-all at all.
It became an expression for so much more.
But not on the first time you met him anyway.
You were lazing out on your own hospital bed, groaning and cursing to yourself, dosed up on painkillers (thank god). And he was there and that night was slightly still.
It was really only the following day you got to know him.
Got to see what Yuuki really was like for the world.
--
“Hey, you. You,” the man calls out to you with a loud and piercing voice, cocking his head back a little, his brown curls bouncing lively on his shoulders. “You there! Helloooo, the man on the next bed!”
You remove your fixed gaze from your cellphone screen and glance at him awkwardly, almost uninterestedly. “I’m listening.”
“What’s your name?” the man goes on, leaning over the edge of his bed. “Na-something-san?”
“Natsu,” you answer him and start to fiddle with your phone again, one-handed. Maybe you should’ve thought twice before speaking your mind in the wrong company. Being utterly pissed off didn’t really work as an excuse with a random street gang.
“Natsu,” the man repeats and scratches his head, messing up his hair. “I’m Yuuki. Hey, Natsu-san,” he continues with an annoyingly extended and loud noise. A hopeful tone. You start wondering if your stay at the hospital is going to turn into hell on earth. “Do you have any games on that?”
“Cellphone? Yeah?” you manage to mutter amidst your surprised blinking. Not really what you expected.
“Can I borrow it? You know, it’s really boring in here!” the man, Yuuki, exclaims and groans to prove his points, twiddling his toes you can see peeking under his blanket. “I think I’m going to go crazy locked inside. Come on, just a few games! Please!” he asks, claps his hands together and bows his head deep. “I swear I’m going to do something to make it up to you!”
You sigh, deep and exaggerated, before turning on your bed to properly face him, sitting on your bedside and leaning forward.
“Then what will I do, hmm?” you demand him to answer your question voiced with a loud and annoying whisper, cocking your head. “It’s my cellphone and my boredom killer, you know. Unless you have a good deal for me I don’t see why I should sacrifice it. You understand, right Yuuki-kun?”
For a while Yuuki only stares at you with a confused expression. Then a curiously excited smile rises on his lips and he sits up, leaning towards you too.
“Because company relieves boredom,” he whispers loudly back, leaning more and more forward, rocking slightly. “I suggest a tournament. With bets.”
“I know the games, of course I’ll win,” you murmur to him, an amused smile tucking your lips. He smirks back at you with a bright glint in his eyes. Shiny.
“But I have an extra hand to use,” he reminds you. You narrow your eyes and purse your lips. …Right. As if that would help him enough to win.
“I bet my dessert,” you tell him loudly and cockily. Yuuki smirks and it’s almost smile-like as he rests his back against the headboard, making space on his bed and patting it enthusiastically.
“I bet my window spot.”
You throw your cellphone at him and he catches it with a skilful lunge. You get up on your feet and make your way over to his bed, sitting on the spot he made next to him.
And then you start playing. Playing, conversing and killing boredom.
Two people full of life and energy to live through the days on the move weren’t meant to be locked inside a hospital.
Next day Yuuki still has his window spot and you groan and complain with an angry frown when he demands to get your dessert. Maybe you had underestimated the power two hands in use could do. Fuck.
They let you check out of the hospital before Yuuki can. He waves at you with a happy and wide smile that has somehow grown familiar to watch. You aren’t really used to being around smiles. And you still wonder what the hell was he even doing there other than being examined for something. You never really asked.
“When I get out we’re going to play something more exciting and hold a tournament with better bets!” he exclaims, demanding and cheery. “Bye byee!”
“Tell me how your tests will go,” you scratch your nose, throwing your backpack over your shoulder. “Good luck with them.”
Yuuki groans and frowns briefly. “Come on, it’s going to go just fine! The doctors know what they’re doing and modern medical science is super developed,” he keeps nodding and drums his fingers to his knees, a determined look in his eyes and a smile back on his face. “A week and I’m out of here. It’s nothing too big, I’m sure. I can crash your place then,” he smirks.
