Burning the Midnight Oil

Chapter 13

Feeling At Long Last

~Nino~

A date, what a marvelous thing. A timeless ritual of two would-be lovers circling into each others' gravity like twin suns yearning for supernova. Call it courtship, call it wooing, a dalliance, whatever suits your pleasure. The foundation of one was the same as any other, or close enough, just like the foundation of a house. If it be strong, it may stand. If not, it may stand still, for a time, before the cracks ran deep and the moisture fractures it further.

Their foundation wasn't formed yet, but settling, hardening into place. If it snapped into place now, it would be flawed and inevitably crumble. But there was time to smooth it out. If they both put in that last effort.

Nino was doing her part, a new one at that. Tonight, she played the enabler. See, a date does not magically happen, not like in the movies. A two-hour romcom can only fit so much content into its run time, and it chooses to show the intimate moments, those perfectly staged moments of bonding between the leading couple. They do not show the hours spent choosing the venue from a field of possibilities, cleaning the car of leftover fast food wrappings and chewing gum wrappers, pressing the suit free of wrinkles. These things simply happened. In real life, someone had to turn the wheels of romance.

This was the first time Nino acted as their enabler. All their previous dates had been Futaro's bold initiatives, and she'd been on the cushioned chariot racing from one event to the next, however those had turned out. Now it was her turn to crank the gears, and it was more time-consuming than she'd expected. Choosing a concert was the easy part, the challenge was finding a reasonable place to buy tickets. When she fumed how the internet was full of scalpers, she'd shot off to the venue itself the morning of and purchased them in person, surcharge free. Her pocketbook wasn't ready for convenience, it could barely stomach the tickets themselves. It sat a right bit leaner in her purse like a protester far into a hunger strike.

It couldn't end there though, and the rest of the evening hadn't gone smoothly either. Nowhere near as disastrous as their first date, at least not yet, but it was a start she'd have liked to avoid. She and Futaro had spent the last seven hours on shift at the cake shop. She'd had to bring her concert outfit in a bag to hide it, or she'd have risked dodging questions from Ichika all the way out the door. Futoro had closed once again, a part of his well-earned punishment, and while he worked she'd scrubbed the women's restroom herself to make sure it was clean enough to double as her changing room. She'd had to scrub the sink again after she finished her makeup. She'd forgone her ribbons today, she didn't want to risk losing them in the mobs if their knots came undone. She'd told Futaro to close as quickly as he could, and bless his sweaty soul, he did his best and was ready to change by the time she stepped outside. All that effort came at a price, and Futaro smelled of something fouler than cake batter. It'd be lost in the din of the crowd when they were all just as sweaty, she told herself. Still, she kept herself upwind of him on their way.

But all of that would be worth it once they stepped inside. The lights, the music, the life of the crowd, it would all be so ravishing! They were going to feel alive!

Maybe. She hoped. She glanced at Futaro as they walked down the street. Last night when she asked if he'd ever been to a concert before, she'd already known the answer. She could even guess his reasoning, she knew him well enough by now: 'So much wasted study time', and 'Why not just buy the CD? It's much cheaper'. He didn't understand, no one really did until they felt the beat flash through their bodies like lapping waves from a rising tide. Would he feel it tonight? She hoped so. She certainly hoped so.

She stopped him as they reached a staircase falling into the underground. There wasn't a line, just clusters of people trickling in at their leisure, people must have already swarmed inside. They'd missed the long wait in the queue, but they'd be stuffed in the nosebleed section, far from the stage. Oh well, as long as the band's equipment knew how to scream they'd do alright, she thought.

Futaro looked down and glared, "This is it?"

"Yup, welcome to The Afterlife."

"So Hell. We're going down, so that's Hell."

"Huh, never thought of it like that. The Afterlife is so much better, though."

"Uh-huh. Doesn't this look shady to you?"

"Have you ever seen a club before?"

"No."

"So here's a crash course-"

"You're not the tutor-"

"-there's clean clubs and sketchy clubs. You can usually tell by the people. If not, you'll know the moment you get inside."

"How? What're the signs?"

"Use your gut for once, braniac."

"Right. So this is?"

"The only kind I go to." Nino said confidently. Futaro waited for her to continue. Nino glared, "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

Futaro glanced down the stairs, "Let's find out."

"What's that supposed to mean!?" She said, and Futaro grinned like a card shark after making his play. Nino realized, and said, "Are you teasing me?"

