SWAN 18 - Behind Your Skin/Normal and Happy-

Song Without A Name
On the Edge of Seventeen. More Commonly called Eighteen.
Sprung fully formed from the forehead of
Lady Yate-xel

It really was curiosity. Some kind of grand experiment. There were no elaborate fantasies or expectations of anything on Johnny’s part, just curiosity. After the awkward ‘best friend is in love with me’ feelings settled, it seemed logical to try to pick at it. To see what was in it and what made it tick and why it happened. To see if he could be taught to see it, or be shown it, or learn it.

“To see if he can seduce you,” Devi had said. “You’re fucktarded.”

“It’s not that,” Johnny had answered. “It’s experimenting.”

“That sounds worse, Nny.”

“Ugh, you’re horrible.”

“Why Johnny, that may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Devi had told him she thought the idea was awful. Johnny had felt something like jealousy from her, but couldn’t pinpoint what about. He worried briefly about how Jimmy was going to react, and then wondered about Tenna. She was related somehow. Close enough to Devi that maybe the two of them could do the same thing that he and Edgar were.

Considering the possible consequences of doing so, it was collectively decided that Jimmy wouldn’t be hearing a word of these new developments. Devi had been against keeping it from him at first, but when Johnny mentioned the amount of trauma it would put Edgar through to know that Jimmy knew the real nature of things, she let it go. No one really wanted to see Jimmy trying to maul Edgar in the street, regardless of how much Tenna thought the tickets would go for.

Tenna had known about Edgar’s intense fondness for Johnny for quite some time.

“See, what gets me is that you didn’t know all that time,” she’d said.

“He’s Edgar, he’s my best friend, why would I have suspected?”

“That’s exactly why you should have suspected,” she’d answered, though she looked at Devi when she said it.

Johnny had, in a rare moment, felt sort of dumb for not noticing how fond Tenna was of Devi all that time. Maybe he had a blindness towards this particular madness that was so obvious to other people in exchange for knowing everything else.

So with Jimmy oblivious, Devi reasonably tolerating, and Tenna wondering why it had taken so long to happen, Johnny was left to deal with Edgar’s fondness for him. It didn’t bother him, and it didn’t repulse him, so it was a step in a direction. He couldn’t be sure if it was the ‘right direction,’ but it was one. Edgar seemed very sincere about the entire thing, and Johnny had reason to believe that Edgar would not be as totally okay as he promised he would be if Johnny called the whole thing off and declared them simply friends. He wasn’t sure how he wanted this little ‘courtship’ thing to pan out, when he was honest with himself, but he thought that was acceptable. It meant that he was being at least marginally open-minded about it, and that seemed admirable to some degree.

Everything was ‘sort of,’ or ‘marginally’ or ‘kinda.’ It was better than ‘fuck no,’ though, so Johnny went with it.

Edgar was very cautious around Johnny for the first few weeks. Johnny appreciated this half of the time, and wanted to scream the other half. The ratio was really closer to 40/60, but he had gotten good at stopping himself.

“Okay, look,” Johnny said one day, when the ‘walking on eggshells’ act had gone on as long as he could stand. Edgar jumped considerably when Johnny spoke, so Johnny was fairly sure that Edgar could not handle much more of this bullshit either.

“Yes?”

“You can deal with a little risk. I have confidence in you. Really.”

Something seemed to just click in Edgar the moment the last syllable left Johnny’s mouth. He dropped onto the couch where Johnny had been sitting, and made a vague motion towards Johnny’s hand.

“May I?” he asked.

Johnny had looked at Edgar, at Edgar’s hand and back again a few times, then nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, and they watched some dumb bad movie while Edgar held Johnny’s hand. They made merciless fun of the movie, and Johnny forgot about Edgar’s hand almost entirely by the time they were half way through.

And it continued that way for weeks. After a while, Johnny would get used to something, and Edgar would gradually forget to ask permission. Edgar, it turned out, really radiated elation when he experienced it. Johnny wondered why he’d been unable to sense it before.

Could have saved Edgar a lot of pain.

Pain still worried him. Pepito still worried him. The way Edgar looked at him, something else he had never noticed before, worried him.

Edgar had tried putting an arm over Johnny’s shoulders once. It had really been too much, and Johnny shrank away from it. Edgar backed off, of course, and Johnny had made sure to do something, laugh or smile or make some kind of joke, he didn’t really remember what, to make sure that Edgar didn’t feel terrible about it.

This part of the process really wasn’t supposed to be the two-way street, but it was more comfortable for both of them if Johnny did things to make Edgar feel better about everything.

Giving a shit about other people turned out to be work. That had honestly surprised him.

Edgar made nice things for Johnny. Took him places. Johnny appreciated the gestures of all of it, but felt like Edgar shouldn’t have taken the effort; Johnny never felt any different afterwards, even if Edgar beamed at him like maybe he should have. Johnny was as polite as he figured was appropriate, but he sometimes sat alone in the pink recliner or on his bed with his headphones, and wondered what the hell he was doing.

“May I?” About coming close to Johnny’s hair or something this time. Johnny sometimes found that he couldn’t read some of Edgar’s intentions, but never wanted to ask for clarification. It was in the same vein as not letting him feel too discouraged about being rejected for something. This sort of defeated the purpose of the little questions in the first place, but for some reason, Johnny never altered the pattern. All in the interests of science.

