TITLE: "Twilight"
AUTHOR: Polly Burns
EMAIL: [email protected]
SUMMARY: Andrew and Jonathan try to cope with a traumatic event, but don't do such a great job.
SPOILER WARNINGS: Eh, "Seeing Red", I guess, but just a little, tiny bit.
RATING: PG-13, I guess, for badwords, vague references to sex and violence and criminal-type behavior. This one's pretty tame, folks.
DISCLAIMER: Don't be goin around saying that you own these people and you made them up yourself, cos sure, it's the internet and you may think nobody's gonna care, but what about that Joss Whedon and his friends at UPN? They know you're just some dork-kid who wants attention. Yep, you guessed it, these are not my characters and they never were, and I am just a dork-kid who wants attention. Song lyrics come from Poor Girl, which is not by me, cos it's by X. The city of Tijuana is in sole custody of itself and so is Gloria Trevi- and that's just fine with me.
NOTES: Okay, for the uninitiated who give a damn, Gloria Trevi (a.k.a. "The Mexican Madonna", a.k.a. "La Atrevida"- the daring) is a Mexican pop star who allegedly collaborated in the abduction and rape of a whole lot of underage girls with her manager/ lover/ whatever. It's been a big scandal for years and now she's got a (I think it's Brazilian) baby, which might get her exonerated. I imagine this will all still be going on in a year from now.
This story takes place about a month from the events in "White".
1 Twilight
You said "hold me tight"/ but I couldn't get it right.
The room was twilit, or dawnlit, the bath-water-warm half-light that came on between times, between glossy raven night and fiery day. Jonathan could hear his breaths, each one like a silken handkerchief, silken half-light rocking him out of drowsiness, out of sleep. He turned his head the slightest bit, to look at Andrew. Andrew was all right, completely still, even in sleep maintaining his death-grip on Jonathan's arm. Everything was all right; his breaths came and went like little waves knocking on the side of a boat. All right…
And then, it began to seep into Jonathan's brain that the corner of the bed shouldn't go down like that, not like it was weighted, not like somebody was sitting there. Who would be perched there, making the bed go on a slight incline? Without moving any more than he had to, he managed to shift in position enough to get a look at their mystery guest. First, he noted the eyes, slightly tilted, with luminous irises of rich brown, eyebrows that slanted downwards, like a cartoon villain's. Slowly, Jonathan's eyes were adjusting to the grayish light of the room at dawn, and to what he was seeing; next came pointy features, still slightly swathed in adolescent chubbiness, skin as pale as Jonathan's. The boy, this boy-person, opened his mouth, to start to say something. Even before the words came, Jonathan knew the sound of that voice- it was like the sound of water over sand, sometimes it cracked at the end of words, there was a hint of a lisp.
"What are you doing here?" Jonathan hissed, raising the sheets over his chest like a woman, clutching them there with a shaky hand.
"You don't have to whisper," Warren said, he nodded in Andrew's direction, "He won't hear you. This is a dream."
"Don't you nod at him!" Jonathan snapped, then, "What the hell are you doing here? You're dead." Then he remembered something, "And didn't I tell you to stay away from us, anyway?"
"I'm not going to hurt you, or, or anybody else. I'm here to help you."
Jonathan rolled his eyes, "What, like an angel?"
"No, angels don't exist."
"Oh." Feeling slightly disappointed, Jonathan looked down and stuck out his lower lip for a second. "So what are you doing here?"
"I told you, I'm here to help you." He should have rolled his eyes at me like ten times by now, called me Sparky or something, Jonathan remarked to himself.
"I don't really do that anymore."
Startled, Jonathan looked up, "Huh? Do what anymore?"
"Roll my eyes at people. Make up insulting nicknames."
"Don't do that, don't read my mind!"
"I'm sorry," he seemed genuinely contrite, "Just, sometimes I can't help it. It's still kind of an involuntary thing."
"Dude, weird." Jonathan frowned. "So what are you supposed to be helping with?"
Warren looked down at his clasped hands then looked up. "I know about what happened, what happened to Andrew."
Automatically, Jonathan got a tighter hold on him. In sleep, Andrew tugged at the sleeve of his tee shirt. "What do you know?"