"Who, me?"

"That's sadistic!"

Futaro shrugged, and said, "Well, I learned from the best." He eyed her knowingly.

Nino bit back a sneer, "That was the line, Fuu. Watch it."

Futaro was unfazed, "Do you have the tickets?"

Nino glared a moment longer, then sighed and pulled out her phone and her e-receipt, "Here, we show them to the bouncer and we're in."

Futaro nodded and headed down the stairs. Nino followed and flashed her phone to the bouncer, a man who was built less like a brick house and more like a yurt with a few hundred miles on it. But his eyes were like needles pinning you to the floor and he held himself like a man twice his size challenging disturbance, and Nino imagined that was enough to dissuade the average troublemaker.

The bouncer nodded and handed them a pair of blue wristbands. Blue signified guests who were underage, the red ones were the tickets to the bar. Nino ruefully thought how they were too young for that kind of excitement.

Those wristbands opened the door for them and they headed down another flight of stairs into the wide open space of the concert venue. Bright florescents illuminated the bleak interior, but they would die and be replaced with a spectrum once the concert began. Crowds of people were already milling about, the red-bands armed with colorful drinks to heighten their evenings. The patient crowd was already assembling around the stage, knowing they'd lose their place if they dared to step away.

The Afterlife was a newer club, but the space itself wasn't. An architect might wander the venue and find hints at its former life: the perfectly spaced columns, the industrial wiring above, all hinting at its prior existence as an underground parking lot. The owner was a pragmatic businessman always prowling for the next moneymaker, and when a clever entrepreneur broached the idea of turning his underground parking space into a venue, he'd listened. Heavily insulated with layers of dirt, wide open space, and rife with opportunity to draw massive crowds just begging to burn cash on a night out, much more than the stingy traveler was paying to park their commuter for a few hours. The liqueur sales alone sold the idea, and The Afterlife was born.

Nino dragged Futaro to the edge of the crowd. She moaned, "Dammit, why are the tall guys crowding the front? It's so rude! Show some consideration for the vertically challenged!"

"I can see just fine," Futaro said.

"Said the giraffe."

"Blame genetics, Nino."

"Lemme hop up on your shoulders."

"Bad idea."

"Right, you're as stable as London Bridge."

"Genetics."

"I've seen your Father. Genetics have nothing to do with it."

Futaro recoiled, and Nino called that her revenge.

They didn't have to wait long before those ugly lights dimmed, splashing them in sudden darkness. Futaro grabbed her shoulder and asked, "What happened, a power outage?"

"Listen," Nino whispered, the crowd had gone deathly quiet, three hundred sets of lungs holding their breath for the moment, the gunshot, the curtain call. The very air was ripped from the room, and with it went the sound, trapping them in darkness, and in silence. But Nino could feel the crowd around her like a herd on a great plain waiting for a sign, a roar, to come to life.

There was a low hum from behind the stage, the sound of something waking from a deep slumber. Suddenly a crash! And another! Then the lights lit up in blues and greens and luscious reds and the crowd roared, oh, it roared like a pride on savanna. But the sound from the stage roared back with the sudden fury of an earthquake, ripping through their collective cores and sending shivers through every ear and down every spine.

The lights flashed like hummingbird wings and they burst onto the stage, five colorful boys armed with weapons of sound, and they ripped through the air and murdered the silence with reckless impunity. Drumsticks clashed under the roaring guitar, but theirs was a struggle in unity, all working to feed that underlying beat, beat, beat! And then the singer, a young lad not much older than him and her with hair as orange as magma, belted out a wail that woke the dead in the underworld below their feet and the crowd exploded!

Nino was right there, a small part of a much larger cry that was deafened by the roar of the band as they commanded the sound, weaving it into that marvelous beat, beat, beat that shook her like a rattlesnake shaking its tail and she loved it!

A band this good doesn't normally play on a Sunday night, oh no, they usually get prime booking in the early weekend and sell out entire clubs. Only two types of bands played on a Sunday here: the dregs, and the undiscovered, and Nino knew how to tell them apart. It was all in the label, the managing company. They knew they had to start their new ensembles off small, give them a few shakedowns before giving them a proper debut. Nino knew this company, and she knew this new band would be prime to surprise the Sunday crowd. And did they ever!