Or something.

“Yes.”

It turned out to be something like resting his cheek on the side of Johnny’s head. It wasn’t horrible. Johnny might not have said yes had he known that was coming, exactly, but he discovered that he was more tolerant than he previously imagined. Maybe as long as Edgar asked, Johnny was willing to try anything once. The very thought echoed in his head and kept him up for hours upon hours.

Weeks had worked Johnny into allowing his hand to be held, being hugged at random times, and even Edgar’s face in close proximity to his hair. He wasn’t sure what was so appealing about his hair, honestly, but whatever Edgar got out of it seemed to make him happy for days at a time, so Johnny let it go unmentioned.

“One of these days,” Edgar said once, his breath on Johnny’s scalp, “I’m going to bite your ear off, and you’ll never see it coming.”

“And I will haunt the shit out of you if I die from shock or blood loss. This will also not be happening ever again,” Johnny warned, motioning between the two of them. “And I will saw yours off in retaliation if I live.”

“I’d give it back,” Edgar muttered.

Times like that were why Johnny decided to let things go the way they were. It was still Edgar behind all that talk of adoring Johnny, and Johnny found he enjoyed the way they overlapped. Even if it still felt like a psychology project, watching Edgar react naturally to Johnny in two different ways was fascinating, and so, entirely welcome.

Finally, Edgar got into territory that Johnny couldn’t just mindlessly say ‘yes’ to. Edgar seemed to realize this and actually asked about these things well in advance.

How much was he allowed to say regarding how he felt?

How did Johnny feel hearing that Edgar actively wanted to kiss him?

The answers to those had been “Oh, god,” and “Oh, shit,” respectively. Edgar, brilliant as he was, understood every implication in those answers and said no more about either of them. Johnny felt both relieved and worried that he’d ruined Edgar’s enthusiasm. Edgar’s song, meanwhile, laced its way through everything and anything and it scared Johnny to hear one so clearly over another when he hadn’t been trying to.

The song bothered him. It was everywhere. Johnny was usually so good at letting them all blend into nothing, into static, into the background noise, into just the hum of the music machine, that when he could do nothing but feel it everywhere it made him a little panicky. He was nervous and jittery and had flashes of not knowing if Edgar was really Edgar.

“Someone promised me the sky
a tunnel of white light
I never knew if they meant to kill me
But I suppose I’ll be alright

Sticks and stones could break my bones
If they were really there
As it is now I’m immortal

And until I find happy
I have nothing to fear”

Everywhere and everywhere and everywhere and it never left him alone. He understood for only a few moments how Edgar must have felt hearing Jimmy’s song roar through his speech, or hearing Devi’s peak up over her glares, or even Tenna’s suddenly dropping in from nowhere. The moment he thought of Devi and Tenna, he escaped. He tore out of the house and tried to out run the things he couldn’t stop hearing.

Clawed at Devi’s door. She screamed that she wasn’t signing anything, and that whoever was there could just go fuck themselves. It was Tenna that answered. She had never looked more like Johnny’s friend before. Devi stood up from her chair across the room.

“Nny, what the hell are you doing?”

Escaping.

“Coming to visit.”

“Having trouble handling Edgar?” Tenna asked slyly. Johnny suspected that perhaps Tenna had been just as perceptive as he had been all these years, and maybe more so, considering his recent discovery of his blind spot.

“Maybe,” he answered.

“Awww,” Devi cooed in mock sympathy, “your little game backfire on you?”

“No,” Johnny answered, tucking himself into the corner of her couch. “I’m fine. I just needed to talk to some other people. I don’t get to talk to you guys when we can’t go to the school everyday.”

It was still there, that song, but it was so much lower now. He could breathe for a while. Devi’s stereo was on in the kitchen. Oh god, something else to concentrate on, thank you.

“behind your face
behind your skin
behind you bones
look within”

Johnny felt Tenna staring at him, he looked her in the eye and she bit her lip thoughtfully. Johnny raised an eyebrow at her, and she turned to Devi, who had been sewing something.

“I’m going to go pick up those eggs we needed,” she announced suddenly. “Can I assume you and Johnny won’t kill each other?”

Devi rolled her eyes. Johnny didn’t see it, but he knew it was there.

“We’ll be fine, thank you,” she said.

Tenna left, sending some kind of pointed look at Johnny. Maybe if he felt less crazy he’d have known what she thought she was accomplishing.

“So what did he do?”

“What?”

Devi put down whatever she’d been fussing with. “Edgar. What did he do?”

“Nothing,” Johnny said. This was the truth, wasn’t it?

“So, you’re here, claiming you need to see us even though you’ve spent months at a time with him, happily ignoring us, and nothing has gone wrong?”

“I didn’t say that,” he answered, resting his chin on his knees, “I said Edgar didn’t do anything.”

Devi came to sit beside him. “Then what the hell happened?”

“She left to let you ask me about this.” Sudden realization.

“Yes, she did.”

“Is she always like that?”

“Considerate? Lots of people are, Nny. Answer the question.”

Considerate? That wasn’t what he’d meant.

“His song. It overpowers everything,” Johnny said, staring off beyond Devi’s table.

“That’s it?” Devi asked.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Come on, Nny, really? God, I hear Tenna’s all the time and you don’t see me going loopy.”