"I know about Ethan Rayne, I know-"
"Don't say that name."
"Sorry. I know that Andrew got hurt."
Jonathan leaned forward. "Yeah, so what, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna smite him or something?"
"I can't smite people."
"Bet you wish you could," Jonathan smirked.
"No, actually, I don't."
"So, what? You're nice now?" He frowned again.
"I guess you could say that." Warren smiled with one side of his mouth.
"So how are you gonna help us?"
"I'm going to give you some advice."
Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Great, advice from Mr. Let's-Take-Over- Sunnydale-And-Maybe-Kill-A-Few-People-While-We're-At-It."
Fidgety, Warren looked down again, ran the corner of the blanket through his fingers. "What, did I hurt your feelings?" Jonathan yelled, taking advantage of it being a dream, "It's your stupid fault any of this happened! Because of you, we had to haul ass out of the country. The girl who you drove insane by killing her girlfriend nearly murdered us. If you hadn't turned into such a psycho, none of this would have happened, that fucker wouldn't have- None of this would have happened."
"You wouldn't be with Andrew," Warren said quietly.
"You don't know that," Jonathan scowled.
"The two of you didn't get along until you found that you had to. You didn't start letting yourself love him until it seemed like the rest of the world had been stripped away, and there was nobody to disapprove or to stop you. Until it felt pointless to hold it back anymore."
"Sh-shut up!" Jonathan shook his head. "Christ, I liked you better when you were a psycho. At least then you only went around thinking you were right all the time."
"I know I did horrible things when I was alive, and to be frank, what I'm doing now isn't exactly a picnic. The pain you feel, I feel it too."
"What? You do?"
"Part of the job," Warren shrugged, "I'm getting used to it."
"You would only be here cos it somehow benefits you."
"That's not why." Warren leaned forward. "I don't want you to hurt, I don't want Andrew to, either. I did a lot of cruel things to you, to both of you, and I know I can't apologize, but please, just listen to me."
"Okay, gimme your great advice."
"Get over it."
"What?!"
"Get over it." Warren raised his eyebrows, like What can you do?
"That's your super-duper ghostly advice?"
"I'm not a ghost," he mumbled, sounding really hurt.
"Sorry." It was hard to be mad at him, when he was all dead and stuff. "So, what, just, like, forget it happened?"
"No, that's not it. You can still be upset about what happened, but stop letting it ruin your life. He," Warren started to nod toward Andrew, but stopped himself, "He's gotten over it, or nearly so." Warren furrowed his brow, "Well, he will. I dunno, it's hard to explain," he had a far- away look on his face, "I still have trouble with words sometimes…"
"But it only just happened! How am I supposed to get over it, how can he be over it? How could it be over so soon?"
Warren looked at the floor. "It's not over, just, well, this is like a turning point. Everything can still be all right. Just-"
"Just what? How can it be better?"
"Because he loves you," Warren's expression was soft, "He loves you and he knows that it will be hard, it'll hurt for a long time, but he can take it, as long as he knows you're with him, that you love him."
It almost hurt to look at Andrew, so Jonathan did so only briefly. He turned back to Dead-Warren, "I do."
"I know you do, and so does he. Just, you're not doing anybody any favors by walking around reliving it, bathing in the pain just because you think you're being disloyal to him by forgetting for a second."
"Stop fucking reading my mind!"
"I'm sorry," Warren shook his head, "I know I should be able to help it, but it's almost painful to keep it all out."
You should be in pain, Jonathan said to himself, because he knew Warren would hear it. A wave of shock ran over his face, and then he looked wounded. Warren's eyes fled to the beaten-down carpet.
"Sorry," Jonathan murmured.
"No, it's okay. I expected you to be a lot meaner, actually," he looked up again, "Anyway, the important thing is that you let go, let go of everything but him," another aborted nod, "but Andrew. He's what's important. And you're important to him; whatever you feel, he feels that, too. I know it's hard, but you have to be strong for the both of you."
"I know." Jonathan closed his eyes. "So are you gonna, like, turn into light or disappear in a cloud of smoke or get beamed up or what?"
"No, you'll just wake up and I'll be gone."
"Well that's kinda lame. Don't you guys get any neat special effects or powers or anything?"
