Hello delightful readers. I'm back in the world of Hetalia, and it definitely feels good. Recently I've been on a Bleach kick, and am working on some fics in that fandom, but sadly, that fandom is not as wonderful and responsive as this one (Shameless: If you watch/read Bleach, you should check out my Bleach fics...). I recently posted a note on some of my stories to see which ones have the most interest, and Matchmaker Canada was the unanimous winner. I was surprised, because it's honestly one of my least favorite fics because I don't think it's as good as it could be. Anyway, if you follow that one, I will be working on a new chapter, which will probably be GiriPan, but first I will be writing this and random Bleach stuff, because that is what's in my head at the moment.
Reverberations is probably my favorite of my fics, and I love it when I get ideas for it. This one was inspired by the midnight service at my church. I closed my eyes and listened to the music, and it really seemed like it was speaking in a whole new language that you miss with your eyes open, and I just went off that. I hope you like it, and as always, tell me how I'm doing with reviews!
Rating: T, for one curse word and two implications of sex
Pairing: I really hope you know what the pairing is by now
Disclaimer: See pairing, but insert the word disclaimer
Sorry for the moderately long AN-it's a habit of mine that you'll have to put up with-and please enjoy the story!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a really good song must be worth at least a million. At least that's what Arthur thought.
He'd always found that he'd been able to express himself better through composition than through writing or speaking. When he got emotional, he found it hard to put his feelings into words because it made him feel so open, so damn vulnerable. If you said exactly what you felt, there was no going back, no playing things off. With his music, it was a thinly veiled code, and however thin the veil, it made Arthur much more confident about expressing his emotions. Sure, his songs didn't spell out words, but the mood of the piece made it obvious what kind of basic emotion the composer was experiencing, while the more refined ear could detect subtleties-conflicting emotions, internal battles, self-doubt. Arthur's closest female friend Elizaveta could always keep tabs on his relationship with Alfred just by listening to his compositions (she also claimed she could tell whenever they had particularly great sex, but Arthur refused to acknowledge that "skill"). Even Alfred, one of the most oblivious people he had ever met, was able to detect some of Arthur's moods from his songs.
However, it had taken him a while to develop even the most rudimentary understanding of reading the atmosphere of the sounds. This was one of the primary reasons why they had danced around each other for so long before actually starting a relationship. Arthur was extremely insecure about everything but his music, while Alfred was overconfident about everything except his feelings. While Arthur was typically extremely perceptive, he tended to have a blind spot when it came to Alfred, who didn't seem to grasp the concept of subtlety. Arthur's songs grew more and more raw and overtly emotional, so much that the orchestra and the audience both felt it more than heard it. Only Alfred remained deaf, perhaps selectively so. Arthur's love letters, stories of seemingly unrequited love, calls of want, of need, called out to a person whose only reaction was to give unoriginal but sincere compliments.
Once they passed the initial stage of their relationship and became comfortable with each other, Arthur started to teach Alfred how to read music. Arthur was completely fluent in this strange language, while the only notes Alfred could read were ones pinned down on the staff. So Arthur taught him how to let the mere sounds drift away until he could hear the undertones, the countermelodies, the cadence. At first the lessons were purely musical, but eventually he began to show Alfred how the elements revealed a type of conversation. The sections and themes sometimes fought fiercely, throwing dissonance around as the drums beat out a war cry, while sometimes they called questions and answers, giving parts of a sentence which were strung together into a patchwork confession. When Arthur first said things like that, Alfred just concentrated on the way his face lit up when he talked music, because the actual words didn't register. But through rigorous and unconventional training, he began to haltingly become privy to the secret lives of the orchestra's sound waves.
On nights when they were both free, they would go to one of their apartments, or eventually, the one that they shared, and Arthur would make Alfred sit down on the floor. He'd close his eyes with butterfly kisses or gentle fingertips, then put on a recording of one of his songs. Alfred's job was only to listen, to feel, and sometimes Arthur helped open his ears with small guiding touches or words barely more than breaths. People say that you hear better when you can't see, and Alfred found that when he closed his eyes, he could still see his lover within the rhythms and he could hear all manner of things that he couldn't see. When the song was over, Arthur made sure he kept his eyes closed for a minute to let the music conclude, last notes ringing in the silence like an auditory afterimage. Then he would ask simple questions, silly little questions- What did you hear, How did that make you feel, What did it remind you of? And sometimes the questions would be serious inquiries slipped within all the open ended queries-Can you hear me? Can you see me? Are we in tune, are we even on the same frequency? And eventually, when Alfred's answers were close enough to satisfactory or at least insightful, Arthur would point out the things he heard when he wrote it, and the things that it was about.
"This was written when I saw you around that girl who I thought was more than a friend. Can you hear the turmoil and jealousy and frustration, because you weren't actually mine to be jealous of?"
"You said this one sounded like anticipation-I wrote it right before confessing to you."
"This song just ran through my head until I finally wrote it down…it started the morning after you spent the night at my house for the first time."
And sometimes, (Arthur loved these times) Alfred would find something that Arthur wasn't even aware of, a little musical tic which was so innate that it didn't even register. Like the little trick with the strings which mimicked the sound Arthur made whenever they kissed, or little variations on Alfred's favorite song. When Alfred pointed things like this out, it made Arthur blush, but it also made him irrationally happy to know that they were on the same wavelength, so much that things like tiny homages in his music could be given unconsciously, and noticed easily. It became their version of love letters tied with red ribbons in fading envelopes-instead they had recordings of trills, and bits of drafted sheet music. It was their way of passing little messages secretly in plain sight, right in front of the ears of the orchestra, the audience, God, and anyone else who happened to be listening. Anybody else who heard it may hear the emotion, the musicality, the style, but Arthur and Alfred could hear the undertones of whispered I love yous ringing clear as day.