Johnny gave her a look.

“Loopy directly related to that,” Devi corrected.

“But, but you’re not-” Johnny started.

“Not an amazing music processing machine like you? No, I’m just not as special as you.”

“I didn’t-”

“Shut up, yes you did.”

Maybe he did mean it that way.

“You did this to yourself, you know,” Devi said.

“I didn’t ask him to try to drive me insane with his song,” Johnny countered.

“No, but you can’t possibly have thought it wouldn’t happen. You always told me you could feel when Jimmy was angry, or when he was jealous, and that you could feel things just as well from Edgar. What made you think that indulging some guy who says he loves you would not result in his song flaring up like that?”

“have you not seen
and have you not heard
and do you not know about this-”

Johnny shook his head.

“Do you remember when it happened to Jimmy?” Devi continued. “When you teased him just enough that we had to lock him in his trailer for a week so the song would stop screaming at us?”

“Yes. Yes, I remember.”

“And this still didn’t dawn on you?”

“No,” Johnny answered slowly, “Jimmy had an obsession or some kind of lust. Edgar doesn’t feel the same way Jimmy did. This is different.”

“You’re rationalizing. It’s not working.”

“No, really!” Johnny protested, finally looking at Devi. “It is different, I know it. It feels different. It even looks different. Edgar looks at me differently than Jimmy does. Did. Does.”

Devi leaned back and stared at the coffee stain on the ceiling. That stain and how it had gotten had been the subject of many long debates over the years.

“So what made you think,” Devi asked, with a sad kind of sympathy in her voice, “that good genuine feelings would be easier to deal with? That a song wouldn’t react more strongly to something that really consumed a person and not just high school infatuation?”

Johnny tightened his hold on his legs, pulling them closer to his chest. Maybe he could just close his eyes and compress his chest and…

“are you like them?
can you surmise?
… in this world
to tell lies”

“I didn’t think Edgar was that strong.”

Devi was quiet for several minutes before she spoke again.

“Nny, he can probably hear yo-”

“No, he can’t,” Johnny interrupted. He pressed his palms to his eyes. The colors made him a little dizzy, but he didn’t move his hands. “I thought, before, when he couldn’t hear his… Half of me was proud of him when he finally heard it. That part of me hummed. Part of me was angry, and that part let him sit there hunched over his own vomit.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t hear yours.”

“He can’t. He would have told me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. More sure of that than anything else at this point. He would tell me if he heard it.”

Devi took out part of her hair and started retying it.

“What are you going to do if he ever does?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Johnny shook his head, still with his hands over his eyes. “It excites me and terrifies me at the same time.”

“I thought it would have been me,” Devi said quietly. She looked at her TV, which wasn’t on.

“behind your face
behind your skin
behind you bones
look within”

“I thought so, too.”

Tenna came back in the few minutes of quiet after that. She was ‘considerate’ enough not to say a word. She didn’t buy any eggs.

“Lii~iies…”

*****

When she’d finally sent Johnny home, Devi tried to talk to Tenna about what had been going on. Tenna didn’t want to hear about it. She asked if Johnny was alright, and Devi responded half-truthfully. Tenna said then that she just wanted to be informed when poor Edgar finally failed at everything.

Devi had been surprised. Tenna was usually so optimistic.

*****

Home again, and hoping desperately that he wasn’t crazy.

Johnny had been greeted enthusiastically and nearly smothered when he came back from Devi’s place. Edgar talked too fast about being worried, about not knowing, about scaring Johnny away. Johnny dismissed it all, not because those things weren’t true, just because the voice was too much.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he said. Edgar looked skeptical, but accepted Johnny’s dismissal with no question. It took a few moments for that to worry Johnny. And longer to act on it.

“Don’t let me do that,” Johnny said nearly twenty minutes after he’d come through the door. Edgar, thankfully, predictably, was confused.

“Huh? Do what?”

“Or maybe, it’s more like, ‘Don’t do that.’ I’m not sure.” Johnny squinted at something across the room trying to figure out the best version of whatever he’d said a moment ago.

“Nny, you’re starting to scare me.”

No, no, that was the opposite of help. Johnny looked up and really concentrated on Edgar’s face.

“Don’t do that,” he said, trying to make every syllable clear. “Don’t just let me brush things off like that.”

“I didn’t want to pry; I figured it was pretty reasonable to want to run when you’ve got me and everything here.”

Reasonable.

“You promise me. You promise that you’re not making excuses for me,” Johnny said, staring intently at Edgar.

“I’m not, really. I just thought it was something you’d tell me later,” Edgar explained. Johnny heard worry in there somewhere. “You know, like you usually do.”

“I hear your song in everything, Edgar. I can’t get it to go away.”

Edgar shifted his weight on the couch. Johnny didn’t remember sitting in the pink chair.

“I’m… sorry?” Edgar tried. “It doesn’t feel any different to me. I think sometimes that it’s faster than it used to be, but it’s not doing anything strange. Can I do something to fix it?”

Stop caring. Stop being so happy that Johnny was sitting there. Stop feeling elated at being able to come so close.

“I don’t think so. It’s not something you can control,” Johnny said, letting his gaze fall to Edgar’s knee or maybe just to the left of it. “It’s the people around you who are supposed to be able to deal with them, no matter how strong.”

