Silence
This is not the first time, although it almost feels like it. And yet, I know that it is not supposed to feel like that. I don’t know what it is, the place or the boy, the circumstances or maybe even myself. I crouch down on my side of the floor, and knowing the biological elements of the process, believe I am supposed to feel happy, for my hormones have just had a major roller-coaster ride. But I am not. I have been seconds ago, but I am not anymore.
Maybe I have devoted my heart to mysetry or secrecy. It’s weird to know that I can say that, but things have just happened this way. We started off with brushing shoulders in the corridors whenever we had the chance to do so. It were moments of a meaningless kind, but for me, they felt full of sense. Some of them passed too quickly, some of them as if in slow motion. We don’t know each other, and yet I could feel as if we had gone through centuries together, but never talking to each other.
Never talking. That is him. His self lays in slight gestures, in the tiny muscles that move the thin line of his eyebrows. When I am told, I can look into other people’s heart, I say I don’t feel I can. It would be as if I was a magician who could feel the faint waves of an emotion like an animal can smell the winds. I can’t do it, but I know, I can pick up a lot in gestures and faces. Some are more readable, others less. But in those moments, in which time seems to move slower for a bit, I can never say where my interpretation stops and my wishes begin. I am trapped to only acknowledge the mere fact of his passing by and when it is over, I just can’t tell anymore.
Someone who doesn’t even smile or cry seems to be the master of secrecy. This personality should not be fascinating, it should not even be noticed. But no human being can be completley without emotion, I don’t believe in that. And yet, he almost made me doubt the principles I used to be sure of.
I did not even notice, how moments intensified, how those cold glances out of emerald seas, which never reached my eyes, became more frequent, how we seemed to brush star dust off each other’s shoulders with the wind we produced by passing each other. He never touched me, but too often I thought I could feel the warmth of his body being blown over to my skin and reaching through to me. He never looked back at me. And all he had ever said to me in the past, seemed so trivial and meaningless. He doesn’t use words, so if he does, it cannot be himself. Silence, I learned, can have different meanings. People can be analysed by words, but silence has to grope you to make you understand. I never got a chance, and I was not expecting one.
He never looked back… There came a time, when it seemed as if he wasn’t even seeing me, although I was more than aware of his presence. We faced each other on long corridors and he would see past or right through me. But he knew me. He knew my name. It seemed as if he had changed throughoutly, as if he did not have any interest in his surroundings anymore. I refused to believe that. He was too intelligent to turn his mind to the inside or to complete emptiness, he was too sure in what he was doing – he must have picked up anything happening around him, and filtered the information he didn’t need to leave it behind. And that was how I felt. I was an information he had marked unimportant and dropped.
I couldn’t ask. Anybody I would have begged to just talk to me, but it wouldn’t have served any purpose in this case. And what could I have said to him, who expresses himself with silence? I can’t talk in silent words, I am not familiar with this art. And I don’t feel as if he has taught me yet.
It is, as if this scene happens over and over again. This empty gaze flies past me, while I can hear the rhythmical clinging of our steps on the thin carpet or the cold metal of a space ship. I am more aware of his steps, than of mine. My hearts beats in rhythm with his, even though his legs are longer and follow another rhythm than mine. And when he passes by, I keep on walking, to make sure my footsteps don’t stop. But all I am doing is listening to that sound, until I cannot hear it anymore or until he has disappeared behind a door, and I wonder which one.
How dare he change that moment? How dare I? I can always tell it is him when I hear him coming close. It is just like my heart beat, so I should be able to tell. It is not easy to stay relaxed, knowing the scene following and anticipating it. It means nothing for him, I kept telling myself, and I used to wait for the brink of a second where he is the closest, the moment, when our shoulders are in line and the stardust falls onto the floor. But he did not want it anymore. He looked at me and stopped right in front of me, taking me out of the concept, which I was so familiar with.
Like the thorn of a rose, his eyes pierce into mine. He, who hadn’t been aware of me for months, suddenly realizes I am alive. The floor under my feet seems to give away as I try to read his thoughts. I am no magician, and I feel I am not. He is the magician, for his magical thorns pierce right into my heart and draw blood. In a valiant attempt to continue this moment, I try to walk on and past him, but the familiar clinging of his footsteps is missing and my heart knows no rhythm to beat with. There is a barrier around him which forbids me to pass or leave the range of his eyes in which I am trapped like a singing bird.
