[Fic] radio silence
Apr. 11th, 2011 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suchacharmerradio silence: It’s not that Kakashi hated jazz. In its way, in its own time, it was beautiful.
Length: 1300
Rating: G for being general and completely nonthreatening.
Characters: Gai, Kakashi
Notes: Set a few months after the Kyuubi attack, pre-series. Originally meant to be longer, but after sitting abandoned for a few years, it is what it is.
All characters and content within are the creative and legal property of Kishimoto.
Kakashi Hatake sat, ungloved hands idly folded in his lap, in a wicker chair on the Maito family porch as the sun slipped below the horizon. The envelope, dropped off by a masked shinobi Kakashi was pretty damn sure he recognized, sat on the low table at shin level, the cat eye symbol of the wax seal peering up at him with something between a dismissal and a challenge.
He refused to look at it.
Gai sighed theatrically; Kakashi pointedly ignored it. His friend’s leg, he noticed with a sense of resignation, was still jittering. For nearly twenty straight minutes, bouncing up and down. And just one leg. The left leg. The right one stayed perfectly still, like all of his muscles there were on lockdown.
Every now and again, his hands convulsed.
“Worried about something?” Kakashi asked, slouching down in his chair to shield himself from the wind that brought a chill from Mist. November in Fire Country was cold. Nights straddled the frigid.
Gai shook his head, his customary smile coming off forced. “Worried? Why would I be worried?”
Kakashi smirked in the dim electric lighting. With the sunset putting on such a spectacular show of artistry behind them, Gai’s features were lost in the backlight. The slope of his jaw line was most prominently visible, followed closely by the curve of his bottom lip; some of the porch light caught the underside. That’s how Kakashi caught the fake smile. “Thought maybe it was a pastime of yours.”
He snorted in response, following Kakashi’s lead and sliding down against the cold. “Hardly,” he said briefly, a bit louder than necessary.
Kakashi shrugged. There’s a radio on the window sill playing an upbeat, tumultuous tune that Gai seemed to love torturing him with on a semi-regular basis. Jazz hour. Somewhere between seven and eight o’clock. If tried hard enough-if he cared- he could play this on the air. Gai showed him, once some time in a summer, on the piano no longer there in the study.
He didn’t know the composer, didn’t know the name like Gai surely would, but he recognized it all the same. The sounds of it all reverberated, fizzed and rushed in his ear drums like drowning.
There was a time, he remembered- a time not so long ago, even, when Gai would have played it on the air himself; when he would have told Kakashi the name of the song without prompt, with a certain amount of the manic glee inherent in everything Gai did.
Now, though.
Now, the piano was gone, the letter there, and Gai looked false, uncomfortable slouched down the way he was. Too big for his own skin and ready to jump clean out of it.
Kakashi tilted his head back, meaning to look up at the sky but seeing only ceiling instead. There was a crack that hadn’t been there a few months ago, but that was hardly unusual these days. Pity, he thought idly, lazily. Nothing interesting there.
Beyond the fractured columns of the porch, off in the half-shadows of the yard, the rustling of the wild hens clucking and scratching for their last semi-frantic meals before the foxes came out- made quiet contention against the music. Not quite loud enough, but there all the same, reminding Kakashi of when they weren’t there roosting on the low branches of trees, where the foxes couldn’t get at them.
Gai sighed again out of Kakashi’s range of sight, sat up an inched forward just enough for his fingertips to graze the edge of the envelope. Kakashi heard it all as if he saw it, sound made clearer in the sharp night air. He pulled it forward but did nothing after that, pinning it down as if it was something disastrous. It wouldn’t look dangerous, Kakashi knew, if he were looking at it. A plain, standard-sized envelope. White. Light-weight. Ordinary, by all accounts.
The hens started up an impromptu chorus of squawks and shrill screeches. One of them sounded like she was dying. Gruesomely.
Gai started visibly, fabric scratching against his nails as he gripped his pant legs in an effort to keep still.
“Something’s got the flock worked up,” Kakashi commented idly.
The crack in the ceiling looked like a lightning bolt. Crack, flash, from the sky to the ground. Kakashi didn’t have much imagination when it came to imagery.
“Probably a fox.”
The tempo of the song slowed for a few moments, allowing Kakashi to breathe, allowing him to look. Not at the letter, but at Gai, worrying his lip bottom lip between his teeth. It made Kakashi, somewhat irrationally, want to bite it himself. He’d never done it before, but he could. He wouldn’t mind. It would erase the barely-disguised fear in Gai’s limbs, in his jaw, in his eyes. Allow him a different sort of sigh that wasn’t of fear, of exhaustion. Of sadness.
