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// What We Would Do Without Words 
// Story: Deafening Actions 
// by Future Regret 
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Autumn was sweeping summer out of the sky. A thick layer of white clouds corralled the scarlet evening overhead, the frigid waves tumbling eternally in beneath them. The brilliant azure ocean was dimming into an ominous blue-green steel, thick and impenetrable. The winds that skipped off the crests of the water seemed to pick up its chilling bite. It seemed like the day and its vibrant hues were being sucked away by some inescapable whirlpool situated behind them, but it was not enough to make them turn around.

Nothing was. The two forms had each other pinned in a sort of blissful captivity on the bench. The fall could fade into winter and they would remain as a snow-capped, frozen statue. The evening cold of the seaside surrounding them was made irrelevant by the roaring furnace that was made as the two bodies grew closer and closer together, their silhouettes blending seamlessly into one another.

The blond girl was wrapped up by a firm alabaster arm. They had been allowing the chorus of the wind to fill the air uninterrupted. She pressed up against the over-sized boy beside her, relishing at how the feeling of his trained muscles penetrated the layers of sweatshirt between them. One of her hands, which had been burrowed in what little space it could find between the two of them, crawled out tepidly, and journeyed down to where the man’s massive palm rested against his thigh. The smaller fingers wove their way between his own and gripped down. She took her face from where it was nestled in his shoulder and looked up at him, smiling, her golden eyes performing a spinning ballet.

The wind and waves missed a beat in their endless song and her voice leapt to fill into the infinitesimal gap. “You’re beautiful.”

The man let out an involuntary exhale as the words struck his dozing mind, and he let out the quickest response he could – some guttural noise between a grunt and a snort. He looked down and slightly away from the girl, to his cold side, lowering his ball cap in an attempt to hide his crimson eyes.

“What?” The girl said, stopping short of the softest of giggles. “I mean it!” She attempted to roll her eyes, causing them to careen out of control. “Would you prefer the term handsome?”

For a while, his only response was a deep sigh, then he turned to her. With his head still lowered and the brim of his cap forming a makeshift confession booth to shield them from the empty beach, he matched her smile with a genuine, yet teetering, one of his own. Their eyes met, and as much as he wanted to there was no hiding the glint of pain that shone out him. “I know you mean it, I just…” His face contorted as if some jagged object was scraping its way up his throat. He stopped it, pausing in an attempt to let his mind hammer it into something comprehensible before releasing it into the billowing air. “It’s just so much harder for me to feel you mean the words – like there’s something wrong with my brain that won’t let me, no matter what I do. It’s not all the time, and I don’t want you to feel bad for me, but sometimes I feel so… unworthy.”

The girl nodded, her smile flattening into a faint imprint of contentment. The boy felt a twinge in his stomach as she turned back towards the sea. The oncoming wind sent her eyes adrift in their sockets like storm-tossed ships. “I know how you feel. Every time I see my reflection or my eyes cross and I see doubles, I feel like I’m just a defective version of myself – that I could easily be better if one tiny thing about me was different. That if only the world were only a little bit kinder, I could do more. I would mean more.

“But then I remember something.” She shut her eyes, leaning further into him. Her smile was in full bloom once again, starkly contrasting the graying world around them. “That I’ve got people like you in my life, and that even if I couldn’t hear you reassure me and tell me that it didn’t matter, I would still know that it’s true, because you’re still here with me. Words are great, but I don’t need them to know you’re at my side. I’ve been feeling it the whole time we’ve been sitting, talking or not.”

He focused on her presence resting on him. Its warm glow burned away all those paper thin barriers that seemed to crop up like weeds around his mind. He knew they would be back, but maybe next time there would be a little less and he could get rid of a few himself. Light flooded from her into him, illuminating his face. He lowered his chin onto the girls head. The ambient noise of nature beginning its yearly culling formed a sort of cocoon around the two of them. “Right again, babe. Are you sure not a counselor or something? I would hate to get a sweet girl like you in trouble with the principal.”

He felt her laughter push into his side and her body shake beneath the weight of his forearm. He gave her a playful squeeze and she squeaked. Despite the day sinking behind them and the rapid cooling of the air, they managed to get even warmer, somehow closing what little of a gap there was still between them. He watched their shadows stretch out in front of them, making their way to the ever-darkening brine as if they were trying to give the pair a moment of true solitude. Maybe that was why the night had chased away all the colors and commotion of the day too.

For a moment, the sound of the waves receded, the wind tapered off, the cold reached equilibrium with their combined warmth, and the clouds smothered the sky. All that was left was them.