I can’t pass him and end up standing close. He looks at me with that unnerving silence, penetrating me with that thorn, not minding my injuries at all. I am so close, I can feel the cloth of his shirt on my arm. I can even feel the back of his hand against mine. Like a snake, soft and steady, his fingers trap my wrist. I am imprisoned already, what does he need to capture me for now? I have no control over myself, I cannot decide whether I close my eyes or not, whether my body is talking its silent language by itself. I have lost my senses and feel like I am in a rough draft of a painting. Shades disappear and mangle, I have no idea about light and shadow or black and white.
I am watching myself as my other hand grabs the one over my wrist in return. I cannot look at him anymore, although I know his eyes are boring into my flesh and leave petals behind. There are no spirits or demons. The door opens by itself and closes again. I am a doll controlled by some superior brain, looking down on me and him in amusement.
He is wearing a pilot suit, and I start disliking it. The red and black cloth, enclosing his body tightly, makes me afraid it could squeeze and kill him. Thoughtlessly I pull down the zipper and free him from the danger of this black demon. I am not even aware of the fact, that this is his room, that he is living here, that he is safe here and I am not. Under my own suit I don’t wear anything but boxers, but I only become aware of that, when I have lost those, too. Or do I even become aware? My picture has melted into skin and soft colors and I am running around on the canvas in circles.
There are no words for this, because words ask for an explanation and I can give none. Words ask me, why I am here, straddling his hips and asking for his body. Who knows where my sense have been left behind, where my mind and consciousness have flown…? I am not aware of the fact, that I have never come to anything like this before, that I have never seen anyone naked except myself. I could care less right now.
All that matters is the fact, that he knows where to go, and that my body knows just as much. I have no time to savor the kisses on my chest, no time to tell what I want and don’t. I don’t feel in the position to give requests or search for what is right and wrong. I can’t distinguish my sweat from his, I can’t deal with the scents reaching my brain and I cannot deal with all the skin I am not feeling, but experiencing. If I have never been touched before, this all makes up for it.
It’s all there could be – fright and joy, angst, need, pleasure and pain. He hurts me. Then he heals me. Why I am not crying or talking, I don’t know. Usually confusion brings me down, now it turns me on. He twists my world with nothing but his bare skin, and I know, he is the magician who conjures me. I am lost. It doesn’t matter who is first and who is last. I think it just had to be me, because it is new to me. Never has anyone desired me enough to give me such feelings and I am caught by surprise. The stardust returns, but it is swirling like mist around us and fogs my mind. We can’t maintain silence, but we don’t say anything, either.
I guess, since it is his room, it is my turn to leave. I dress in the few things I have and leave. If I had met anyone on the corridor, I don’t know what I would have said. I have trouble finding my own room, I feel weird walking, weird in my own body and in the tight cloth of my pilot suit. There is no stardust around me, just some weird light of pink and yellow, the remaining shades of my picture. I want to know what he is doing, and I cannot find a reason to ask.
The next day, he comes into my room. There is no word, just one of those looks, and this time, I undress myself without his help. I don’t have time to wait. I have almost forgotten the thorns, the petals and my picture and I want to have it all back. Whether he knows it or not, he is giving it to me again. But this time, the silence, or rather, the wordlessness is making me unbalanced and the picture isn’t the same at all. In my own room, silence seems wrong, words seem to be missing. I am not in the position to ask for words, I know. And what words could someone like him give to me? He gives me much more satisfaction than that, but it only feeds me for a time-slowing moment. When he has left again, he leaves me hanging in the air, my body satisfied and my mind wandering in shadows.
Today, I thought it was over. I had been with him and he had been with me, and it was all there could be. Last night we have made up for each other’s mistakes, should we have made any, and there is nothing we are supposed to give to or owe each other. But there is a difference between deserving and wanting. I don’t deserve anything else, but I want more. And how was I supposed to look at him, anyway?
