Strangers
The video starts with the blurry view of a sidewalk, there’s the slight noise of wind in the background as the camera is moving sideways. The tall trees that can be seen in the background prevent much light from getting through, it’s probably a cloudy day.
Whoever is filming the video is walking in a park, the different shades of green of grass and bushes fade all into each other resulting in an harmonic view.
In seconds the sight of an old looking wooden bench comes into view, there’s someone leaning on its back, facing away.
What is visible is only the back of what a long time ago must have been a brown bomber jacket, now all it’s left is scratches of greyish and dirty yellow. It looks like there are some patches on the side of its sleeves; at least on the left one, which ends in its pocket.
From under the collar a dark red neck warmer peaks out, it looks delicate to the touch, but is soon covered by a mass of brown and caramel hair strands. The curls whirl around in the wind and sometimes lift in the air like they are small snakes trying docilely to break free.
Whoever this stranger is, he doesn’t realise he’s being recorded. He continues to keep his head tilted down and, out of sight, attentively reading the book he’s holding with one hand, his other one resting in the warmth of his jacket.
The recording keeps moving to the left, reaching the other side of the bench. There’s someone sitting there and, by contrast, they’re staring directly at the camera. Curious gaze, looking up, and ever so piercing.
Like the sight of the Sun, a burning star, is impossible to handle for the human eye, it is impossible to study it, and establish the colour of his eyes.
It could be tried with a million metaphors, but not anything would come close to it. A white flashing bright light, not coming from light years away, but just a screen apart, without a shade of their own.
As beautiful is the person who owns them. Their pale skin is in contrast with their long hair, waves of pitch black strands fall to his shoulders and past them, outlining him like a portrait. His face, elegant and androgynous, sharp but sweet, stays in its spotlight. A perfect nose and high cheekbones, on which a light rose flush sits, probably from the chilly weather.
He’s holding in his lap a pair of white headphones, the wire is all tangled up, and it seems seems they were trying to straighten it out, but without any success. As he stares up, his long fingers, which peak out of some black gloves that only cover up to their first knuckles, gently keep with that motion.
They’re now looking behind the camera, right at the person holding it, with interest and just a bit of confusion. Her hair shivering from the breeze reveals the many silver earrings he’s wearing, and it comes resting on the black leather of the jacket. It is slung on his shoulders, covering him as if it is a blanket, leaving his forearms bare and naked to the breeze.
A black pashmina is draped over his neck and collarbones, the end of it pendant on a white and red The Door shirt. A short sleeved shirt, even in this weather. Their tights are tightly hugged by a pair of very dark jeans and their legs are crossed elegantly. The bottom part of the pants is way wider and, from underneath, it reveals a pair of black boots.
They are breathtaking.
If the Earth had eyes to see, it would’ve stopped to admire him. Even if for just a second, the wind would’ve suddenly ceased and the falling leaf would’ve rested mid air. The rotation of the planet would’ve stuttered itself, if it knew about his beauty.
And that’s why there’s no reason to blame the unknown cameraman when they stutter asking what they have probably repeated already a hundred times that day.
“Hi, sorry, are you two a couple?”
The question rests floating through the following silence.
The guy with the shorter hair slowly, lazily, moves to turn to face them. Head still deep in a book, eyes following the yellowish pages. Until when, midway, he looks up and finds the other stranger’s gaze already locked into his.
It’s a game of catch, but there’s no winner, there’s no loser.
They have wrapped each other with their eyes. The recording of their side profiles gives away their parted lips and held breath.
On the left, high cheekbones, pointed nose and the milk white skin of a stranger meet the olive, the crooked nose and scarred face of another. As if they are Yin and Yang, they dissolve into each other. They melt into something, together, that had always meant to exist.
Because it feels so fundamental. Necessary.
Probably for the reason that, as for Yin and Yang, there’s already part of the other in themselves. Deep, buried, maybe hidden, but it lives and it shines. That is why the boy in the black jacket, who has now stopped fidgeting with his headphones, is straked by the amber colour of the eyes in front of him.
