Silco’s Song of the Week #8
Physical (you're so) by Nine inch Nails
artwork by (@writing-cins) 🖤
“He was devastating to look at: loose strands of dark hair falling across his brow, lips parting around a flash of teeth as if the music itself threatened to devour him in its intensity and rage.”
My friend @strawberrybrie has blessed us with exactly that vision in her new fanfic "Physical (I Wanna Get Physical With You)", and since this idea of him surrounded by fog, bass slung low, shirt clinging to sweat, has been living rent free in my head, it felt only right that today’s Song of the Week is dedicated entirely to her work.
Some of you might think 'Nine inch Nails again?' Yes - Nine Inch Nails again. But really, there’s no avoiding it (and knowing that @strawberrybrie was listening to this exact song while writing) even less so.
So shall we start with a little analysis?
I've mentioned it before: Nine Inch Nails is Silco - Ferocious and vulnerable, ugly and gorgeous, brutal and tender. All in one breath. Trent Reznor writes with the same contradictions that define him: obsession bordering on worship, intimacy that feels like a threat, desire that scars as much as it heals.
Silco is not “romantic dinner with candles.” Silco is the industrial beat that rattles your bones, the desire you shouldn’t say out loud but feel deep in your chest. He is the fissures, the neon lights, the dark alleys of Zaun. He’s every word you choke on because speaking it makes it too real.
“I wanna say all those things that would be better unsaid”
Silco is a character of words that leave you speechless. His words are his weapon, slicing through pretenses, cutting through control, dragging truths into the open whether you’re ready for them or not. He’s the brush of a hand that lingers too long, the heat that rises in the wrong places, the tension that hums under the skin before anything is even said. Silence with him isn’t calm—it’s an electric field, ready to spark at the smallest touch.
“I want you hard in my arms, so soft on my bed…”
For Silco, closeness has never been clean. It’s always entangled with power, control, the threat of loss. Every embrace is a negotiation. Every touch is a gamble. And in that danger, in that intensity, there is an intimacy so raw it leaves you breathless. You don’t just feel him—you feel him breaking into you, reshaping you, leaving a mark you can’t scrub away.
“You’re too physical to me.”
That refrain says it all. Wanting someone so badly it feels dangerous. Touch that blurs the line between surrender and possession. A bassline that coils like smoke around your throat, dragging you under.
And if you’ve ever watched a bassist’s hands, you know: precision, rhythm, stamina, control. Imagine those same movements transposed into intimacy. He’d play you the way he plays: slow enough to make you ache, relentless once he finds the rhythm that undoes you. Every motion deliberate, every pause purposeful. He would take his time to explore, sliding his fingers along you with the same control and attention he gives a fretboard, tracing, teasing, finding exactly where the tension coils and where release waits. Every touch measured yet insistent, coaxing every reaction, savoring the way your body bends and trembles under his touch.
So yes - Nine Inch Nails again. Because no other band captures the dirty, obsessive, all-consuming physicality of Silco the way they do. This song is the fic, and the fic is him.
This week’s SOTW is for Brie, for her amazing work, and for all of us who can’t stop imagining Silco, shirt soaked through, commanding the stage with a bass that feels more like a weapon than an instrument.
“You’re too physical to me. Oh, goddamnit!”
(This song is included in the Eye of Zaun Radio playlist. Stick around for more Silco song references)