Warren closed his eyes and laughed. "Nope- or, really, we just get one."
"What's that?"
"The mind reading thing, the knowing stuff thing."
"Oh."
"I know that he loves you, Jonathan, and I know that you love him. Don't let this get to be bigger than you. Do what you have to, but don't let it destroy you."
The little wintergreen demon that was fear sunk its claws into Jonathan's shoulders. "Could it?, uh, destroy us?" His eyes widened.
"Don't let it get to where you could find out the answer to that question."
Trying to think up something else to say, something else to ask, Jonathan let his eyelids fall. When he opened his eyes, he did so with a start. Dead-Warren was gone, and the room was fresh and fragrant with the first sighs of morning.
The problem was that ever since what had happened had happened, their little life in Mexico seemed to no longer fit. Everyday, Jonathan felt stifled, claustrophobic. He supposed that he could have been unconsciously compensating for his initial desire to curl up into a ball and hide under the sink, away from the huge, dangerous world, but theorizing about it didn't quell the feeling of tightness, fitfulness. Walking on the streets was strange, it now filled him with such a hot fear. To both their surprise, he had begun holding Andrew's hand wherever they went; this was formerly taboo, for it could attract attention and trouble that they didn't need. But Jonathan needed this now, needed to always have some kind of tangible, physical link to Andrew. Maybe that was compensating behavior as well.
They hadn't done it, made love, since what had happened. It had been nearly a month since Andrew had come home, dazed and ravaged. Neither of them talked about it, but they knew it wasn't going to happen any time soon- they weren't going to have sex. It hurt, in a dull yet insistent way, like a bruise that keeps getting poked and pressed, to feel like that part of their life was over. It was only a flat, dim ache, though, because in lieu of their usual hyperactive sex life, they were more affectionate with each other than they'd ever been. The constant handholding was a bit frantic, but the rest of it was… sweet. Bittersweet, but sweet all the same. They were always wrapped around each other, in that bed with the sagging middle and the shaking frame that looked to be constructed from the bodies of dead model airplanes, their two heads on the same pillow, bodies all the way under the big red and brown Southwestern print blanket. Nobody could hurt them, in that bed, so there they stayed.
The bed had become their base of operations. They spent long days cocooned in the once-stiff white cotton sheets, gone skin-soft and floppy from constant use, the wonderful big blanket their insulation from the outside world, the air conditioning on the top setting to make getting out of bed seem even less attractive. They slept, for halves of hours at a time, or lay huddled in wordless mock-sleep. Under the tight buzz of the television, they practiced fitting their bodies together in a dozen different ways, re-learned the shapes that had long-ago been memorized. They touched, and re-touched, tickled, jostled, kissed- they were in constant contact, but not the way they had once been. It was sweet, but with a bitterness.
The bathtub was the only other place in the room worth spending time in. When they had their bath, Jonathan would unfurl the shower curtain, drawing it around the elliptical tub, so that it held in the majority of the steam. The thickened air made Andrew pant, a sound Jonathan still liked to hear, even if he was not the cause of it. It occurred to Jonathan that they were probably regressing, that the places where they spent most of their time were womb-like. This was probably not the best thing- this might actually have been what Dead-Warren had been warning him about. Jonathan found himself wishing that Dead-Warren would come back, so that he could ask him what the hell he'd been talking about, specifically.
Was it really so bad, though?- not having sex? Even when he thought about it, for a long time and not just in passing, Jonathan found that he didn't mind it, it wasn't bad. Andrew didn't seem to be upset, didn't try to initiate anything, either. When Andrew wanted something, he asked for it, in one way or another, and he wasn't asking for anything more than he was getting.
The root cause of their "problem" (Jonathan thought of it with imaginary quotation marks because it wasn't a real problem, not the kind you felt like fixing) wasn't all that easy to determine. Everyday, Jonathan asked himself the same questions. Number one, Are you still attracted to him? The answer was always yes. Number two, Are you attracted to anybody else? The answer was always no. Women had stopped interesting him since they had gotten together, and men had never interested him. He didn't like Andrew because he was a boy, he liked Andrew because he was Andrew. Number three, Does the thought of having sex with him make you feel anything negative? While he couldn't say that it did, Jonathan didn't really feel anything positive, either. He didn't really feel too much about it at all. Number four, What the hell is wrong with you? That one still went unanswered.