Maybe you’re looking forward to it. A bit more than a bit. Maybe.
“Bothersome…” you grumble as you walk out of the hospital and get on your car.
Now… how the fuck were you expected to drive your car one-handed?
--
Yuuki lies on your bed, playing your guitar (badly and with no detectable melody whatsoever) and singing. You’re afraid your ears will start bleeding. You wouldn’t really wonder at all.
You crash on the bed and yank the guitar away from the other man, pissed. Yuuki laughs and covers his face for a possible lunge at him. Well, if you were expected to then why not? It was almost an invitation. It juicily smelled like one.
You grab the other man in your arms (a bit clumsily with your packed-up one) and climb on top of him. Yuuki arches his back, still laughing, getting a bit more hysterical and tries to push you away, trashing around.
“No no no no no I’m not going to play it again, okay? Okay? I promise!” he keeps yelling amidst his laughter and manages to turn over on his stomach, still trying to crawl away from your hold. Make a child-like run for it.
You growl threateningly and press closer. Suddenly you can really smell the other one. It’s a somewhat pleasant scent even though it has hospital written over it somewhat. And then you realise you want it and you’re on your bed already and well, why the hell not?
You nib at Yuuki’s nape slowly and press an open-mouthed kiss on the red spot you left. Suddenly Yuuki is quiet and unmoving. Not really the reaction you had been expecting. Yuuki is difficult to pause.
The bed-sheets rustle as you bury your head in the curving nape and pull both of you upwards into a sitting position, Yuuki’s back against your chest. He’s still quiet and pretty much motionless.
At least it isn’t a homophobic reaction. …Yet anyways. You’ve got your fair share of them.
“Something wrong?” you murmur quietly with a hoarse voice, wrapping your arms better around him and burying your face in his hair behind his ear, enjoying the closeness. Yuuki feels a bit frozen.
You turn Yuuki’s face and press a kiss on his lips, sucking and brushing, wetting them. And finally he moves - he shifts a bit and answers hesitantly. But he moves.
You turn him properly around, still attached by the lips. You pull his plump upper lip with your teeth as you let your hands wander downwards his sides and fumble his fly open. Yuuki doesn’t stop you, only arches his neck for you to have access to it. You take the opportunity.
Somehow Yuuki isn’t a smiling person in bed, you come to know. It’s not the opposite, it’s just not the smiling Yuuki. It’s not the full-of-life Yuuki in a frustrating way, it’s an unsure and stumbling Yuuki.
You do have sex, he lets you. It’s not that he doesn’t like it, he does and often it shows too. You had been expecting a bit of a fight on who would be the one topping but he lets you on just like that. And you just cease getting him.
When you’re finished you still hold him in your arms, forehead pressed against his damp hair which clings to his skin. He lays still, his back against your chest.
The next morning when you wake up he’s gone. You aren’t sure if it’s for good.
You grab your bottle of scotch and stay in, lights out.
--
“Natsu-san?” Yuuki’s voice checks from the other end of the line. You hold your phone, dumbfounded. Two weeks of nothing at all and then…
“Mnnh,” you answer, sitting down on your bed. …He called you. It’s a weird feeling; it’s weird thinking he called you. “What’s up?”
“Ennhhhh,” he groans to the phone. The tone is odd - Yuuki-like. A groan of displeasure but a strong hint of smile behind it, happiness. Energy. “I kind of had to come to the hospital again. BUT you’re going to visit me, right?” he asks and you wonder if his voice sounds a bit unsure. If he’s unsure deep down.
“What the fuck?” you groan to the phone and snort disapprovingly. “What did you do, crack your skull? What the fuck, Yuuki.”
“I just have something wrong with my eye,” he complains back at you. You can hear how his lips are pursed and how he shifts. “But come around, will you? Soon. You’re coming, right?”
“Okay…” you mumble the answer, walking over to your window to look out of it. Passing cars and grey streets. Dull. “But what the fuck, Yuuki. What happened to your eye?”