“But you’re so good at that. You said we’re all just background noise. I thought… well, I don’t know that anything I thought would have been accurate,” Edgar tried to laugh, but it wasn’t terribly effective.

“If happiness if all we have
Then how I am here today?
I exist without a world
Track all my time without a day.”

“I thought so, too,” Johnny said. “I’d just miscalculated – underestimated – how much like Jimmy you’d be.” If the song would just die down, he’d be able to think. He’d be able to do more than pronounce his words so deliberately. Like he was lying. He wasn’t lying.

“Like Jimmy?” Edgar asked, with some poorly disguised horror, “What does he have to do with this?”

“Once, I told him I would go home with him. I teased him about it, and taunted him about it and was probably more horrible to him than he really deserves,” Johnny answered. He looked up to make sure Edgar had acknowledged – he did – and kept going. “His song started to get really loud after a day or so. Not just to me, but to Devi and Tenna, too. We had to lock him the trailer and scream at him for days to get it to die down.”

“I am hoping for more clarification, and I hope I am drawing the wrong parallels here.”

“The stronger the feeling,” Johnny explained slowly, “The louder the song. Yours is so much louder now than his ever was.”

Edgar looked a little embarrassed, and Johnny found the capacity to smile for once in what felt like days.

“I’ve never had one directed right at me with so much force before.”

“I’m sorry,” Edgar said, lowering his head. “I can’t- I don’t know what I can do about it.”

“I already told you it’s not you.”

There was another one of their trademark silences. At least, Johnny imagined it was silence for Edgar. Johnny heard verse after verse of Edgar’s song.

“Nny?”

“Yes.”

Edgar had missed a beat there. Maybe expecting that to have been a question.

“What does it mean that I can’t hear your song?”

“That you’re like everyone else.”

“No one else can-?”

“No. No one.” Forehead to his knees.

“So, you’re the only one who’s ever heard-?”

“You’re not listening to me. No one can hear it.”

“Not even you?” Edgar spoke near a whisper.

Johnny stared angrily at the floor.

“Not even me.”

Edgar looked like he wanted to cry, and his song nearly exploded. Johnny curled up in the chair, and tried desperately to pass out.

It worked.

*****

Edgar struggled with calling Devi, and waking Johnny up. Mostly with waking him up. Maybe Johnny felt better sleeping and not hearing Edgar’s song over everything.

Edgar listened to Johnny breathing and tried to hear a song in it. He sat on the arm of the pink recliner, unsure what lines he could cross. Little “may I?”s were not going to help now if Johnny couldn’t answer him. How much of what he did before Johnny woke up would be respectful of Johnny’s personal space and how much would be actually giving a damn?

The decision didn’t take long. Personal space be damned, Edgar picked Johnny up out of the recliner and stretched him out on the couch. Perhaps out of habit, he asked permission, but didn’t plan on stopping, permission or no. He wanted to hold him or clear his mind for him or do something – some little gesture that would be of help somehow – but there was really nothing he was capable of. The best he could do was lamely drape a blanket over Johnny, tuck his headphones onto his head and sit by the couch to wait for him to wake up. He made tea at some point, and Johnny slept through the whistle and Edgar dropping several mugs on the kitchen floor.

Edgar kept checking to make sure he was breathing. The song never manifested itself in Johnny’s breaths, but each time Edgar listened for it he was sure that if he just got closer the next time, it would be there. Somehow, this degraded into listening to Johnny’s heartbeat. It was still beating, but Edgar found that he was disappointed that it didn’t beat to some off balance rhythm that he could discern a song from.

The headphones probably didn’t help.

*****

There was something on his lungs. Something trying to compress him. Something warm. He was wearing headphones.

“Wheeling choking
drifting hopelessly
in a waiting dream
Trying to get on track again
shedding parts of you

Bottoms up now
shut the door on me
there is no ending
drip drain leak seep
here's more of it
I want to be you”

When Johnny opened his eyes again, he saw the ceiling, and part of the couch. He didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch. His head hurt, but there was nothing trying to drown out all of his thoughts anymore. The music was all a low fuzz again, even Edgar’s, though it was still louder and more prominent than the others, felt fine and manageable again. The headphones helped.

“Tether me to the next moment
don’t you see?
in between

I can't breathe
drown myself in you
Don’t you see?
It's not me”

Speaking of Edgar.

“Um,” Johnny managed. He felt the hum of the syllable under Edgar’s head, which had been lying on his chest for what Johnny guessed was a little while.

Edgar jumped and shuffled into a non-threatening position on the floor, perhaps thinking if he got there fast enough Johnny wouldn’t notice what he’d just been doing.

“Sorry,” he said, “I was just making sure you were still alive.”

Johnny felt groggy, but managed to smile.

“Begging silence,
stillness listening
Memories floating
fragments surface
Don’t recognize
Could this be
half me?”

“A likely story,” he joked. “You were planning to have your way with me, I know it.”

“I like them unconscious,” Edgar shot back, grinning. Johnny laughed. Hadn’t done that in some time. Felt like something escaping.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Edgar said, the earlier joke gone from his voice. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” Johnny answered. “I didn’t really try to… maybe I did. Still, sorry. Thanks for the,” he tugged at the blanket, “the help, I guess.”

“Of course. I’m glad it didn’t get me killed.”

“Killed? Was I thrashing or something?”