Jonathan awoke, as though he had been shaken by both shoulders. Another dream- he had woken to a dream of gauzy sunlight and the silver-needle chants of the birds. It was a dream, he knew, because the bedroom did not usually open out into a garden, the fourth wall cut away so that one could walk along a little path that started by the television and continued on to who-knows-where. Leaning on his elbows, he cast a look at Andrew. He was just as still as ever, eyes masked by creamy lids, body masked by the big blanket. Two fat, gleaming crows sat sentry at his head and feet. One of them cried out, making Jonathan start, but not waking Andrew. Jonathan knew, as one knows such things in dreams, that the sound the crow had made meant Go!
Tentatively, he stood, remembering dreams that he had had in the past, in which the floor was slick as wet skin and kept jerking and shifting. Under his feet, there was no ice; rather, the threadbare carpet had been transfigured into velvety grass. Taking small steps, he moved around the bed, his eyes on Andrew the whole time. Then he looked to where the fourth wall with its dusty-curtained window should be. Is this where- he began to ask, but the crow cut him off, with another Go! So he went.
The whole place was lit the way something looks if it is beheld with eyes half-closed, in the soft-focus of dusk. There were many trees, some Jonathan couldn't identify, their bark silvery under a coat of verdigris moss. The air was lit up by birdcalls, Jonathan could understand all of them. He caught, Ah, white boy, white boy, and Mind your own, Frederick, and Loves you, loves you. Shouldn't the birds be speaking Spanish, this being Mexico? He was glad they weren't though; hearing people speak Spanish still made Jonathan nervous, with the possibility that they could be saying mean things about him or Andrew.
He walked on further, his head darting to the side every so often, to shoot looks over his shoulder at the sort-of-room with Andrew still asleep in the bed. Crows had always terrified him, what kind of group of animals en masse is called a "murder" anyway?, and he kept on being afraid that they were going to hurt Andrew. They didn't, though, they just sat balanced at both ends of the bed, occasionally burrowing beaks into their fat-shined black feathers.
This really was a beautiful place, the nicest dream-place he had ever known, by far. He would have to tell Andrew about it when he woke up-
A small child of indeterminate age and gender came into the middle of Jonathan's path from within a clump of bushes off to the left. In its hand, it held a stick, a small branch actually, neatly pared and papered with moss. When it saw Jonathan, it raised the stick, as if to say, See?
"Oh, what's that?" Jonathan asked, crouching down a little to be at the kid's eye-level.
Once it spoke, Jonathan figured that it was most likely a he, a little boy. "They're going to hit me with it," the child said matter-of- factly.
This filled Jonathan with a soul-deep sadness, but he didn't let it show. He only frowned slightly, and said, "Well, what would make you feel better?"
The little boy pointed to some huge, star-shaped pink flowers growing out of a vine on the ground. Hibiscus, Jonathan said to himself, surprised that they could be found in this garden. For even if the garden were only a piece of his mind, his mind was in Mexico, and hibiscus flowers didn't grow in that part of the world, did they? He shrugged and asked, "Which one?" He hoped the little boy would pick one of the more wilted blooms, as Jonathan didn't like the idea of hurting things, even plants. It must have been his mother who had imbued him with that fear of doing damage. As a little boy, she had banned him from climbing trees, saying that what it was like for the trees was if somebody dug their heels and fingers into your skin, and wouldn't that be painful? So Jonathan had never climbed a tree in his life. Not that he had ever really been tall enough to reach the branches.
The little boy pointed to a flower with petals that were slightly mashed, copper-brown creases bisecting the damp pink. Jonathan was relieved, this one was almost dead, it wouldn't hurt so much to pull it off the vine. He stooped to pluck it, but as his fingers brushed the petals, the flower was renewed. For a period of time, either a second or an hour, he stared at it, amazed by its resurrection, at its recovered beauty. When he turned around, the little boy was gone.
