The Instrument
Ryou's delicate fingers looked just the opposite: their tips were hard and calloused from the playing. His muscles knew the correct notes, and his lips would always part at the right time to sing the melody. Ryou had such a lovely voice, the timbre pulling his favorite further into the song. The strumming was what Malik loved best; those fingers working notes together in harmony—it always made his skin crawl, the beginnings of a masterpiece. The melody was always first, the bait and hook that would remain lodged in his thoughts for days. That spark of creativity made Ryou the god that was he was, molding and maneuvering until he had gotten exactly what he wanted. Until it was ready.
The rhythm came after, naturally. Ryou was not so delicate then, while forming the beat; and it was Malik's favorite part, for Ryou to wrangle the pulsing, the throbbing under his control. He owned the song and he would command it; lead the rhythm around the stroke of genius and inspiration he had started with. The song needed to have the proper pieces from beginning to end. It didn't matter the order in which the parts were composed; music could be made in all sorts of ways. Malik had noticed that he was always too preoccupied to notice the difference in order anyhow. Ryou always set the rhythm, even when it was difficult for Malik to catch on and give feedback. Sometimes Ryou didn't want feedback, and Malik would hum the melody that Ryou had sung instead. It was good enough, sometimes, and it kept him focused on the music. They made beautiful music together.
Malik was good with lyrics. It was something that they both agreed on. His voice was passionate. There was some magical property in them that made Ryou play his very best, he was told. Malik didn't believe it. He was simply honest about his feelings, his obsessions, and it showed when he sang. He was nothing but an amateur; Ryou made it easy. It was impossible for him to keep silent when Ryou was playing, stumming, picking, tapping, making rhythm—and Ryou's voice was always better, guiding him, asking him to add just a little more to it. He had the most experience, and Malik was always eager to learn more.
The songs they composed weren't always soft and sweet, and Ryou's hands didn't always begin with the delicate tracing done by tips. At times it happened the other way around: the melody itself would be hard and brutal, the song almost beaten to perfection before the rhythm was introduced. Sometimes the song was almost perfect before it was even finished. Malik never had a chance for any control on those songs; once Ryou had gone with it, he was along for the ride and not a say in it. Ryou's voice was rasping, grating in those songs, the hiss of a serpent to his favorite as he played, tempting the song as though it would challenge him.
Those were the songs that they danced to, where they worked closest. Slow, easy music was only one kind of creative intimacy, where what they produced was so magnificent there was no other way that they could feel but connected as one. The rasping, grasping songs that gripped Malik's soul and tore a piece of it out—that was Ryou at his best, his raw talent. It was a battle between artist and art. The danger was not in being defeated by the song, however; it was in becoming addicted to the fight. The violent clash of octaves and tones, screaming voices and arching notes was hard to leave. Those were the songs that they could never be sure were finished, and always in hindsight Malik was sure that each additional one was another battle in a larger war. The dance itself was violent, twisted to the point where sometimes he was unsure what he and Ryou were doing—was it music? Sometimes it seemed as though they produced nothing but noise.
The Crescendo. Ryou had to have one of those in every song, loud or soft, easy or hard. It was something that they could only do when they fell into each other's style; the strumming and clashing and the beat beating the song into place—in the heat of the room, it choked them until they lost themselves. Malik loved being lost, having to feel for Ryou through their effort, their work. He could feel everything: every bead of sweat, the tension in Ryou's fingers as they picked at those notes, building, building—louder, louder! Malik's voice was not something that he could control at this point, and it went where it wanted to, where the song needed him to finish. Ryou's voice would match his in a frantic harmony, sounding against each other as they played to the end.
And when it ended it was beautiful, echoes bouncing around the walls, the last note still audible for a seconds after they had released it from the mouth of their song. Ryou had always said to him that it was his favorite part. It was the part of the song, he'd said, that reminded him of why he'd started playing for in the first place, who he was playing for.
{FIN}