There he is again, on the corridor, and it’s like a silent agreement. But we can’t walk next to each other, one can’t follow the other. We have to take it the way it is, the moment it appears. The war has probably screwed our minds, but we learned to deal with it. He doesn’t have to drag me. In this case, he is all I know and want to know, and I follow obediently. It’s only a closet, half empty, but it suits this unbalanced situation. There is no need to completely undress, and I don’t want to wait for it. The little comfort I can get here is needed badly and I have no intentions to hide it. We are not in suits, so our pants drop easily. But he doesn’t agree with me, frees us of our shirts and painfully keeps that consolation from me.
With that same silence that always accompanies us, he reaches around my hips in front of me, shamelessly taking me in his hand. If he wants to, he can, as long as he gives me my consolation. We are standing right there, only dim light around us, and it is dusty in here. It is the same as before, but since he slightly taller than me, I feel like I am pushed upwards. I am not going to heaven, to hell rather, and it is not where he is trying to take me, standing behind me and being closer than anyone else ever has been. Our hoarse cries seem to be the same as silence, because their massage is unnecessary – we can both feel it, and they don’t say anything else. I can’t keep quiet anymore, I don’t want this meaningless silence of which our moaning is part.
“Trowa!” I cry. Just once. And it doesn’t seem to disturb him. I want him to say my name, I want him to once tell me that he knows who I am, but he doesn’t. And then, it is all too late, anyway.
I sink down to the floor afterwards. I could keep myself upright, if I wanted to, but I don’t. He sits down away from me, catching breath as well. And as we are sitting like that, I realize, that it isn’t consolation I am seeking, and it isn’t the silence that disturbs me. It is because I think I know why things went this way. I know most people like me, think I am cute and attractive. It’s all desire, and my hopes for more are inane. For him, I was easy to have, for him, I’d have given myselrf either way. Now, I don’t want him to say my name anymore. I don’t want him to talk, ever. Words from his mouth would seem like gold made of copper. I also know that silence from me must seem like silent rain, unnatural. But I cannot say anything, for I wouldn’t know what. All I want is to be in his arms and know this is not just what it was so far. He never promised me anything like that and I never gave conditions. This is bound to remain what it is. It is bound to only fullfill the desire of the body, the desire of the hormones floating in young people at the sight of something attractive. I was the same way, but I am not anymore.
I don’t even realize I am crying. Wordlessly, I am handed my pants and I put them on. My thoughts are still floating, and I can’t prevent it. There I sit partly veiled in tan colored cloth, as if modesty had any meaning right now. I can hear my heart beat, and I know it is the rhythm of his steps. It’s only my heart, though, and he isn’t walking away, but sitting with me in a closet.
“Quatre,” he says. It seems like a dream, so distant and unreal. But there is meaning in a dream, and there is a meaning in this one word. I hear him sliding over the floor and his knees, wrapped in his gray jeans, comes in sight. His warm arms wrap me from behind, pull me close, and I cannot protest. My legs are crossed and I fiddle with the rim of my pants, looking down, but leaning against a lively body with a heartbeat that swings in rhythm with mine.
Trowa nudges me from the side, me tears trickle onto his nose. It is like he is trying to be fatherly, like he is comforting me. The soft kiss on my cheek is supposed to be a revelation, and I don’t feel I can grasp it. I lean back against him, sad in a way, of which I don’t know how to cope with. It’s good to lean like that, to get consolation, and I don’t want it to stop.
His hand travels to my chin, not brushing my chest or arms, not indicating anything sexual, but only care. He turns my head just enough, that I can look at the face over my shoulder. His lips seek mine and find them and we exchange a long and intimate kiss. It confuses me, because I can’t tell how much meaning there is in a kiss. Certainly more than there is in words.
As we are parting, my mind has gone flying. I cannot interpret him like this. I look at him, unable to ask anything. When he looks back, he smiles. But it’s not his mouth that smiles, it’s his eyes, and that smile lasts for more than just a few seconds. It is my answer, and I feel, that he can use words, but that he doesn’t need to. That smile is all I need, because it is a rare gesture, but so clear, that I have no problems telling the meaning. I smile back and he brushes my nose with one of his fingers. It remains on the tip for a second, then brushes over my lips and body to the skin over my heart.
“Thank you,” I say, going back to the world I came from, the world of words. He nods and cuddles me in his arms, rocking me slightly. He doesn’t say it, but I can hear it anyway. My Quatre, he says, and I believe him.