Jonathan had a headache, one of those that make even the dimmest light feel like a knitting needle to the temple, the point coming out of your eye. A bright voice in his head kept snapping, Physician! Heal thyself, a phrase he'd always liked the sound of, but now, if it were a person, he would throttle it. He wasn't good for much, he knew; better to just suck it up, get out of the soft, warm bed and go to the Farmacia for some aspirina. Being sick or hurt in any way always made Jonathan frantic; he always felt like he'd never know what it was to be healthy again. In pain, he could never fathom the absence of pain.
He sat up.
"What is it?" Andrew asked. On one side of his head, the hair was matted down, on the other side it was almost vertical, from leaning on the pillow.
"I have a headache." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Oh. Do you want me to go out and get you something for it?"
"No, I'll just go."
Andrew shrugged, "Well, either way, I'm going."
Something touched Jonathan, something he could not express, something welled up in him. "Okay," he said hoarsely, and patted Andrew's hand.
God, we look like junkies, Jonathan thought when he caught a look at the two of them in the mirror behind the television. Neither of them seemed to be able to stand up straight, they were rail thin, and behind their sunglasses, their eye sockets were stained the tan of insomnia. All that time in bed, and they couldn't seem to get any rest.
Out on the street, it was mercifully dim, the sun having pissed off and retired behind a great big cloud Andrew said was in the shape of a cruise ship. Jonathan argued that it was obviously a dragon of some sort, and the discussion carried them all the way to the Farmacia. Along with the aspirin, Jonathan bought Andrew a Popsicle.
"This is my favorite flavor," Andrew said, sucking the juice right out of the ice, leaving it brittle and tinted with Popsicle blood like a woman's lips were tinted pink in an old fashioned photo.
"What kind is it?" Jonathan asked. It just looked red to him.
"I dunno," Andrew tilted his head down to catch a drip of scarlet on his tongue, "Red, I guess."
Jonathan laughed. "What does it taste like?"
"Not any kind of fruit, that's for sure. Um, like really good cough syrup."
Again, Jonathan laughed, "You are so weird."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." He took hold of the hand that didn't have the Popsicle.
In the room, Jonathan took two aspirin. For a second, he watched Andrew through the bathroom mirror, watched him taking off his clothes, settling back into bed. How frail he was, how small and controlled his gestures were, as though even moving a little bit hurt. Pressing his hands against the counter, he wondered if Andrew still felt any discomfort. It had been a month, but maybe the sheer force of the blow to his psyche was enough to prolong the aches, keep open the cracks leaking pain that Jonathan had been sure he'd sealed up and shut down. Maybe he hadn't done a good enough job. Maybe-
"Jonathan?" Andrew's voice rang out, splitting air, splitting Jonathan's thoughts.
"I'm coming," he said and flicked off the bathroom light. His legs felt unsteady for walking, but he only had to go about ten feet. At the edge of the bed he sat, pulled off exactly half of his clothing and then got into bed next to Andrew, who pushed against him and pulled him closer.
Jonathan had a thought, just then, one of those ridiculous thoughts that either turn into innovations or get you laughed out of the room. He sucked in a breath of air, scented with Andrew, due to their proximity. "Hey, Andrew?"
"Hey, what?" Sleepily, he let his head fall on Jonathan's shoulder. Instinctively, Jonathan laid his hand on the back of his head.
"Do you think, maybe, you would wanna go back to America?"
Andrew looked at him. "We can't, though," a puzzled frown slightly twisted his mouth, "We'd get arrested, sent to jail."
"Only if we went back to Sunnydale, that's the only place where anybody knows us. Think of all the places where nobody knows us, nobody at all. We could go to New York, or to New Orleans or Chicago, anywhere."
"But Jonathan, I mean, this is like, kind of our home. We can't just leave."
"Why? Whose gonna cry about it if we go?"
"Well, nobody, but, but, I just learned how to roll my r's! See, churrrrrros. And what about Gloria Trevi? I'll never find out what's gonna happen with her and her Brazilian baby if we go back. And they don't have good tequila, either, and the soap operas there are lame… And if I were arguing with you over who's more of a girl, I would so be winning-" Andrew giggled, then became serious again, "But, really, Jonathan, it's not safe there, it's safe here. We should stay here."
Jonathan sighed, "But it's not safe. I don't feel safe here, and I know that you don't either. I mean, apart from today, when was the last time we got out of bed? All we do is lie around all day, we don't even sleep as much as we should, and we hardly eat. This isn't the way it should be."