The Maito family once had many things; a piano, among them; a ceiling without cracks; a wall without holes for the foxes to get in.
A patriarch.
That was before the whole town went to shambles. Before walls were meaningless.
Kakashi once had things, too. A mother, a father, a compound with flawless walls of his own. The difference was, of course, Kakashi had lost these things long ago, beyond recent memory. His mother, he can’t remember. His father, won’t. And, unlike Gai, he didn’t miss what he lost.
(Nights were different. November in Fire Country was cold. Nights straddled the frigid and Kakashi remembered, then, the doors that were left open, his father in the yard staring at nothing much, nothing at all. He remembered, then, missing summer.)
“It’s staring at me,” Gai says pointedly, gesturing roughly. The wind kicks up behind Kakashi, tousles Gai’s hair. He’s in need of a cut.
“They do have a sense of humor, don’t they?” Kakashi says genially. It was befitting, in a way. The masks made it possible for the dying to see nothing, for the killer to see everything. Kakashi could appreciate the irony.
Gai’s laughter choked, died somewhere in this throat, not entirely unlike the chicken that met it’s end less than a minute ago.
The song picked up tempo again, increased from before, if that were possible. It didn’t seem it, but Kakashi knew better. He couldn’t tell you the notes, what they were, but he knew the changes, no matter how small. That’s how Kakashi knew the world, the same as if he saw it. Better maybe. If he were to go blind (and he wished he would, sometimes), he’d see the world in sound: in the fall of breath, the whisper of cloth, the whirl of fear, and the shiver of sadness. He heard this, this riot, this cacophony, this tumult. It made him cringe.
Gai bit his lip, still, close to drawing blood, his muscles a quiet frenzy beneath his skin. There was a hum in the air from it. A hum around them both.
It’s not that Kakashi hated jazz. In its own way, in its own time, it was beautiful. It was just the just the crash that bothered him, the overload; the sounds of it all reverberating, fizzing and rushing in his ear drums like drowning.
Making the world loud with the things he couldn’t bear to say.
“Who is this?” Kakashi asked.
Gai met his gaze, looking startled. Looking puzzled, like he didn’t understand why Kakashi would want to know. “Matsuko,” he said after a spell, hands poised still just over the letter that’ll change everything. Change nothing.
Kakashi nodded, like it mattered. He didn’t want to know, he didn’t. He just wanted Gai to tell him.
Gai’s fingers twitched-just for a second, just for a moment-as if he were going to play it on the air.
Length: 1300
Rating: G for being general and completely nonthreatening.
Characters: Gai, Kakashi
Notes: Set a few months after the Kyuubi attack, pre-series. Originally meant to be longer, but after sitting abandoned for a few years, it is what it is.
All characters and content within are the creative and legal property of Kishimoto.
Kakashi Hatake sat, ungloved hands idly folded in his lap, in a wicker chair on the Maito family porch as the sun slipped below the horizon. The envelope, dropped off by a masked shinobi Kakashi was pretty damn sure he recognized, sat on the low table at shin level, the cat eye symbol of the wax seal peering up at him with something between a dismissal and a challenge.
He refused to look at it.
Gai sighed theatrically; Kakashi pointedly ignored it. His friend’s leg, he noticed with a sense of resignation, was still jittering. For nearly twenty straight minutes, bouncing up and down. And just one leg. The left leg. The right one stayed perfectly still, like all of his muscles there were on lockdown.
Every now and again, his hands convulsed.
“Worried about something?” Kakashi asked, slouching down in his chair to shield himself from the wind that brought a chill from Mist. November in Fire Country was cold. Nights straddled the frigid.
Gai shook his head, his customary smile coming off forced. “Worried? Why would I be worried?”
Kakashi smirked in the dim electric lighting. With the sunset putting on such a spectacular show of artistry behind them, Gai’s features were lost in the backlight. The slope of his jaw line was most prominently visible, followed closely by the curve of his bottom lip; some of the porch light caught the underside. That’s how Kakashi caught the fake smile. “Thought maybe it was a pastime of yours.”
He snorted in response, following Kakashi’s lead and sliding down against the cold. “Hardly,” he said briefly, a bit louder than necessary.
Kakashi shrugged. There’s a radio on the window sill playing an upbeat, tumultuous tune that Gai seemed to love torturing him with on a semi-regular basis. Jazz hour. Somewhere between seven and eight o’clock. If tried hard enough-if he cared- he could play this on the air. Gai showed him, once some time in a summer, on the piano no longer there in the study.
He didn’t know the composer, didn’t know the name like Gai surely would, but he recognized it all the same. The sounds of it all reverberated, fizzed and rushed in his ear drums like drowning.
