Soundtrack

Title: Soundtrack
Author: raven
Email: ravens_slavegirl@yahoo.co.uk
Rating: R, maybe.
Pairing: Perttu/Eicca
Disclaimer: Nope, didn't happen. But there\bsolbsolutely no point in suing me - I'm so poor all you'd get is a battered copy of LotR and a collection of my trashy fanfic.

***

There’s no music in the room – no stereo, no CD – so Eicca has to imagine the soundtrack to their fucking. He’s got a head and a heart full of music so it shouldn’t be all that monumental a challenge, but as Perttu spreads his thighs, all he hears is silence. Empty, roaring silence.

Then he pushes inside him, one slow, agonised thrust, and as Perttu gasps all Eicca hears is a swell of Barber’s Adagio for Strings. It’s so tortured, all aching violins, that his eyes sting. He bites down hard on his bottom lip and leans down hard on the bed. He’s too cold to move quickly and too distracted to care.

His hair’s sticking to his back and his shoulders and to Perttu’s chest. His eyes are open and his mouth is closed; Perttu’s eyes are closed and his mouth hangs open. Eicca remembers hearing a vocal version of the Adagio once, and they called it Agnus Dei. Lamb of God. But this isn’t the vocal version he’s hearing. He wonders if that means anything.

Perttu grasps his forearms tight enough to bruise and he comes, his head flung back into the pillows. He comes all hot and sticky between them and though usually the sound and the feel and the passion of Perttu’s release are enough to drive Eicca to his own, there’s something piercingly half-hearted about it now, forced.

He closes his eyes as Perttu’s open, grunts lowly and thrusts a couple more times before it’s over. He pulls out and drops down face first onto the bed. Usually their shoulders would be touching. Usually Eicca would have an arm around Perttu’s waist.

Eventually, Perttu leaves the bed. Usually Eicca is the first to leave.

He picks up his cello. It’s been sitting by the bed this whole time and Eicca, though he’s not watching, knows what’s happening. He should know the sound of a hand on the neck of the cello by now, the rattle of the bow as it’s lifted from the body. Perttu accidentally plucks at the A string and Eicca finds it fits the chord in his head, the dying strains of the Adagio. Then Perttu leaves the room. Somehow Eicca finds it amusing that he’s playing second fiddle to a cello.

He didn’t expect the Hallelujah Chorus or Trent Reznor getting closer to God. But he didn’t expect it to come down to his.

It’s not until he hears the glass shattering that the music fades in his head and he starts to warm. He sits up quickly and swipes the hair from his face, goes to the bedroom door with a frown on his face. What he hears is frantic now, like Romance on speed, on a wild accelerando without any end. Anxiety claws at the insides of his forearms and the back of his neck and right along his shoulders, wrenching his muscles tight beneath his sweat-slicked skin. He opens the door.

The broken glass lies like ice on the floor, shining with spilt water under the harsh fluorescent strip light of Perttu’s kitchen. Six champagne glasses lie shattered, littering the floor, and Perttu’s kneeling there in the middle of it all. His left hand’s red. He puts his finger to his lips and when he drops it back down it’s like he’s been sucking on that broken glass. Eicca half expects him to spit a piece onto the floor and spray the stark white kitchen unit – and the cello that’s sitting on it – with thick red blood.

Perttu looks up. For a second their eyes meet and Perttu stands. Somehow he avoids the glass as he walks barefoot and naked across the room over to the doorway, over to where Eicca’s standing, staring. He doesn’t even glance at the floor. It’s like he’s fearless. Or perhaps he wants to hurt.

“You won’t be able to play ‘til that’s healed”, Eicca says, taking him by the wrist. It’s not what he meant to say, but they’re the only words he has. In his head, there are six violins all playing the shower scene from Psycho. He’d laugh if the dissonance wasn’t enough to hurt.

“I know”, Perttu replies. His lips are still bloody until his tongue flickers out to lick it all away. He wrenches free of Eicca’s grasp and blood splatters against the wall, against the back of Perttu’s cello. Perttu looks away. Eicca can’t.

Perttu closes the distance between them and he takes the back of Eicca’s neck with his bloody hand. He pulls him to him, crushes his lips in a brutal kiss. It’s hot and wet and Eicca feels his teeth press awkwardly at his flesh. When Perttu lets go, his mouth tastes metallic. It should be warm, he thinks. It’s not.

“Say something”. Eicca tries to sound demanding but it comes out as a plea. Perttu’s just standing there, motionless, not even looking at him, his body smeared with a sickly pink. Eicca starts to think it might be worth the glass in his knees to sink to the floor and blow him hard and fast, just to get a reaction. He doesn’t.

“You need to leave now”, Perttu says at last, running a bloody hand through his hair. “I need you to leave now”.

He’s still standing there, naked, when Eicca’s dressed and ready to leave. He still won’t meet his gaze. He’s plucking his cello’s A string. He’s playing arpeggios. They’re minor. They stick in Eicca’s head, like splinters of that broken glass that crunch beneath his boots as he heads for the door.

Perttu doesn’t say goodbye; Eicca doesn’t trust himself to speak. He closes the door behind him as he steps out into the snow.

“I can’t do this anymore”, Perttu had said. “I don’t love you. It’s not right”.

“I don’t care about l. It. It was a lie and they both knew it, then and now. It was a desperate lie. “Give me one night. One last night, at least”.

Eicca pulls on his coat, tucks his hands into his pockets. A wry smile forms on his lips and all the music leaves him. In the end, as he walks away, everything fades down to the tick of a metronome. Somehow that’s even worse than silence.

***
End
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