"How should it be? I'm scared, Jonathan. This, this room, this bed, it's the only place where I know nothing's gonna happen to us. Out there, anything could happen! Anything did happen," he added, almost inaudibly.
Jonathan stroked his cheek with the back of his hand. "It's all right."
"Not, it's not all right. I thought it would be, but it's not. And it's not fair! There's always something stupid that comes around to fuck everything up! Is it ever okay?"
"I'm starting to think not," Jonathan shook his head, "I think I'm going to give up on thinking that everything is okay, I think I keep jinxing us."
"You would." Andrew snuggled against him.
"We can stay in Mexico, Andrew, but something's gotta change. This, the way things are, I think…" he remembered something Dead-Warren had said, "I think it could destroy us."
"Destroy us how?" Andrew's voice wobbled like a jump rope being snaked across the floor.
"I don't know," he almost added Dead-Warren didn't say, but was glad he hadn't. "Think about it, at least. You don't have to make up your mind right this second, but, uh, I think stuff should definitely change."
"Like what?"
"Like getting out of bed once in a while." Andrew opened his mouth to say something, but Jonathan stopped him, "To do something besides take a bath."
"Oh." Andrew pouted a little. "Can we start tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Jonathan raised his eyes to the pockmarked plaster of the ceiling, "Tomorrow."
"Hey, Jonathan," Andrew came trotting up to him with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Hey, what?" Jonathan put down the video game he had been looking at. Once, these kinds of things had been his whole life, now, it all just looked foreign. Maybe he was getting old.
"I found this guy, and he, like, tells you your future by having you sing," Andrew said, breathlessly.
Jonathan looked around. "What? Where? Where is he?" All he saw all around him were Mexican versions of the people he and Andrew had once been, boys with nothing more to do than immerse themselves in other worlds, presumably better than the one they lived in. Idly, Jonathan caught himself wondering if any of them were secretly plotting to take over Tijuana. From downstairs, he heard the crunching sounds of pixilated objects being exploded.
"He's not here," he batted at Jonathan's arm excitedly, "He's in Las Vegas!"
Somebody walking by bumped into Jonathan, knocking him off balance. Andrew grabbed his arm and steadied him. Pendejo, he muttered in the stranger's wake. Andrew giggled, that word was still unbelievably funny to him. "So you wanna go to Las Vegas?" Jonathan asked, "So we can do what, sing show tunes at some guy so he can tell us our future? I'm sorry, Andrew, but this sounds like bullshit."
"No, no, it isn't. Cos he's not a guy, he's a, um," he leaned in close and whispered, "He's a demon."
"Dude! He could, like, eat us then!"
"No, no, he's a good demon," Andrew waved the piece of paper around, "See, look, that's him."
"What, he has his own website?" Jonathan snorted, and took the paper from Andrew.
"Everybody has a website," Andrew shrugged. Jonathan studied the picture. Green skin, horns, red eyes.
"Yep, that's a demon." Red lips, eyeliner, electric blue suit, bad bleach job. "That is one gay demon."
"Yeah, thanks, Mr. Kettle." Andrew elbowed him playfully.
"It's the pot calling the kettle black." Jonathan shoved him a little. This was as affectionate as they could be in a place like this. There was so much teenaged male rage in the internet café that Jonathan was nearly choking on it.
"Okay, Mr. Pot."
"That's better." Jonathan bit his lip. "So, what you sing and this demon guy can tell you your future?"
"Not just your future, your destiny."
"And you wanna do this?"
Andrew looked down and kind of swayed from side to side. Quietly, he said, "Yeah."
"If it's important to you, we'll do it."
"Really?"
"Really. Now come on," he took Andrew's hand, screw what anybody had to say about it, "I'll buy you an ice cream."
For a couple of days, they practiced their old stick-up routine, a relic from their first days in Tijuana, when they'd been wild and careless, gotten drunk until dawn and made it in their hotel room until sunset. Before Jonathan had woken up afraid one morning, before Andrew had been hurt. In a way, it was nice, getting up to at least one of their old tricks. Jonathan wondered if crime was something that ran through their veins, if it was in any way related to the magick they did, or the way they loved each other. On three accounts, they were pushed as far out of the respectable, normal world as one could get and still know of its existence. Once, it would have bothered Jonathan, being on the outside, but it didn't now- because he wasn't; he and Andrew were always on the inside of each other. Andrew was what colored his blood.