The sweet earthy tone feels like an old secret he had forgotten. A specific memory of a dream you know you had but can’t remember. It feels like he had been playing the piano all his life without knowing a key was missing, and now the melody he could play was so, so, so much better. So wonderful.
He can see under that stranger’s eyelashes all the secrets of the world. Everything that has been lost or forgotten, everything that matters, is hidden there.
In the Furious Orlando, Ludovico Ariosto says that everything that has ever been lost can be found on the surface of the moon. It is where people go when they lose their mind to find it again.
But no, it's right there. Under his eyelashes.
“We don’t know each other.”
The boy on the right speaks, finally facing the camera. It reveals the long scars that go through his face, one crosses his nose and disappears forked under his jaw, the other starts from his eyebrow and, sparing his eye, gently breaks the skin of his lips.
There's a rolled up cigarette stuck behind his ear.
He answers in a calm voice, low. A soft accent caresses his words, a rolled R and a musicality added to the vowels. Still he pronounces every word slowly, giving the sentence it's time to spiral in the air.
It disrupts the silence in the same way a spoon of sugar is added to a cup of tea, gently and welcomed. Even if the previous locked gazes, for him, had been an ambush he had felt the need to break free from.
One second he was resting in the quiet and peaceful angle of his mind, nothing but the flowing reading in front of him. Letters that turn into words, that turn into sentences, that turn into life. It brings him far away, it cools him down, or, actually, warms him up.
Then, in the same amount of time lightning strikes the sky on a November day, he has found himself lost.
Standing in the middle of a frozen lake where there's no end, no horizon anywhere. That was what those eyes felt like.
The temperature on his skin descaling quickly, so quickly it could leave cracks behind. And the gentle white frost dormant on the frozen water. Blue, white, grey. Silver.
The same of a jewelled sword, or a deadly tear. The silver glimpses of a far away dying supernova in the pitch black sky of the night.
Which is not a star, but an explosion. Something that from destruction brings creations to millions.
Just like that, on that thin cover of ice, it felt like it would’ve needed just a needle to drop for it to be shattered in thousands of deadly shards of glass.
He couldn't stand there for too long. No matter how beautifully captivating that danger was. No matter how much he wanted to.
So he spoke to snap out of it, not expecting really any form of replies, but grateful when it does come.
“We could change that,”
Is all the other guy, a not for long stranger, says. And by the end of the sentence he's already standing up, stepping to the side of the bench, offering their hand for a hand shake.
Wich it's something he noticeably gets quickly embarrassed about, because who in 2024 still does that? In the era of tactical instagram likes and stories, Hinge dates and ignored texts, he offers the man of his dream a hand.
That is extremely embarrassing for someone like him, always perfect, always cool.
And to try to quickly forget that, he smiles. And it works. The white of his teeth and the arch of his lips it's everything that could be seen from kilometres away.
“My name is Sirius.”, he says.
The other shifts and reaches for his hand. Even if he's still leaning on the back of the bench he's the taller one.
Their gazes are locked again. They are one, together far away. it's when their hands touch that they're breathing breaks free again.
A golden hand of broken skin gently wraps around a silver one. They don't shake them, they embrace them in silence.
“Like the star.”
He hums, smiling again, “The brightest in the sky”.
“I would've said the prettiest.”
Just like that, his cheeks blossoms of a stupid rose colour, and this might be the first time in his life. Before silence can fall again, before they both get imprisoned in that bubble of harmony that it brings with it, the taller boy speaks again.
“I'm Remus”, and his name feels like the biggest gift.
He brings back his hand so he can support his weight on the bench, his other hand still holding the book. Thumb in between the open pages so not to lose the point where he has been interrupted.
There are annotations on the page margins, a faded grey of a pencil.