“Just something with the nerves,” he dodges your question with an avoidant answer. “But you’re coming? Great!”
You don’t really talk for a long time - it’s not even like you know each other properly. It’s not like you have all that much to talk about. Maybe you should ask him things. A call had to be a positive signal.
You decide to go the very next day. Earlier would’ve been too pushy and pathetic even for you. You were asked for god’s sake.
Next day it’ll be.
--
When you arrive, Yuuki’s sitting up on his bed, the duvet drawn to his hips. At the sound of the door he quickly turns his head and smiles as he sees you, looking relieved. Then he’s full of smiles again.
“Natsu!” he greets you enthusiastically and you walk your way beside him, hands in your pockets. He seems just fine. You can’t really even tell which eye he’s there for.
“You look fine,” you tell him as you sit down. “So tell me more. I don’t get it when you just babble about nerves, is it bad?”
“I’m fine,” Yuuki presses. “I just wanted to see you. After all that happened, I thought maybe we should talk. You know.”
It feels a bit as if he would’ve been lying, giving out excuses. His eyes dart around slightly and his thumbs rub against each other. Still hard to keep still, you see and snort.
“Is that a bad ‘we should talk’ or a good one?” you ask him. Stupid pressure. You had been expecting a happy reunion but now with all Yuuki’s serious (not that he really seems to speak it too seriously) talk you’re starting to get the chills. Grow angry and frustrated. You had gotten the point but if Yuuki was just going to rub it in more you were seriously going to punch him, hospital or not. There’s a limit for everything.
“Depends on what you’re expecting,” he answers truthfully, nodding, his smile faltering slightly, a groan of displeasure escaping his lips. “I just wanted to say it was a one time thing. Right?”
You frown and feel anger. You feel anger and disgust towards yourself, you hate yourself when you like someone, when you take liking on someone who is never going to want you. You do it all the time. And you wonder what you did wrong this time.
Maybe they just never really like you.
“It can’t have been that bad,” you tell him, eyes narrowed and expression angry. He laughs a bit, a nervous tone to it. Yuuki seems to laugh a lot as a reaction to different feelings. You wonder how it can be, you don’t often bother. “You know, you can’t decide on it alone just like that!” He could and you know it, you do. But it angers you. It’s the weak feeling of helplessness. “So I won’t even get a chance? Should I just fuck off completely now for your liking?”
“Oh come on, don’t take it like that…” Yuuki mumbles between his nervous laughs. “It was obviously just a one time thing! You made it seem like that too!”
You can’t sit still anymore. You get on your feet and frown. You need to kick something. Hard.
Funny how no one can love you. Not really. Not even anyone so out of your world like Yuuki. That should’ve been expected, though.
“What if I like you?” you tell him with a hoarse and strained voice. “Does it change anything?”
Yuuki laughs, tone still that nervous and hysteric one. And you wonder if he drowns the silence with it, the silence that would’ve followed. And then you wonder if you actually want the silence. Why does the silence have to be his stupid laughter too?
“…Look here, will you?” he asks of you and you do, walls up. He doesn’t want you, you know it. But you have to look. You can’t stop clinging to the hope. Not that you really feel it as something as beautiful as hope.
He watches your face without any words. And he seems so, so sad. So sad it’s really hurting. And you feel like a child under his gaze. Something pitiful.
“Smile, alright, I don’t want to part ways in bad terms…” he mumbles. You snort and feel your muscles tense. Yeah fuck. What had he been expecting really? It was his fucking heart there. Yuuki shouldn’t have called at all.
The door opens and a doctor peeks in, looking at him and his angered and strained expression for a while.
“Bad moment?” he asks. Yuuki nods with an apologetic grimace. “Alright.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Yuuki calls out loudly before the man can leave and he opens the door more, looking at him. Yuuki sits up better and coughs. “I might do it. I probably will. Just give me some time.”
“…Alright,” he tells him quietly and bows his neck. “I’ll go and we’ll make the preparations. Whenever you please, just let me know?”
