Say Something. Anything.

Yunho doesn’t like it when it’s too quiet.

There’s nothing really to say about this piece. I wrote it on a whim, and it turned out surprisingly well.  It’s good to finally choke out something readable after so long.

I hate it when he doesn’t talk.

He talks nineteen to the dozen nonstop and nobody can get a word in edgewise once he’s started. You’d never know it to see him the first time around, like we all thought when we first met as trainees. You wouldn’t know it to see us now, but you have no idea how glad we were to see him start talking to us, especially when we moved into the same apartment, just the five of us.

And with five people squeezed into a little under a thousand square feet,you’d think that I’d like a little peace and quiet every now and then, just so I can hear myself think. A brief respite from the constant squabbling only five headstrong teenaged boys can engage in every day of living cheek to knee in a rigidly controlled environment, toiling through gruelling schedules and returning home dogtired to bicker over who gets the bathroom first, who ate the last piece of chocolate or who stole whose new garment – yeah, you’d think I’d appreciate a little silence.

You’d think that after so many years, the silences would have gotten easier, more comprehensible – like in all the movies and stories where they say silence isn’t really such a bad thing after all and it means so much more than any words could ever say. And when he’s going on about so much triviality, chattering endlessly about nothing at all while a dozen drummers are practising on my skull, you’d think I’d want him to stop for a moment.

But I hate it when he doesn’t talk.

It has nothing to do with what he says in his rambling, disjointed monologues. It’s what he’s not saying when he falls silent, that makes it hard for me to breathe, drives me completely and utterly over the edge into that place called insanity.

It’s the pain he’s bottling up inside, eating him inside out, while he’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub watching but not seeing the water run, instead of getting in and washing up.

I hear his guilt.

It’s the heat simmering slowly as he pounds chilli in the mortar with deliberate gravity, every descent of the pestle weighted with an anger that is as ice-cold as it is searing fire.

I hear his jealousy.

It’s the repetitive swiping of the rag across the table as he refuses to meet my eyes, even though the table is already gleaming like a mirror. When I stretch out a hand to catch his work-weary ones, he retracts them swiftly and turns his back on me to re-enter the kitchen, my utterances of his name falling on deaf ears.

I hear his obstinacy.

It’s the pendulous movement of him between bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, bedroombathroomkitchen, creases huddled close between his brows as he swipes my brow with a cool washcloth and changes the water when it gets warm, hardly seats himself on the chair beside my sickbed when he realises that he’s forgotten to get me a glass of water, and when he’s done that, he’s up and off again because he’s forgotten to turn the heat down low on the porridge he’s simmering on the stove.

I hear his worry.

It’s the silence that hangs around our bed like curtains draped over a four-poster on a warm night, heavy and stifling. I can feel him shifting around, having trouble finding a comfortable position in which to sleep, yet too proud to ask to curl up in my embrace. It’s so quiet that it even drowns the sound of my breathing out, and I strain to hear his thoughts over the unbearable quietude.

I hear his discomfort, yet I really hate it when he doesn’t talk.

I reach out and pull him into my arms to spoon close together, feel him tense up with the sudden motion, whisper urgently in his ear.

“Jae, I hate it when you don’t talk. Talk to me, baby, please? Say something, anything. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

A long moment ensues, and I can almost hear the struggle within him through his heartbeat.

Finally, “something. Anything.”

I close my eyes, even though he can’t see it, not sure whether to be more exasperated with his infuriating literal answer, or glad that he’s finally talking again.

A whisper, so soft I would have missed it, lost in a duet of heartbeats.

“You.”

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