There was a time, he remembered- a time not so long ago, even, when Gai would have played it on the air himself; when he would have told Kakashi the name of the song without prompt, with a certain amount of the manic glee inherent in everything Gai did.
Now, though.
Now, the piano was gone, the letter there, and Gai looked false, uncomfortable slouched down the way he was. Too big for his own skin and ready to jump clean out of it.
Kakashi tilted his head back, meaning to look up at the sky but seeing only ceiling instead. There was a crack that hadn’t been there a few months ago, but that was hardly unusual these days. Pity, he thought idly, lazily. Nothing interesting there.
Beyond the fractured columns of the porch, off in the half-shadows of the yard, the rustling of the wild hens clucking and scratching for their last semi-frantic meals before the foxes came out- made quiet contention against the music. Not quite loud enough, but there all the same, reminding Kakashi of when they weren’t there roosting on the low branches of trees, where the foxes couldn’t get at them.
Gai sighed again out of Kakashi’s range of sight, sat up an inched forward just enough for his fingertips to graze the edge of the envelope. Kakashi heard it all as if he saw it, sound made clearer in the sharp night air. He pulled it forward but did nothing after that, pinning it down as if it was something disastrous. It wouldn’t look dangerous, Kakashi knew, if he were looking at it. A plain, standard-sized envelope. White. Light-weight. Ordinary, by all accounts.
The hens started up an impromptu chorus of squawks and shrill screeches. One of them sounded like she was dying. Gruesomely.
Gai started visibly, fabric scratching against his nails as he gripped his pant legs in an effort to keep still.
“Something’s got the flock worked up,” Kakashi commented idly.
The crack in the ceiling looked like a lightning bolt. Crack, flash, from the sky to the ground. Kakashi didn’t have much imagination when it came to imagery.
“Probably a fox.”
The tempo of the song slowed for a few moments, allowing Kakashi to breathe, allowing him to look. Not at the letter, but at Gai, worrying his lip bottom lip between his teeth. It made Kakashi, somewhat irrationally, want to bite it himself. He’d never done it before, but he could. He wouldn’t mind. It would erase the barely-disguised fear in Gai’s limbs, in his jaw, in his eyes. Allow him a different sort of sigh that wasn’t of fear, of exhaustion. Of sadness.
The Maito family once had many things; a piano, among them; a ceiling without cracks; a wall without holes for the foxes to get in.
A patriarch.
That was before the whole town went to shambles. Before walls were meaningless.
Kakashi once had things, too. A mother, a father, a compound with flawless walls of his own. The difference was, of course, Kakashi had lost these things long ago, beyond recent memory. His mother, he can’t remember. His father, won’t. And, unlike Gai, he didn’t miss what he lost.
(Nights were different. November in Fire Country was cold. Nights straddled the frigid and Kakashi remembered, then, the doors that were left open, his father in the yard staring at nothing much, nothing at all. He remembered, then, missing summer.)
“It’s staring at me,” Gai says pointedly, gesturing roughly. The wind kicks up behind Kakashi, tousles Gai’s hair. He’s in need of a cut.
“They do have a sense of humor, don’t they?” Kakashi says genially. It was befitting, in a way. The masks made it possible for the dying to see nothing, for the killer to see everything. Kakashi could appreciate the irony.
Gai’s laughter choked, died somewhere in this throat, not entirely unlike the chicken that met it’s end less than a minute ago.
The song picked up tempo again, increased from before, if that were possible. It didn’t seem it, but Kakashi knew better. He couldn’t tell you the notes, what they were, but he knew the changes, no matter how small. That’s how Kakashi knew the world, the same as if he saw it. Better maybe. If he were to go blind (and he wished he would, sometimes), he’d see the world in sound: in the fall of breath, the whisper of cloth, the whirl of fear, and the shiver of sadness. He heard this, this riot, this cacophony, this tumult. It made him cringe.
Gai bit his lip, still, close to drawing blood, his muscles a quiet frenzy beneath his skin. There was a hum in the air from it. A hum around them both.
It’s not that Kakashi hated jazz. In its own way, in its own time, it was beautiful. It was just the just the crash that bothered him, the overload; the sounds of it all reverberating, fizzing and rushing in his ear drums like drowning.
Making the world loud with the things he couldn’t bear to say.
“Who is this?” Kakashi asked.
Gai met his gaze, looking startled. Looking puzzled, like he didn’t understand why Kakashi would want to know. “Matsuko,” he said after a spell, hands poised still just over the letter that’ll change everything. Change nothing.
Kakashi nodded, like it mattered. He didn’t want to know, he didn’t. He just wanted Gai to tell him.
Gai’s fingers twitched-just for a second, just for a moment-as if he were going to play it on the air.