Very early on a Wednesday morning, when the sky was just a long wash of milk, Jonathan magicked open a car that was parked on the curb. Gets what he deserves, Jonathan thought of the car's owner, for parking like that. They weren't taking anything with them, just the money they had wrung from tourists. They got what they deserved, Jonathan thought, Looking at him that way. He cast a glance at Andrew, whose hand was lain like a magician's white glove on Jonathan's knee. It had made him furious to see horrible American men hanging around Andrew like aphids in a rose garden. The looks they had given him, their intentions chalk-scrawled across their faces… That was something he had never gotten used to. Both he and Andrew had been glad to give up that gig. It was over for good, now.
Neither of them had said anything, but they both knew that this was it. No more Tijuana. God only knew where they'd be next, after Las Vegas, in a year, two years- but Mexico was dead to them. It had this taint on it now, a thin veneer of decay, moldering anguish.
Jonathan turned his head briefly, he didn't like to look away from the road when he was driving, as he still wasn't terribly good at it, and took a mental picture of Andrew. He turned his eyes back to the road, and examined the Andrew-picture behind his eyes. His sweet Andrew- he would do anything for that boy, he thought, with a fullness and a sting in his eyes. His sweet Andrew, lazily leaning against the door, head at the window, hand on Jonathan's knee. He looked like a rag doll, as he had many times before, but the punch was never pulled, it never broke Jonathan's heart any less to see him this way. He wanted to pull over, to get in the backseat of the stolen car with him and hold him like the Virgin Mary always seemed to be holding the crucified Jesus on all those religious post cards. That couldn't be, though, he shook his head, they had to keep on going, get away, get away, get away.
He said Andrew's name, and Andrew turned to the sound of his voice, smiled weakly. The pain in him was immense, a wine red ocean snarling in his ears, but Jonathan held it back, kept driving. What he wanted to do was to tell Andrew that everything would be all right, to reassure him somehow… Was there even such a thing as "all right"? Jonathan was sure that there wasn't, but wanted to say it anyway. Sadly, he realized that it wouldn't do either of them any good.
AUTHOR: Polly Burns
EMAIL: [email protected]
SUMMARY: Andrew and Jonathan try to cope with a traumatic event, but don't do such a great job.
SPOILER WARNINGS: Eh, "Seeing Red", I guess, but just a little, tiny bit.
RATING: PG-13, I guess, for badwords, vague references to sex and violence and criminal-type behavior. This one's pretty tame, folks.
DISCLAIMER: Don't be goin around saying that you own these people and you made them up yourself, cos sure, it's the internet and you may think nobody's gonna care, but what about that Joss Whedon and his friends at UPN? They know you're just some dork-kid who wants attention. Yep, you guessed it, these are not my characters and they never were, and I am just a dork-kid who wants attention. Song lyrics come from Poor Girl, which is not by me, cos it's by X. The city of Tijuana is in sole custody of itself and so is Gloria Trevi- and that's just fine with me.
NOTES: Okay, for the uninitiated who give a damn, Gloria Trevi (a.k.a. "The Mexican Madonna", a.k.a. "La Atrevida"- the daring) is a Mexican pop star who allegedly collaborated in the abduction and rape of a whole lot of underage girls with her manager/ lover/ whatever. It's been a big scandal for years and now she's got a (I think it's Brazilian) baby, which might get her exonerated. I imagine this will all still be going on in a year from now.
This story takes place about a month from the events in "White".
1 Twilight
You said "hold me tight"/ but I couldn't get it right.