They tore apart the air and rearranged it into a rhapsodic cacophony of sounds blasting over the crowd like an alarm sending everyone into a frenzy! A mosh pit was already forming ahead of them and those brave souls were circling the core like a flurry of sharks, bouncing and screaming with delight! The crowd pushed in closer to the stage and Nino was right here with them. She screamed her lungs inside out as the band slashed through their first number, a startling power piece to steal everyone's attention and let everyone know what they were here for, in case anyone might have any misconception what was to come. The lead singer pointed out into the crowd and cast a spell because they all screamed even louder as their instruments went silent. And then he threw his arms wide and the lead guitar tore into their next song.

Nino was hopping up and down and ran her fingers through her hair, her forehead already damp with sweat, and for once she didn't care. This was the time and place for a little dampness. The chill from before was long gone, and she didn't know if it was from the crowd of from her own rushing blood.

She turned to Futaro. She wanted to see the same excitement on his face, how the powerful bass had ripped away his indifference and given him a rare spurt of joy. But she should have known it was not to be.

Futaro huddled into himself staring at the flashcards in his hand. He flipped one on its metal ring and ran his eyes over the next, his mouth following the text as if in a trance. Because that's what it had to be, for him to ignore the pandemonium all around him. He willfully withdrew into the one thing he knew too well: his studies. Even here.

He finally noticed her glaring at him, looking up from his flashcards. He didn't look guilty. Just confused. It was as if he wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten here, like he'd wandered in from the library without realizing he should notice the noise.

Any anger she felt dissipated when she saw his expression, and she realized she shouldn't have expected anything else. She'd hoped he could dive right into the life of the concert and flow with the music, but of course he couldn't. It was like throwing a baby into the water and expecting it to swim. Too much, too fast, it could only flounder and drown. Everything was baby steps with Futaro, she couldn't expect him to leap with her. Not yet. Maybe not ever. That last bit made her sad when she realized it might always be like this. Baby steps. Just tiptoeing to the finish line one day at a time.

It couldn't be helped now. They were in for the ride, the crowd was swallowing itself and they'd have a hard time getting out now. She stepped closer to him so he'd remember she was there and turned back to the stage. She tried getting back into the rhythm of the concert, but part of her was torn for Futaro, like she had one foot in the pool and the other in the desert. She patted his back to remind him she was there and jumped with the crowd to the beat, beat, beat.

She didn't resent him. Not then. Not yet.

~Futaro~

Too. Much. It was too much! The noise was like a thousand screaming souls from hell! That's it! This was hell! It had to be! Their cries raked at his barriers trying to bring them down!

That first note had been the harbinger of doom. It promised ten thousand more, just as sharp and painful on his conscious. This was not a band in The Afterlife, it was an army of specters come to stroke every sin of the souls caught in their net, a crowd of souls willingly embracing their malevolent gift of ruin. Their very feet shook the floor as if to make it collapse and expose the land of the dead itself so they might tumble in, a waterfall of the damned. His whole body trembled to the point of collapse with the beat, beat, beat!

Futaro's trip into feeling was small, one step at a time. He had slowly opened the dam of feeling he'd so masterfully constructed and exposed the entrance to his fortress of unfeeling solitude. But this was...he didn't want to feel this. Not at all. And in an instant he rallied his defenses, battened down the hatches, raised the drawbridge, boarded the windows and set a watch against all feeling. Then he retreated into the one place he might have some control: his studies. He took his ever-present flash cards and gave them all his focus until the world itself seemed to melt away, with all the assaults on his delicate senses.

He shut out the noise masquerading as music. He shut out the screams. He shut out the bumping, the shoving, the shaking. He shut out the smells of sweat and humidity, the salty taste of the air, he shut out the beat, beat, beat! He shut it all away and crafted a place all his own, with these little flash cards. He ignored the world and created order and peace.

He delved into the familiar equations, the formulas and properties of chemistry, the building blocks of all matter. One who mastered the fundamentals could control reality, in theory. He found the idea full of promise, crafting a world to suit his tastes. His fingers fell into practiced rhythm flipping the worn cards one after another. He settled his mind into a natural rhythm as well-paved neural paths fired with solutions, the comfortable roads of familiarity.

He could have stayed there all evening and left the outside world to its anarchy. But one thing burrowed through his raised defenses, something that had learned how to wiggle through his isolation with so much practice. It was her. Wasn't it always?

