sounds of a whale → junhao

二

     jun had no idea what had made him crazy in love with the young man. he had just caught him, one day, singing in an empty classroom, while he was wandering in the corridors of the conservatory, looking for his night course. he had turned around, lightly laughing, embarrassed of being caught and had helped him to find his way. and jun had been helpless, his voice did not come out to thank the young man, he had grabbed his wrist to hold him while he was catching back his breathing so he could ask him, huskily, what was his name and if he could wait for the end of his class to help him leave the place, and also if he could offer him a coffee. minghao had blushed. he had stared at him with his big black coffee like eyes but did not turn back, like he had already known jun and had expected this reaction, still being flattered by it. he had accepted. With the time, they had created a routine, slowly expanded through little rehearsals together before their classes, and eventually through a date during the music day, and jun had taken minghao's lips, unable to let them go ever again.

minghao, with his trailing voice, only used when he was feeling uncomfortable and trying to hide it with a built disdain on his face, had often told him he was weird. that his passion made no sense, that jun was too handsome, too talented, too full of charms and charisma, too popular to want this badly to stick around the chubby singer, who had just ended his diet trying to destroy his old hang-up from his high school years and the bullying that came along. jun's big almond-like eyes, his smooth and thick hair, his thin legs that could be compared to a model's, his jawline that seemed to be able to cut the finger of the one who would stroke it, and his almost all the time crooked smile that gave him a perfect boyfriend straight out of a Japanese anime vibe. smiley, charming and confident – the truth was that he was none of all this. he actually was quite the opposite. minghao, still confused by the evident contrast between jun and him, knew an anxious boy, who hated crowded spaces, short-tempered and jealous, clumsy. he knew his terrible sense of humour and lame abilities at cooking. he knew his sick need to learning everything about anything, caused by his lack total of self-confidence. he knew his total adoration for the young man, that no one had ever noticed before him – and all this sounded like an average romcom aimed to single and puffy teenagers.

minghao knew jun was full of insecurities and he had always been surprised to see him even more affected than him by those. he had always seen himself as anxious and naturally stressed, but the first time he had seen jun trapped into an anxiety crisis, crying until ripping his hair and hitting the walls down to hurt his fingers, minghao had felt, for the first time, the weird need to be strong. this instinctive desire to be there for someone. he had crouched next to him, took in his warm hands his scraped fists, and had kissed the head of a frozen jun, barely able to breathe. walking with difficulty through the storm until he got into the eye of it, minghao had defied his fear – jun could have never hurt him, he was sure of that – and had whispered that he was here. that he was not going to abandon him. that everything would be fine. that it was just temporary shadows and nightmares surrounding his mind, and that now, they were two to fight them. he could remember jun's dark eyes, like an abyss, his eyeballs injected with blood, staring at him, lost, like near madness. he could remember jun, grabbing him suddenly, cutting his breath short, not even trying to hide his tears, uttering painfully that he had thought he had left forever and that he could never be forgiven if he had abandoned him now.

minghao never knew what jun needed to be forgiven for. after allowing to let himself go against his naked and burning chest, he did not fall asleep immediately, asking once again silently to the moon and stars that he could glimpse through the window what was torturing that much jun, because his heart has been broken ever since, not knowing what was his distress and how to calm it.

* * *

The young fisherman had never seen that before. The waves were two times the size of the mast, the noises they made every time they were crashing against the hull sounded like the last noises before the door of hell. He was sure he was going to die and he did not like this statement very much. His mother would probably sob for weeks before spending her entire life saying that her son was a useless idiot, and had been so until the very end. Leave to hunt whales, he had said, that young moron. Those chimeras that probably did not even exist, and it would have been better if he had staid and sold shells to help his old mother that had given him everything. Instead of looking for dragons and unicorns, risking the Kraken and Poseidon's anger. Holding to the balustrade, the young man could hear the nasal voice of his aunt and the one, piercing, of his mother and their various postmortem reproaches, probably not really different from those he was given when he was a minor, obliged to take the tea with them.

Now that he was facing his destiny, even his horrible aunt Joselyn did not seemed like his worst enemy ever. Henceforth, dragged into a terrible maelstrom, looking like some kind of divine punishment, his boat turning faster and faster, cracking without mercy, the mast falling on the sailors that had not been able to hide fast enough, and the young fisherman turning away so he would not see how his comrades were crushed. He was the only one not crying, too annoyed to realize that his life was going to stop before it has even started. Here he was, waiting, more wisely than an elder, for death, without fighting or asking for help, without confessing nor praying.