Hello, my lovelies. I know I have been fairly inactive for a while because of school and such, but it's marching band season and I had to write some more music porn. It's not actually porn, hence the rating remaining at T, but there is some extremely obvious use of music as a metaphor for sex. I hope that doesn't offend anyone. I was just thinking about how music, when it's played well, has a way of getting inside your body. You can feel the drumbeats and the melody and such. And so this came about. It is a little different than most fanfiction, as it is more about music than the characters and it's kind of an experimental thing. I hope you enjoy it.
Warnings: There really is nothing explicit, just some musical innuendo and the use of music as a metaphor for sex.
Disclaimer: Same as always.
Thanks so much for reading, and if you enjoy it, please please please review so I know better what to write in the future. I adore everyone who has reviewed this story with wonderfully fantastic comments.
Enjoy!
Sometimes, Alfred would regale Arthur with funny stories about his experience in high school band. He often mentioned how all the teenagers (including him) made millions of jokes about how much musical terms sound like sexual innuendo. They would snicker whenever the clarinets were instructed to "push in" or "pull out." Fingering, tonguing, and blowing were perfectly innocent pieces of terminology which often became the basis of many an immature joke. Eventually, the novelty of mocking these terms wore off due to their common usage, but when Arthur heard about the association of music with sex, he began to ponder upon the concept, as a composer rather than as a high school boy.
The two concepts were clearly relatable. Music was not erotic, typically, but it could be extremely sensual. After all, what is music based on? Vibrations, the type which thrum through one's body starting at the mouth and making their way down to the chest to be joined by the vibrations of the dozens of other individual wavelengths which combined, create a beautiful pressure which resonates in the eardrums and chest cavities of all those listening. Music is vibrations singing together in unison, or in harmony. And what more was sex than two people trying to do the same, using their bodies as instruments?
Critics often noted that Arthur Kirkland's music had a way of engaging your body, not just your ears, as you listened. The drums beat along with your heart, and the violins drew their bows directly across your vocal cords. The flutes fluttered along your fingertips while the brass resonated deep within your belly. They attributed this to his prowess as a composer, a rare and eccentric prodigy. Really, it was much simpler than that. The music he wrote always found its way into the body because the human body always found its way into his music. And what else could you expect from a man whose inspiration was his longtime partner and lover? Every look, touch, and expression of Alfred Jones was carefully encoded into notes on a score, and distributed out to orchestras around the globe. Individually, the parts were beautiful, but shallow, but when played with a full symphony, everybody within earshot became possessed by the story of two men (yes, two men) who were in love, and also happened to be lovers. And while the audience couldn't read the message in the music, never realized that this was the story of Alfred Jones and Arthur Kirkland, they could feel the raw emotions-the love, the lust, the desire, the affection, the attraction, the excitement, and a plethora of other feelings which permeated the sound.
Arthur's songs were about love and all the emotions that came with it. But they were also about sex. The physical act of expressing love. Not as something dirty, to be mocked by teenage boys in the band room, but as something natural, and even beautiful.
His songs had a way of teasing you, blessing your ears with light touches from the woodwinds, thrilling trills in the upper register of possible. Then you noticed that beneath the auditory caresses, the percussion was pounding a heartbeat in accelerando, racing from exhilaration. And as you realized that, you suddenly became aware that the low brass was building deep within your chest, rich baritones ringing and swelling, coaxing your emotions to the brim. The piano scattered gentle touches along your spine, insistently playing with your senses in ways that were decidedly intimate. And then the strings would join in, drawing their smooth bowstrings across your already taught nerves, making them sing with emotion and want, for buildup, for release, or for something you couldn't quite fathom. The trumpets vocalized their triumph, crowing smugly and proudly over the blatant seduction of the senses which was occurring right under your ears.
By this time, you were hooked. It was only the beginning, only the rising of the wave, but you were glued to your seat. The allure of the melody swept through like a wave. The audience saw it coming towards them, saw that they were in its path, and then pointedly remained where they were.
Then the parts began to intertwine. The flutes would call a question to the French horns in lilting, flirtatious tones; and the horns would echo their theme, agreeing in darker, warmer voices that this was indeed what they desired. The trombones slid their deft fingers up and down the scale in time with the violins and violas, voices blending as they worked in time. And the tubas subtly slid underneath, laying your ears on silk sheets which you never noticed were there. As the drums beat a syncopated tattoo on the texture of the song, the clarinets coyly slid in a quick exclamation of pleasure. The oboes shrieked melodically, drawing a sharp breath every few seconds when they became overwhelmed by the sensations. For a moment there was a call and answer. Across the orchestra, the sections would exchange secret glances and touches, too fast for the eye or ear to follow, hundreds of individual auditory love stories building and building simultaneously and becoming entangled, faster and faster until they could bear it no more.
And then there was a silence.
The instruments and the audience held their breath so as not to disturb the expectant void.
Beat.
Rest.
Beat.
And then with one swift movement, the cymbals collided with a tremendous CRASH, breaking the dam and letting the sound roll out in a flood of raucous release.
The trumpets wailed, the flutes squealed, the drums played furiously as if preparing for war. The tubas swelled, the clarinets screamed, and even the bassoon furiously added in its haunting cry. The war cries of a thousand instruments convalesced in a synchronized cacophony.
And then it was over. The climax roared, then fell. The wave broke and began to recede. As the instruments began to settle into each other, joining in a unison decrescendo, they sustained a sated fermata.
The sound faded, and the audience returned to their seats, retaking possession of their eyes and their hands, the four senses they had earlier left behind as their hearing became absorbed by the aural fornication. They did not realize what had happened. They did not feel sexual, or aroused, or anything of the sort. There was no way to categorize their emotions. They felt the music, and the music wrapped itself around each one of them possessively, marking them with invisible ink, an intimate and invisible sign of possession. They would ever after compare every song they heard to this one, this force of nature (for it was too much to really be contained in the label of a song), and it would unconsciously become a part of them.
Arthur Kirkland's music had a way of grabbing onto people and never letting go, and no one was left untouched, especially Arthur and Alfred themselves. Whenever they made love, they did so to the crash of cymbals and the wail of trombones ringing in their ears as they mirrored the emotions of the symphony in their own private concert.
Needless to say, Arthur Kirkland was a fantastic lover.