A very impolite conversation, almost as if between two comrades. You wonder when and where the two of them became so close.
“Yeah. Umm,” Yuuki smiles that strained and lost smile and nods. And you wonder what the fuck is going on around you. You fidget as the door closes.
“What was that?” you press. “What does he want you to do?”
“I need treatment,” Yuuki answers with a groan. “A surgery.”
“…The fuck,” you grumble as you sit down on the chair again. You just have to. Yuuki is your friend. “For the eye? What’s wrong with it?”
And then Yuuki feels more distant than ever. More distant as a non-genuine smile briefly tucks his lips. But the smile just falters and falters and he looks at a board beside his bed. You follow his gaze and study the object.
“…Friends?” you ask. He nods. His friends look different from you, all smiles and funny expressions.
“Which eye?” you turn to him again and a laughter rises from his throat again, a laughter that leaves you feeling sickly. He fidgets around on his bed and you start really growing concerned. There’s something he’s not telling you.
“Is the surgery going to help?” you ask instead. Yuuki looks at you and turns his face down for a bit and you know it’s a sensitive subject. That you shouldn’t poke around with it. But there’s no one else you can ask and suddenly you’re so very concerned.
He’s Yuuki. He’s the Yuuki you like, and there’s something wrong.
“…It’s going to make my right eye go blind,” he finally answers, his smile only reaching the criteria for a grimace. “It’s not that I see properly with it anymore but…”
You stare at him quietly and let his words sink in. Sink in as you stare at him, frozen where you are. And god you hate the dull and disgusting feeling that overwhelms you. You hate it so fucking much.
“And if you don’t do it? Will you die or what? Why would they do a surgery especially to blind you!?” you object, pressing your lips together, wanting to smash your fists to his bed. “What the fuck Yuuki, you’re considering it?!”
“It’s treatment, I told you!” he mutters back, crossing his arms, lips slightly pursed in defence. “If I want to live I need it. So let it be, it’s not your worry!”
“Well at least it’s only one eye,” you snort back coldly, looking away. And Yuuki grows quiet. It’s not a comfortable silence. After a while you warily turn your gaze back at him. “…You said eye, Yuuki. You said eye. Tell me it’s only one.”
“It’s just one,” he answers. But he does sound slightly hesitant. You don’t need him to answer fully. You know. Yuuki takes in a heavy breath but doesn’t seem to really get much oxygen in his lungs. He looks away.
“You just can’t smile for me, can you?” he says to you. And it feels a bit as if you would’ve been shattering. The corners of your mouth forcefully turn downwards. Your eyes sting.
“I don’t smile much,” you answer him, a quiet grumble. “You can’t distract me by making me smile. It won’t work for me.”
He gulps, still looking away. And he seems to be at a total loss of what to do now.
You think you mess up his entire system.
“It sucks,” he finally says, a bitter smile tucking his lips, only for a fracture of a second. “I would like to see you smile.”
You almost smile. But you’re sure it’s the ugliest expression that has ever met your face.
“Don’t do the surgery,” you command him. “If losing your sight is so bad don’t do it. Don’t do what the fuck ever people want you to do. Don’t do the surgery. It’s your eye!”
“I’ll do it,” he states strongly, eyes determined. “I won’t let it weight me down. The monster isn’t going to get me. I can do this. I’ll show it I can.”
“IT’S NOT A GAME!” you roar at him furiously. “A MONSTER?! Can you even hear yourself? Can you hear what you let out of your mouth? And what, you just smile at everyone? What the fuck is wrong with you?! It’s your eyesight! You’re going blind in that eye, Yuuki, BLIND! YOU’RE GOING TO BE HALF-BLIND, DO YOU UNDERSTAND IT AT ALL!?”
“I do!” he objects, a nervous laughter ringing shakily in the air. He looks befuddled. “What do you think I do, lie here all day without caring?”