“No, I just thought maybe you’d be angry that I’d moved you. Permissions and personal space an’ all.”

It hadn’t even totally occurred to Johnny that he would have had to have been carried to the couch, and actually placed there. He looked at Edgar intently for a moment, trying to find something in his face – he knew what it was but didn’t have a name for it.

“It’s okay,” Johnny said, concentrating on Edgar’s face. “Don’t worry about it.”

Edgar nodded. “Sure. Um, is something wrong?”

“I know you've been on
my back again
Gotta wait for me
Feel your breath
on my neck again
gotta find my way

Tether me to the next moment
can't you see
in between
I can't breathe
forgot myself in you”

Johnny shook his head. It was in there, he was pretty sure, but he’d wait. Laid his head back down on the cushion, and watched the ceiling.

“No, it’s fine. Head just hurts a little. I’ll resume normal functions in a few minutes, captain.”

Edgar shifted to his knees. He was easier to look at now. He picked a hand up and went to move some stray pieces of Johnny’s hair. He stopped before he got too close, and gave Johnny half a smile that looked almost embarrassed.

“normal and happy…”

“May I?” he asked.

Johnny nodded. “Yes.”

It had surprised Johnny when Edgar asked for permission, and he felt strange giving it. Like he really shouldn’t have had to. Like it had interrupted something. Out of place. He closed his eyes and felt fingertips and stray hairs brush over his forehead.

“Do you still hear the song?” Edgar asked, his hand resting near Johnny’s ear. The song in Johnny’s headphones fell apart.

“Yes,” Johnny answered, eyes still closed, “but it’s not the way it was.”

“Something different?”

“It’s not so loud. I think it would fade out if I wanted it to.” Johnny felt Edgar smile.

“’If you wanted it to?’”

“Yeah,” Johnny opened his eyes. “I think I’ll keep it around when it’s not trying to kill me.”

“You’d think you’d be sick of it by now.”

“Do you get sick of it?”

“Well, no, but it’s, well, it’s mine. So, that’d be like getting sick of me, of myself, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would. I’m not sick of you yet though, so it’s staying.”

“How nice to know you care,” Edgar said, rolling his eyes. Johnny appreciated these kinds of jokes more than any others; they really helped manage any potential awkward.

“I’m a nice guy,” Johnny said, shrugging as much as he was able while sprawled on the couch, “It’s a curse.” Edgar laughed, and a finger or two brushed Johnny’s ear. Johnny suspected that was meant to look like an accident.

“Johnny, I feel pretty sure that you’re really not a nice person at all,” Edgar said softly.

“This calls your tastes into question.”

“I know,” Edgar answered. Deliberately ran his fingernails across Johnny’s temple. “I just don’t care.” The song buzzed in Johnny’s head and he flinched. Edgar snapped away from Johnny’s side and held his hands up.

“…happy
I have nothing to fear”

“Don’t,” Johnny said. “I’m not going to bite you, and you’re not doing anything wrong.”

Edgar bit his lip and looked uncomfortable. Johnny’s head stopped swimming enough that he felt like he could sit up. Edgar twitched a little when Johnny moved, like maybe he’d wanted to help Johnny do it, but didn’t make any moves to do so.

“You’re pretty jumpy about all this, Edgar.”

“I don’t want to impose. No, that’s not the word. Don’t want to upset you? Make you uncomfortable? That’s better.” A small, nervous laugh. “Something like that.”

“I’m not,” Johnny said.

“Not…?”

“Not uncomfortable. Not upset.”

Edgar sighed. “You’re hard to read, Nny.”

“Ever think maybe you just suck at reading?”

“Then the combined power of your personality and my failure at people is pretty damning,” Edgar said, with a hint of a less nervous smile. “I couldn’t have fallen for someone more difficult to figure out if I’d tried.”

“You think so?” Johnny asked, leaning against his knees. “I’d have thought Devi would have been hard for you.”

“Are you kidding? Devi would already have kicked me in the face and slapped me around when I did something dumb, and then told me flat out, ‘Yeah, you can do that’ when I sucked a little less.”

Johnny smirked. “You want me to slap you around?”

“Not so much.”

“So, ‘yes’ is too ambiguous for you, then?”

“No, it’s not that,” Edgar said, glancing off to one side. Thinking, Johnny guessed. He couldn’t remember which side glance typically meant people were lying.

“I don’t have any plans for ‘take me now,’ if that’s what you’re after,” Johnny said.

“Well, damn, there go all my hopes and dreams.” Edgar rolled his eyes. Johnny grinned at him. There really was a reason that Edgar was his best friend. It started to make sense that Edgar had fallen for him using that same reason. Maybe Devi had been right. Several times.

“Do you mind if get off the floor?” Edgar asked.

“Oh, sure.” Johnny pulled his feet off of the middle cushion and Edgar climbed up to sit beside him. He got fairly close, and Johnny smiled at him. Edgar took one of Johnny’s hands in his, and rubbed his thumb over the back of it. Johnny watched Edgar’s fingers with a sort of detachment. Like it wasn’t his hand, and those weren’t his best friend’s fingers – he just liked the movement.

“I’m not hoping for anything dramatic,” Edgar said, focusing on Johnny’s hand. “I just want…,” he trailed off, then laughed lightly. “I don’t really know what I want. This just makes me happy. You make me happy.”