He raised his eyes to Nino. He caught the last of her surprise, then a brief flash of anger, but then that faded too, like a candle snuffed by breath. Then she shook her head as if shaking him away. She gave him a wane smile that almost forgave him before falling back into the roars, the mob, and the beat, beat, beat!

Futaro should have felt ashamed. He didn't, his emotions were hidden away with the rest of his senses. But he knew he should feel it now. Hadn't he asked Nino to bring him somewhere, to do something that mattered to her? Hadn't he tried? But he just couldn't do it, he couldn't fall into the bedlam of writhing bodies around him. No, that was wrong. It wasn't that he couldn't, he could. But the very idea terrified him like a recurring nightmare leaving him in cold sweat.

He was finally ready to say he wanted to feel something, and that his years of isolating himself into academic numbness might have been a mistake. But that was still his world, his baseline that he wasn't fully ready to leave. This world of Nino's demanded he tear himself away from all that he knew and open himself up to the swells and tides of this strange new land. He could feel it beating facelessly against him demanding he open his gates, and he just couldn't give that up. Not yet. Maybe not ever. And certainly no this fast.

Futaro returned to his comfortable flash cards. Flip. Flip. Flip. On and on and on with no end in sight. He was frozen in himself. No end to this isolation, not now. Maybe later, but not now. Not now. But…

Nino's hair caught his eye, a flicker of tea rose blooming like a flower in the sunlight. She spun with her hands in the air like a coin rolling on its edge. She laughed, an eruption somewhere deep inside her surging out into the uproar. And then she noticed him through his isolation. She stopped her dancing, panting in place as they stared at each other, her into him. Futaro should have felt ashamed again. And maybe she saw that, buried somewhere deep inside him. She saw that possibility, and the others. Was that why she stayed so long? For hope of what he could be?

Her eyes were dancing with the light, twin torches outside his walls offering enlightenment in the dark. And then he looked beyond them, into her, and saw her soul. It was a forest fire blazing over the hills, leaping up to touch the sky in its smoldering dance. It whiplashed as if to invite him closer, to burn, he thought at first. Or, he realized, to warm him. And he saw the future in her eyes, one of many.

Did he want that? They both asked him at once, their question the only silence in the room.

Futaro's hand fell to his side, his flash cards hanging limply in his fingers. He wanted Nino to turn away, to face the stage and rejoin the hollering mass. Then he wouldn't need to give her an answer, he wouldn't have to decide. But her eyes were on him, so lively and excited as a firecracker sparkling in the dark. She rolled her arms in a small dance and moved closer, could she see his conflict?

She moved closer still, every flicker an invitation, oh why wouldn't she just turn away? People were only so adaptable, they can only range so far beyond their native habitat before they suffer from overexposure to raw elements. Couldn't she see he didn't belong here?

Wait. Wouldn't that mean he didn't belong with her?

He could have thought to himself, maybe it was for the best. Maybe they just weren't compatible. They could never work together, they'd ruin each other as quickly as fire and ice. But he didn't, because he didn't want to believe it. Why? What about this woman kept making him want to step into the beyond?

His eyes were in hers, and he knew she was hoping. She had his attention, did she have the rest of him? But he'd have to let down his walls and embrace all this...feeling. It would be like catching a plane falling out of the sky. His body couldn't handle the stress.

But it was that, or she'd never look at him like that again. For if she looked away, something would change between them, and the distance would open like a rift in the earth. This was his last chance. He didn't want her looking away!

Her eyes, her stare, her promise, those were the keys to Futaro's impenetrable gateway of indifference. All it took was a little turn. And here it was: Nino's lips moved like a snake slithering on a mirror. Her words, whatever they were, were lost in the maelstrom of music and madness. There was the possibility, as infinite as the Milkyway rising against the Moon. He wanted to hear those words meant only for him, whatever they may be. He wanted them to wash over him like a blanket he could wrap himself on a stormy night.

A want to feel, that was the crack in the door. And through that tiny crack, the concert roared through like a flood bursting through an innocuous crack! All the cheers and the vibration and the salty smell and the bouncing bodies and the wailing lyrics and the howling guitar and the beat, beat, beat! Everything pushed its way into Futaro's little world like an injection!

And she was at the center of it all. She wasn't his chaos, his unanswerable question. No, she was so much more. She was his partner, his troublemaker, his romance, his tormentor, his girlfriend, his obstacle, and now his muse, his catalyst. She was his anchor in this wild storm of living. This woman who lit up his life and illuminated so much he had missed!