“LIKE HELL YOU DO!” you keep roaring, getting up on your feet and kicking the chair down. He starts looking jumpy and scared with his widened eyes. “YOU’RE GOING TO BE HALF-BLIND, YUUKI, HOW CAN YOU TAKE IT SO LIGHTLY? WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO YOUR OTHER EYE? YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BLIND, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT YOU CAN DO THINGS IF YOU CAN’T SEE? Is it worth it? What the fuck -”
“IF SOMEONE KNOWS AND UNDERSTANDS THIS DISEASE IT’S ME!” he bellows back at you, clearly furious for the first time. You freeze. The image is too wrong. It’s scary. He hasn’t looked as angry with you ever before.
“If someone knows, it’s me,” he says, disgust coating his croaking voice thickly. “I’m the one it’s killing, I’m the one who has to give up his right eye’s sight, I’m the one who loses everything, every chance to live. But I’m not going to just sit around and let it swallow me whole,” he shakes his head, eyes fiery. “It’s just an eyesight. It’s nothing compared to everything else I can ever have if I overcome it. It’s worth the sacrifice. It can take my eyesight, but I won’t give it myself.”
Security walks in and drags you away for causing a scene. First you answer with violence, downright horrendous behaviour that could’ve gotten you in jail. In the end you just beg and cry weakly at the doors. They don’t let you in. You have to clear your head first, they say. You feel like an explosive.
He does the surgery that night with a small smile on his lips to assure people around him just how fine he is.
You can’t go and see him.
--
You open the door to go for practice. Yuuki stands behind it, his eyes snapping at you as he seems frozen in place. You wonder if he would’ve knocked at all.
“Yuuki,” the name slips from your lips and you let your guitar touch the ground. “How is the eye?”
“The vision isn’t awfully hazy and smoke-y anymore,” he answers. Blind, he means as he pulls his sleeves over his hands, grasping on the material nervously as he fidgets.
“I thought I should stop by and apologize properly,” he explains himself and nods for a few times, his eyes directed somewhere at your neck. The avoidant gaze. “For yelling at you in the hospital.”
You click your tongue and scratch your head. You don’t want to apologize. You started it. You don’t know if that’s what he’s really there for but you don’t really care either.
You just want to let go.
“I don’t hate you,” you tell him with a steady voice. “So you don’t have to worry about being hated by me. You’re not.”
A smile tucks Yuuki’s lips hesitantly and he nods. He looks misplaced in your stairway.
“I have practice now,” you tell him and show the guitar. “I’m in a band. LANDS. In case you didn’t know yet. So I have to go and meet the other guys.”
“Band? Cool,” Yuuki nods. “Would explain the guitar.”
“I sing,” you correct his misunderstanding.
And it’s all just too awkward beyond relief. And your bedroom is just less than ten metres from the door.
“I’ll drive you home,” you offer and Yuuki blinks, surprised.
“I have a motorbike,” he grimaces at you, his smile still so hesitant and dying. “So not this time. Thanks for the offer.”
“Alright,” you mumble and inhale heavily.
The air is just too heavy.
Fuck the practice.
You set your guitar down on the ground and pull him in a desperate kiss. You just want to kiss him, that’s all. You just need his kiss.
He pulls away immediately and wriggles to get away, fights you as you try to force him against the wall. He half-runs halfway down the stairs and looks up at you, holding his black helmet in his hands, flipping it awkwardly.
“It was good seeing you,” he gives you the best smile he can, eyes shining. And it’s so close to convincing it makes you sick to your gut. At the time it did.
You don’t answer as he determinately walks away.
And then he’s gone again.
--
And so Yuuki goes blind without you. And he’ll never see your smile.
--
You can’t get over him.
--
Yuuki sits on his bed all alone. There are no colourful dots as the bandages cling to his skin and press his head. He can imagine. He can imagine the people, the world, sunsets and wind blowing the dry sand around.
But he can’t imagine the dots.
He knows what the lack of them means. And the world is so very still during night-time.
His head feels so heavy.
There’s nothing else he can do than cling to his sheets and face the monster behind the darkness over and over again.
(Will things cease existing now?)
(Does the blackness pause everything.)
--
Part 2