“What are you reading, Remus?”, he replies, coming closer, adjusting the heavy jacket on his shoulders. As the time passes the evening gets colder.
His name rolls off his lips so perfectly, it's like he had already said it a thousand times. It's like, in a past life, that was all he had ever known, all he could ever speak.
Remus, no longer a stranger, twists the book in his hand as he closes it, showing the cover, but never looking away from her.
On the back of his hand black ink takes the shape of a crescent moon. It extends from his knuckles to the beginning of his wrist.
That's not the only drawing, his fingers, long and squared, are adorned with more.
His hands, they look like they have been everywhere. Through stocks of woods, through gleams of pearls. They look like they have moulded as well as demolished. Under the earth, over the clouds. They feel magic, and full of secrets.
On his knuckles the tissue of his skin is of a lighter colour, as if the sun lays a gentle kiss on them every morning. It is scarred in a beautiful tint. The same one that flows in all the scars he shows.
Like the long ones that wrap his other hand. They could look like swirls of smoke if they weren't so rugged. It is, instead, a stony river.
“It’s the third time already”, Sirius had almost lost the line of their conversation.
On the cover, in white, the title was Norwegian Wood.
“Oh! like the Beatles song,” He smiled more and, humming the tune of it, he started intoning the words out, “ I.. once had a girl –”
“Or should I say, she once had me.”
Remus' voice replaces his, still low and calm, not minding to keep up with the notes as his attention is fixed on her lips. Their red tone and the curve of his Cupid’s bow.
One of his arrows had surely striked.
Because, even when he switches on looking at their eyes, that feeling of being kept prisoner doesn’t fade away.
He searches for the bright blue he knows is locked behind the colour of illusion that are his irises. He knows there's life, there's more, under the surface of the ice.
And this time he doesn't intend to move, no. He intends to be there to hear the cracking, see the ice fracture and the water spill out, calling him.
He prays for the cold under him to swallow him, hopes for his sinking. He would beg if he had words to speak. He doesn't fear, he awaits. Because he knows the bottom of the ocean is going to be so beautiful; to reach that blue, to touch his soul, it's all he was ever supposed to do.
The bottom of the ocean, where the light hides, is where he was ever supposed to be.
But, fuck him for it, he gets distracted by the beauty that this life on the surface rarely brings him. On his cheekbones, like strawberries, the rose fade deepens.
He knows it isn't from the blow of the wind, and he begs it to not steal it away.
That is his, and only his.
It might be the only thing he ever gets, so that is his and only his.
“It's my favourite book.”
He adds, maybe childishly, but he can't be blamed for the loss of words.
Probably in an act of nervousness he gets the cigarette from behind his ear and brings it to his mouth. It's an automatic motion.
As he holds it in between his lips he searches for the lighter in the back pocketof his jeans, it’s always in the right one, and it’s there this time, too. When he goes to light the cigarette he leaves the book balanced on the back of the bench and uses his other hand to cover the flame from the wind.
He can’t quite get it; the lighter needs a refill.
Without any notice, Sirius brings his hands to cup the flame for him, they are so near. It feels dangerous and so, so, so warming.
Remus smiles and the cigarette gently wobbles. He rolls his thumb on the spark wheel a few times before he manages to get the tobacco to burn. When Sirius takes his hands away Remus misses the chipped dark red polish on his nails.
Exhaling the first drag of smoke he muffles a thanks and gets a smile as an answer. That might be his favourite word.
Sirius doesn’t recede, he joins him more closely and lays his hand on the book, so that a stronger blow of wind can’t topple it over.
Remus can’t help but notice how his nails match in colour with the cover. He looks at it for a little too long, lost in thoughts, as he takes another drag.
From the camera it’s clear that Sirius notices and, as he comes imperceptibly closer, he smiles and asks, “Do you like reading?”.
“I do”, he turns to look in front of him, there’s nothing, just the park, but that’s not what he’s really thinking about. “You like music“.