Now he was feeling, everything he kept hidden, and more. The life around him filled his very being and pushed everything out into the open, it came bursting forth like a geyser launching a hundred feet into the sky. It intertwined with the world that was overwhelming his senses like light through a kaleidoscope and he could feel everything!

Futaro threw his hand high and flung the flash cards into the air, the spun free of the little ring and rained like fluttering confetti. Nino watched it fall to the floor with delight and screamed, hopping with her hand in the air. And Futaro, he felt that beat, beat, beat! It took his body and he let if flow, moving his limbs wherever they pleased. He threw his head back and howled, a noise he could never recall making before, but to hell with the past, he did it now and it felt damn good!

He jumped to the music, but more importantly he jumped to her, matching her movements and her jumps until they were one. He took her free hand in his own and pulled her closer, surprising her greatly, but she came willingly until they were chest-to-chest, almost touching, flowing to the beat. Her joy and her cheers were twice as strong, because his were pushing hers on.

The song reached its apex and the singer bellowed out a note so high it could break glass, and then went silent all at once. The crowd cheered like the lunatics they were, and Futaro, the greatest lunatic of the night, was right there with them, and with her.

He pulled Nino close, his arms lacing behind her back and feeling the sweat at the small of her back.

She laughed, "What's gotten into you?"she said, her voice happy and sprightly as a line drawn tight.

Futaro said, "I don't know," then he kissed her. It wasn't planned, he suddenly needed to feel her lips. So he did it. He held her head in his hands and kissed her. If she hesitated, it was too quick to notice, and she fell into it, and into him. It was a bumbling, inexperienced kiss, but passion can cover a thousand shortcomings. His would cover more, but he didn't care to think about that. All that mattered were her lips, so soft and moist, moving against his, her tongue bravely peeking out against his lips, a challenge his own met in a graceless melee. She hugged him closer, their chests pressed together, and between them there was a unified beat, beat, beat!

Was she blushing when they parted? Was he? It was impossible to tell in the colorful lights. But he wasn't embarrassed, he never felt more right, not on any test, or anything else.

The band kicked into the next song and the air was consumed with the beat, beat, beat! But Futaro didn't notice, there was something inside his chest more pressing, a different beat, beat, beat!

"I love you!" he screamed.

Nino shouted something back, but he couldn't hear. So he said it again.

"I love you!" It flowed through the pathways of emotion that were open inside him at last.

Nino smiled and hugged him, and Futaro hugged her back. Had she heard him? Probably not. But there'd be another time. For now, this moment would be enough. Because in this brave new land, full of infinite possibility for him to discover, this first explosive leap would remain theirs forever.

"I love you," he whispered into her hair. She, his love who reminded him how to live.

A/N

When I first came up with the idea of this story, I had a handful of scenes: chapter 1, where Nino draws back, chapters 6 and 7 where Nino struggles and Futaro has his first reversal, and this, chapter 13, when Futaro breaks through his barriers and remembers how to feel. That has been the foundation of the story since the beginning, and how I've been waiting to write it. It isn't exactly as I pictured it at first, nothing ever is when putting it to written word, but I think I got the essence of what I imagined.

And this scene I owe to a song, one particular song: Shut Up And Dance, by Walk The Moon. I listened to it repeatedly during the writing, and I recommend you re-read this again with it on repeat, especially in Futaro's section. On another note, I purposely had the title's acronym spell out 'FALL', for what Futaro does at the end. And The Afterlife is a direct reference to Mass Effect, one of my favorite universes. I like to picture a Japanese equivalent of Aria T'Loak sitting virgil over her den watching as this chapter unfold.

This is a climax of sorts, but not an ending. Love is a beginning, and by no means the start of an easy road. A change, possibly a happy one, but change nonetheless is rarely seamless. They're kids still discovering themselves, never mind that they're both nearly legal adults. They have a long way to go.

And that will follow soon. The next chapter will be an epilogue of sorts for this first arc, and a prologue to the next. I hope it will be just as engaging, if for different reasons, and just as meaningful as what's come before it. Thank you everyone who's stuck with it this far, who's only just joining, and will continue to support the story moving forward. Please review and share your thoughts, and I'll continue this story soon.

Chapter published July 11th, 2019.