“I know.” Johnny wished he could say something like ‘You too,’ or even ‘Thanks’ but one was a lie and the other seemed vastly inappropriate for such an honest sentiment. It wasn’t like Edgar didn’t make him happy on some level - it just wasn’t the level Edgar would have wanted.

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“You being happy about me existing? Not really.”

“That’s not really what I meant.”

“I know. But that doesn’t bother me either.”

Edgar pressed his thumb into the skin on the back of Johnny’s hand. It left a light mark when he let go.

“How do you want this to end, Nny?”

“Hell if I know,” Johnny answered. “The best way, I guess.”

“Something tells me that’s going to be hard to obtain.”

“You keep acting like our thoughts are in direct opposition. It’s not as bad as you think.” Sometimes, he just said things and really wasn’t sure where they came from. He liked to blame it on older versions of himself, even if he knew they’d never been sane enough people to have conversations or situations that were anything like his.

“You told me you wouldn’t fuck with my head. Promised you wouldn’t give me false hope.”

“I’m not. It’s really not as bad as you think it is.” Johnny studied Edgar’s hold on his hand for a minute. “Really,” Johnny continued, still watching Edgar’s thumb, “I’d be even more okay with this if you weren’t so nervous all the time.” He thought that was true. He wasn’t completely sure.

“I can’t help it,” Edgar said. “You must be the most terrifying person to fall for in the history of three lifetimes.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“I don’t remember making conscious efforts to intimidate the fuck out of you, so I have to say I’m curious to hear the explanation here.”

“I don’t want to seem like Jimmy. I don’t want to come on too strong, or offend you or anything. I just want you to feel even half of what I do or something, and then…and then something.”

There had been some sort of explanation in there, but Johnny forgot about it the moment it was said.

“Half of how much?” Johnny asked, and for once, Edgar was on the same track.

“More than I can convey. I’d like to be able to, but, I’m not terribly good at it.”

“I can’t aspire to half of something you can’t even measure,” Johnny said, trying to joke. “Really. How bad is it?”

“How bad?”

“How much do you love me?”

Edgar started talking, but didn’t say much. His speech was filled with false starts and struggles to find the right phrase. His grip on Johnny’s hand tightened. Johnny hadn’t remembered Edgar sitting this close before. Shoulder to shoulder. Had Edgar gotten gutsy in the last few minutes, or had he been sitting there from the start? Edgar hummed a little to himself when words failed him, and Johnny thought maybe he was giving up on the question all together. When Johnny went to ask again, Edgar smiled, apparently to himself, sported a ‘well, fuck it’ expression for a moment, and did something reminiscent of singing. Not terribly well, but that wasn’t important.

“More than I could ever tell you
More than you could know
More than I could ever measure
Would all be impossible to show

Immortal until I find happy
I have nothing to fear.”

Edgar’s song. Sort of.

“You changed the words,” Johnny said quietly as though any sudden volume would cause the walls to cave in.

“They just… came out that way.”

“So… were you answering me, or singing?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…” Johnny didn’t finish. He leaned into Edgar’s shoulder without much thought, and let his head rest there without much more. This was a little distressing. Edgar’s feelings didn’t bother him, and he felt confident that whatever his own feelings ended up being, those wouldn’t bother him either, but he hadn’t expected Edgar’s to be that bad. That important to him, that much.

“Should I be apologizing now?”

“No,” Johnny answered, “but I wonder if maybe I should.”

“Don’t,” Edgar said. “I think I’d rather just pretend.”

*****

Edgar didn’t know what happened, and he really had no way to be sure. He’d stopped trying to figure out anything related to the music inside people after a while, so why he’d felt compelled to chant some lyrics that weren’t even the correct ones for his song eluded him. He knew why he’d chosen to voice them, at least, but he didn’t know how they got that way. He really wasn’t the type to try his hand at lyrics; they’d always let Devi do that. In retrospect, that was probably pretty evident. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he was sure it had to have been a lyrical nightmare.

It had even rhymed. Sweet hells.

However, in another ‘mystery of music’ moment, Johnny hadn’t run from him, or laughed at him, or even joked. He’d actually put his head on Edgar’s shoulder. He’d crossed some line, because after that, Johnny showed no discontent at all being held close, or even half-lying on Edgar. There were still lines there, but Edgar was happy to tread them carefully with his usual permissions.

“May I?” To touch his face.

“Yes.”

“May I?” To put his arms around him.

“Yes.”

Edgar didn’t think he remembered a time when Johnny had ever said ‘no’. This didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have. When it did bother him, he was usually out with the rest of the group, and looking at Jimmy.

Edgar was sure that Jimmy could smell Johnny on him, and was just getting ready to strike. It was then that Edgar would try to think, “I can ask him for anything, and he’ll give it to me,” aggressively at Jimmy and hope that it would make the moment pass.

In the end, thinking that way just made him feel guilty. How much was Johnny letting him get away with?

Weeks later, with Johnny still perfectly comfortable lying on Edgar’s shoulder and watching television, Edgar thought maybe he should ask.

“My god, this theme song is awesome.”

“Uh, wha?” Edgar blinked, startled back into the present.

“This THEME SONG. Don’t you hear this? This makes me want to commit horrible unspeakable acts and the show is about the LAW, thisisAWESOME.”

“This show looks ancient, Nny.”