“That, I do", he nods.
“I like music, too."
“And wouldn’t it be wonderful”, he starts in a mockingly chic tone, raising an eyebrow, “for us to discuss music together, tomorrow, maybe, or whenever it is that it fits your schedule, monsieur?”
With those wide eyes in front of him, it is impossible for Remus not to give a chuckle.
“It would indeed be,”– Sirius raises his brow even more, in a jokingly dramatic look of encouragement, waiting for his appellative.
Monsieur. “Love.”
Embarrassing.
He tried to fake a cough to hide it, when he realised what he had said, or, maybe, he choked on the smoke in his lungs.
He was not supposed to say that. Stupid little fucking brain of his.
“Sure– sure! I’ll give you my number then”, Sirius stutters, his cheeks pink once again.
Embarrassing.
“I– I don’t actually have my phone right now,”
“Oh, mine is dead”, he states as he points at the seat of the bench, where a small phone lays turned off.
They spend a moment looking at each other and then around, on the bench, as if something can appear and save them.
There must be something more they can do, it’s impossible for it to end like this.
“I have a pen.”
A voice cuts through from behind the camera, and a hand holding a Bic comes into view.
Wide eyed, both of the once-strangers stare at him, the unknown person who has been recording them this whole time. They must have forgotten about it.
"Ah, thanks”, Sirius mumbles and grabs it.
He quickly turns to Remus, eyeing the red book on the bench, but then visibly changes his mind and goes to grab his hand. The one with the Moon tattoo.
Remus looks back, he can only see the top of Sirius' head, long waves of black falling to his face.
The taller boy still has that quite shocked look on his face, as he has just realised that all of this had been recorded. And probably will be uploaded somewhere on social media.
He chuckles, bringing the cigarette to his lips once again. “Mawredd”, he breathes out in a scoff, shaking his head. Unbelievable.
Sirius starts writing down the digits of his number, and it brings back Remus’ attention to him. The sharp tip of the pen it's most likely to hurt, but Remus doesn't show it.
All he wants to do is stare at the focused look on Sirius' face, feel the warmth of his touch, and wait. And that's what he does, as he keeps on smoking, finishing the rolled up in record time.
If his life was a just a loop of this moment, he would've wasted no time in signing up for immortality.
This is where he wants to be.
He knows better than to ask for more, then to get his hopes up. He is Remus, after all, and that is what life has taught him.
So just this is enough.
Next to the last number, in the black ink of the pen, Sirius is drawing a star.
And his mind wanders, to the future, maybe, through all the things that this will bring him. Sirius is greedy, he is hunger and thirst, because he will never accept to be starved again.
He wants everything, he gives everything. Only like this there can be balance.
The black star falls perfectly inside the mouth of the moon.
It could look like a bite, for them it looks like a kiss.
There is no sweeter pain than the gentleness of the fangs of a crescent Moon.
“Here you go, Moon Man”, he gives him a smile.
It is the brightest in the sky.
. . .
The video cuts to the next frame, it is recorded from far away.
It still shows the same bench, still portraits the same two people. With the difference that they're souls are far from being strangers now.
Not that they have ever been unknown to eachtoher at all.
The boy with long black hair is finally wearing his leather jacket correctly. The other is smoking yet another cigarette, burying his face in his neck warmer.
Sirius is laughing, it can be heard from there, too, Remus looks at him in awe. They talk to each other, fitting in each other's silences.
From far away, where they look smaller, they seem even more like a harmony of tunes.
The falling of drops that gives the pattering of rain, the gentle words of a mother that melt in a bedtime story. The clatter of dishes and the beating of a rug, the one next to their couch in the living room.
A loud howl in the night of a wolf you’ve been waiting.
The click of a lighter. A moan at midnight.
Tears after tears, that give into sobs. The chant of battle, the buzz of a bee. A sigh of relief.
They are a duo of Violin and Piano.
No symphony sounds the same if one of them is missing.