Bullet Challenge: Faster than Sound, by Salieri

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Author: Salieri (aka troyswann)
Title:  Faster than Sound
Pairing/Characters:  gen, RayV, Fraser, Bob
Episode:  Letting Go
Length:  454 w
Summary:  Not letting go.

            You and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
    Some Trees, John Ashbery

 

 

Number one with a bullet.

He's been plucked by the bony finger of mortality.  The "bony finger of mortality?"  His father snorts.  A bit purple, that, don't you think?  You could do better.

Along the strings inside his spine, vibration.  Diminuendo.  Once, he watched a guitar player stroke the strings on the frets with a hollow steel tube held over his middle finger.  It made the notes stretch, dip and rise, turn sideways so that the edges gleamed.  Then, it made him think of the way water travels down a windshield before the wipers take it, or the way a kingfisher aborts a dive and races its own shadow across the surface of the lake and up into the trees on the other side.  Now, he imagines the bullet pressed against his spine and thinks diminuendo.  Against all evidence, his father says.  Sounds loud enough to me, if you can hear it over all that brooding.  The kingfisher aborts its dive, races, rises.

This pain is not gunshot pain.  It's elsewhereness.  This pain is the strings inside his spine stretching, taut, like the tracks of a train drawn across the prairie toward the vanishing point.  It begins in his body but disappears someplace beyond the horizon, a sideways gleaming stroked by a steel-coloured wind, the twisted ends clasped in Victoria's hand.  

Backward, his father says.  Pain is hereness.  You're not doing it right.  Snap out of it, man.

Diminuendo.

Pain is here, his father says.  It's inthebody.  In the cold, trapped by an avalanche for three days, a broken leg, I'd've died there before Buck could find me except for the pain, a reminder of what I am.  A man, not an idea.  Here, not someplace else.  Well, that was then, of course.  Nowadays, it's different.  But the principle is what I'm saying, that's the same.  Pain is here.  What are you looking at?

Fortitude Pass.

Well, you're looking in the wrong direction.  See?  Here.  Look here.

Two magazines beside him on the hospital bed, spilled green and blue on the white knit blanket:  Field and Stream and Canadian Geographic.  "Ray Vecchio" on the subscription stickers.  In the chair by the window, Ray Vecchio himself, slouched like a Klimt figure asleep in geometric shadows, still wearing yesterday's clothes.

The tracks of the train drawn across the prairie.  Fraser could follow them to the vanishing point.

He would have gone, diminuendo, except the bullet plucked at him, made him ring, hums now against bone.

Love is iron, son.  It travels faster than sound. 

 

 

Comments

[mrs-laugh-track.livejournal.com]

Sal you did the thing with the words again. The thing where you are really really incredibly awesome at them. Seriously, with the pretty and the wow. And this, Field and Stream and Canadian Geographic. "Ray Vecchio" on the subscription stickers. is exactly what love looks like

[zabira.livejournal.com]

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OH YEAH, I GOT NOTHING COHERENT.

that's beautiful, heart-wrenching, horrific and TRUE.

and i love it TO PIECES.

<3

[sage]

*speechless*

YES. THAT.

♥

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

*is slain by you words*

[wihluta.livejournal.com]

*incoherent flailing*

&hearts

Field and Stream and Canadian Geographic. "Ray Vecchio" on the subscription stickers.
That, right there, that's love.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Ooo, the steel guitar note and the water on windshield and the kingfisher dive and Fraser's life swooping onto a different path. Beautiful!

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Sal, this is really gorgeous. I have to second the adoration for the magazines moment.

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Once, he watched a guitar player stroke the strings on the frets with a hollow steel tube held over his middle finger. It made the notes stretch, dip and rise, turn sideways so that the edges gleamed.
The sound of this is the most compelling in all of music, to me.

Beautifully written, Sal. I think Bob is desperate here, and trying to hide it. Oh, Ray, subscribing to those magazine for Fraser.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

"Ray Vecchio" on the subscription stickers. is exactly what love looks like

Hee! I'd've gone for Toboggan Today, but I thought that would be stretching it a little ;)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

hee! I will happily accept incoherence so long as it ends with a <3 !

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you!

All just an excuse to use my new icon by snoopypez!

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

OH

beautiful beauuuutiful.

Ray Vecchio himself, slouched like a Klimt figure asleep in geometric shadows, still wearing yesterday's clothes.

oh

be still my beating heart.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

*defibrillates you*

(according to spellcheck, I can "fibrillate" you but not "defibrillate" you. Silly spellcheck!)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

The original quotation I had for this snippet went something like: "The two enemies of life are boredom and pain." Ray reading Canadian Geographic encompassed them both! What he does for friendship, eh?

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

yay! I'm glad all that late-night metaphor-mashing came together! Thank you! :)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that the magazines moment owes much to your vid--you know the one that I love above all vids ever in all time--with its image of Ray with his potted plant on his way to visit Fraser--different ep, different injury, same Ray doing that thing that Ray does, which is Being There.

*smish*

[jesse_the_k]

Just ... lovely. Thank you.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

The slide guitar is one of those things that I can either love or hate, depending on how delicately and appropriately it's used. But I'm always intrigued by the way it bends sound like that.

And I'm glad Bob's desperation comes out a bit here, under his typical bluffness. yay!

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I saw a woman sleeping on the plane like this and thought of Klimt, or of Picasso's lute--you know the one?

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

I do, I do! Klimt is remarkable. I have the image of his Danae imprinted in my mind.

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Umfff.

I made that sound when I finished this story. That's what reading your work is like, sometimes. Like getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat, but in a good way. It's the language, and the phrasing, and the beauty of the connections you draw between thought and image and emotion.

Ray Vecchio himself, slouched like a Klimt figure asleep in geometric shadows, still wearing yesterday's clothes.

And love travels faster than sound. Crystalline images and perfect kernels of truth wrapped in a complex, thinky little package. No one does it like you, Sal.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you, ma'am! And I am impressed that you're around reading fic on this illustrious day! Good luck with everything! *smish!*

[brigantine.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I love Bob here, kinda freaking out, trying to pull Fraser back from walking off the edge, and he actually points specifically to Ray as a way to make him stay, and just - *babbles and flails stupidly*

I love this a lot. A LOT! :)

[catwalksalone]

Utterly beautiful, as ever. And Vecchio is such a thread of hope through all the pain. Oh, boys. *sniff*