“Of course it is, it’s on at three AM. They don’t air the good stuff during the day.”

“Weren’t you watching another one of these the other day?”

“Yeah, there’s something like five different versions. This one is really boring, since there’s no horrible gore in the opening half, but the theme song – oh man, the theme song.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, this is either kind of cute or really fucked up.”

Johnny breathed into Edgar’s shirt. “The best things usually walk a fine line between those, I think.” Edgar’s skin tingled.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said.

“Okay,” Johnny answered. “Wow, that lady is so going to die.”

“Why have you never said ‘no’?”

The aforementioned lady died that very moment.

“Told you,” Johnny said. “What now?”

“Why haven’t you ever said ‘no’?”

“You didn’t give me a reason to.”

“So, you were really okay with everything?”

“Mm-hmm,” Johnny nodded against Edgar’s shirt.

Okay then.

Edgar moved his arm from the cushions on the couch and let it rest on Johnny’s back.

“Is that okay?”

Johnny made some sarcastic remark.

“May I?” Edgar corrected, smiling.

“Yes,” came the answer. “Might as well stay consistent, Edgar.”

*****

Jimmy had come over to complain one time too many, and she’d let it slip. Tenna had practically written up a contract saying that it had been all Devi’s doing that let Jimmy know that Johnny wasn’t treating the ‘dating Edgar game’ as a game anymore. She didn’t really know how it happened, it just came out.

“It doesn’t matter, Jimmy, jeez! Johnny’s been taking this kinda seriously for at least a month!”

And that had been it. Tenna had clamped her hands over her mouth, and Devi had actually wanted to turn into some kind of primordial goo and just slide through the floorboards.

Jimmy stormed out of the building, and Devi bit her lip. There was no way she’d have time to beat him to Edgar’s house. When she looked at Tenna for backup, Tenna held up a sign with ‘not my fault’ scrawled across it in green crayon.

Fuck.

*****

He noticed that Johnny’s responses had changed. He didn’t shudder under Edgar’s fingertips anymore, or shrink away from Edgar’s arm around him. Edgar was sure that he felt Johnny leaning into him, leaning into touch. He couldn’t be sure, and maybe it was all in his head, but he thought, surely, he’d seen it there. Maybe it wasn’t leaning at all; maybe it was just the absence of shying away.

Edgar evaluated every move Johnny made from the moment he suspected onward. Was that a shift towards him, or just that Johnny’s leg had fallen asleep? Did he really need to get up to go upstairs or was he trying to get away from Edgar?

Edgar didn’t like that he let out long breaths when Johnny left the room, as though when he was with him he was straining or working too hard. Like he was relieved. It was the opposite, entirely. Nothing made him feel more at ease than seeing Johnny, but the anxiety associated with worrying about how he was doing ‘courting’-wise drove him mad.

When Johnny returned, Edgar didn’t make any sudden movements. Johnny sat back down next to him, and did nothing that looked even remotely like bolting for the door when Edgar slid his arm back around him. For a moment, Edgar forgot that he was worried, or that he was analyzing, and took in the smell and texture of Johnny’s hair instead. Johnny had long ago begun permitting these soft nuzzles on the side of his head, so he neither flinched nor really moved at all when Edgar felt his hair. Edgar backed off before he was unwelcome and went back to watching whatever was on television.

Johnny shifted again, and Edgar moved his arms up and away from him in response.

“No, no,” Johnny said, when he felt Edgar’s arms move into the air. “It’s not you, you’re fine.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted to get up again or something.”

“Nope,” Johnny said, half-yawning, “just getting comfortable.” As he spoke, he pushed against Edgar, repositioning his limbs as he got situated, and then dropped his head against Edgar’s collar bone. Edgar felt everything in him light up, and he was sure he’d be a pile of smoldering ashes in seconds had he actually been on the fire he felt.

When the burning died down, and Johnny was still where Edgar thought he’d imagined him to be, Edgar tried to speak. Nothing came out, so he coughed once. He startled Johnny, as evidenced by the way he jumped, but Johnny still didn’t move from his spot.

“Nny,” Edgar finally managed.

“Mm?”

“Nny, could I talk to you?”

“You already are,” Johnny replied, still not moving.

“No,” Edgar said, trying to sit up, “no, I mean really.”

Johnny sat up in response to Edgar’s struggle. “What?” he asked.

“You’ve been acting differently, lately.”

“Really?” Johnny asked. “Am I crazier now, or what?”

“No, no, nothing like that…” Edgar wasn’t sure how he wanted to phrase it. “You’ve been reacting differently to me. To being touched.”

Johnny looked skeptical.

“Maybe it’s just me,” Edgar continued, “but I wondered if anything had changed. If it ‘worked’ or something.”

“I don’t think I can give you an announcement when some kind of moment dawns on me, Edgar.”

“From what I see,” Edgar said, “said moment dawned a little while ago.”

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t really know.”

Edgar shifted in his seat again. Johnny was still sitting practically in his lap, waiting for Edgar to shut up so he could go back to falling asleep on him.

“I’m being serious, Nny. This is important.”

“Ugh, serious face.” Johnny rolled his eyes in fake annoyance, and then grinned. “Sorry. What is it?”

“I just want to know if I’m getting anywhere, I thought for sure you were reacting diff-”

“I can’t tell you ‘Hey! You’re two-thirds there, Edgar! Keep going!’ I don’t think it works that way.”

“Will you tell me?”

“When you ‘get there’?” Johnny asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

“You know,” Johnny answered, sounding slightly annoyed and returning to his prior spot near Edgar’s shoulder, “I don’t think I will. I think I’ll let you figure it out.”

“God dammit, Nny, what the hell do you want from me?”

“Nothing at all,” Johnny breathed into Edgar’s neck. Edgar felt himself shiver.

“Nny, look at me.”

Johnny sat up again at the request, but only just enough to look at Edgar from a few inches away, and Edgar studied his eyes intensely. When Johnny started to look uncomfortable and looked away, Edgar held his jaw. Johnny flinched.

“I don’t know what to do,” Edgar said. “This is getting to a point where I can’t do it on my own anymore. I need some kind of signal from you that I’m not fucking up.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Johnny asked, irritated, weakly trying to shake off Edgar’s grip on his jaw. Edgar continued staring at him.

“I haven’t run from you, and I let you do this stuff,” Johnny said. “What about that is not saying ‘You aren’t fucking up’ to you?”

“Because I don’t know how much is tolerating, and how much is-”

“Tolerating?” Johnny asked angrily, finally wrenching his face from Edgar’s hold. “Let’s have a demonstration, shall we?” He pulled on Edgar’s shirt and forced him to sit up fully. Edgar went to protest, and Johnny glared at him. Edgar said nothing.

Johnny picked up Edgar’s arm and draped it over himself, letting it hang limply over his shoulders. And then sat there. He looked at Edgar pointedly, and when Edgar made a questioning expression, Johnny responded curtly, “Tolerating.”

Edgar was about to nod, when Johnny nearly rammed himself into Edgar’s shoulder. He readjusted Edgar’s arm around him and pressed his head against Edgar’s chest. “Rather fucking okay with,” Johnny said. Edgar could feel the vibrations from his voice.

Johnny sat back up to where he’d been when Edgar requested that he look at him.

“Do we understand now?”

“Yes, I think so…,” Edgar answered.

“Good,” Johnny answered, and went to put his head back down.

“Wait, wait,” Edgar said, stopping Johnny with his jaw again, though gentler this time. Johnny just looked at him.

“I’d like to…,” Edgar trailed off, but pulled Johnny a little closer. Johnny blinked, and kept his eyes closed a moment longer than was necessary. Edgar wondered how much thought Johnny had accomplished in the second he’d blocked everything out with that blink. Johnny’s eyes opened again a second later.

“May I?” Edgar breathed, tilting Johnny’s face only just. The same familiar permissions he’d been asking for the tiniest of things.

Johnny just barely nodded. “Yes…”

And this felt entirely foreign compared to kissing his best friend on television. Everything was different about this. Edgar had thought he’d felt euphoric when the Cherry Doom incident had transpired.

No.

When he actually felt things, when he knew he could lose himself in it, because Johnny had given him permission to - that was it. When he could keep his hand on Johnny’s jaw, or move those stray pieces of hair that Johnny kept cutting into his hair, and nothing changed, that was it. When he could swear he felt finger tips in his hair, and on his neck, that was it. When he was home, and no one was there to radiate hatred at him, and no one there to film him, and no one there to shake their head, or to gloat, or to fangirl, that was it.

And when he realized that one or both of them would need to take a moment to let this all sink in, that was it.

Johnny’s head dropped to Edgar’s shoulder immediately. For a moment, Edgar thought he’d suffocated him or that he’d blacked out. He heard Johnny say something, but he didn’t understand it.

“Nny?”

“Shit.”

Edgar swallowed and bit his lip.

“Nny, I-”

“Have you always been doing that?”

“What?”

Johnny was silent for nearly half a minute. “Have you always been kissing me like that? Even…” His voice trailed off, or got caught in something.

“I think so. You mean from before? What would I have changed?”

Johnny shook his head into Edgar’s shoulder. Drying eyes? Objecting whole-heartedly? Baffled? Turning Edgar into a snot rag? Edgar couldn’t tell.

“Even on TV?” Johnny asked, his voice muffled by the shirt he was talking into.

“I’m not sure what you’re-”

“I could feel that. I could feel things, things from you. Things that you feel. Before, I never felt… Not like that. Not that.” He lifted his head, but still didn’t look at Edgar.

“You didn’t know it was there, before,” Edgar said, quietly. Johnny was silent again. Edgar thought maybe he was crying or something, but he couldn’t hear anything.

Edgar felt Johnny shift his weight, and then pull back, and finally look at him. Edgar almost said ‘hi.’ Johnny’s expression was blank for a minute, and then he, in a move Edgar didn’t expect at all, smiled.

“That wasn’t part of the ‘tolerating’ category,” Johnny said, nearly nose to nose with Edgar.

“I gathered,” Edgar answered, partly smiling himself. Another silence. Maybe only ten seconds, but they’d have been the longest ten seconds of Edgar’s life if that was true.

“So?” Johnny asked, suddenly.

“So?”

“So.”

“Are we there yet?” A little sheepish.

“Oh, good for you,” Johnny said, settling back onto Edgar’s shoulder. “Funny, I didn’t feel any smart come through. Wonder if it’s a fluke.”

Edgar thought maybe making fun of him was Johnny’s defense mechanism.