The room was twilit, or dawnlit, the bath-water-warm half-light that came on between times, between glossy raven night and fiery day. Jonathan could hear his breaths, each one like a silken handkerchief, silken half-light rocking him out of drowsiness, out of sleep. He turned his head the slightest bit, to look at Andrew. Andrew was all right, completely still, even in sleep maintaining his death-grip on Jonathan's arm. Everything was all right; his breaths came and went like little waves knocking on the side of a boat. All right…
And then, it began to seep into Jonathan's brain that the corner of the bed shouldn't go down like that, not like it was weighted, not like somebody was sitting there. Who would be perched there, making the bed go on a slight incline? Without moving any more than he had to, he managed to shift in position enough to get a look at their mystery guest. First, he noted the eyes, slightly tilted, with luminous irises of rich brown, eyebrows that slanted downwards, like a cartoon villain's. Slowly, Jonathan's eyes were adjusting to the grayish light of the room at dawn, and to what he was seeing; next came pointy features, still slightly swathed in adolescent chubbiness, skin as pale as Jonathan's. The boy, this boy-person, opened his mouth, to start to say something. Even before the words came, Jonathan knew the sound of that voice- it was like the sound of water over sand, sometimes it cracked at the end of words, there was a hint of a lisp.
"What are you doing here?" Jonathan hissed, raising the sheets over his chest like a woman, clutching them there with a shaky hand.
"You don't have to whisper," Warren said, he nodded in Andrew's direction, "He won't hear you. This is a dream."
"Don't you nod at him!" Jonathan snapped, then, "What the hell are you doing here? You're dead." Then he remembered something, "And didn't I tell you to stay away from us, anyway?"
"I'm not going to hurt you, or, or anybody else. I'm here to help you."
Jonathan rolled his eyes, "What, like an angel?"
"No, angels don't exist."
"Oh." Feeling slightly disappointed, Jonathan looked down and stuck out his lower lip for a second. "So what are you doing here?"
"I told you, I'm here to help you." He should have rolled his eyes at me like ten times by now, called me Sparky or something, Jonathan remarked to himself.
"I don't really do that anymore."
Startled, Jonathan looked up, "Huh? Do what anymore?"
"Roll my eyes at people. Make up insulting nicknames."
"Don't do that, don't read my mind!"
"I'm sorry," he seemed genuinely contrite, "Just, sometimes I can't help it. It's still kind of an involuntary thing."
"Dude, weird." Jonathan frowned. "So what are you supposed to be helping with?"
Warren looked down at his clasped hands then looked up. "I know about what happened, what happened to Andrew."
Automatically, Jonathan got a tighter hold on him. In sleep, Andrew tugged at the sleeve of his tee shirt. "What do you know?"
"I know about Ethan Rayne, I know-"
"Don't say that name."
"Sorry. I know that Andrew got hurt."
Jonathan leaned forward. "Yeah, so what, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna smite him or something?"
"I can't smite people."
"Bet you wish you could," Jonathan smirked.
"No, actually, I don't."
"So, what? You're nice now?" He frowned again.
"I guess you could say that." Warren smiled with one side of his mouth.
"So how are you gonna help us?"
"I'm going to give you some advice."
Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Great, advice from Mr. Let's-Take-Over- Sunnydale-And-Maybe-Kill-A-Few-People-While-We're-At-It."
Fidgety, Warren looked down again, ran the corner of the blanket through his fingers. "What, did I hurt your feelings?" Jonathan yelled, taking advantage of it being a dream, "It's your stupid fault any of this happened! Because of you, we had to haul ass out of the country. The girl who you drove insane by killing her girlfriend nearly murdered us. If you hadn't turned into such a psycho, none of this would have happened, that fucker wouldn't have- None of this would have happened."
"You wouldn't be with Andrew," Warren said quietly.
"You don't know that," Jonathan scowled.
"The two of you didn't get along until you found that you had to. You didn't start letting yourself love him until it seemed like the rest of the world had been stripped away, and there was nobody to disapprove or to stop you. Until it felt pointless to hold it back anymore."
"Sh-shut up!" Jonathan shook his head. "Christ, I liked you better when you were a psycho. At least then you only went around thinking you were right all the time."
"I know I did horrible things when I was alive, and to be frank, what I'm doing now isn't exactly a picnic. The pain you feel, I feel it too."
"What? You do?"
"Part of the job," Warren shrugged, "I'm getting used to it."
"You would only be here cos it somehow benefits you."
"That's not why." Warren leaned forward. "I don't want you to hurt, I don't want Andrew to, either. I did a lot of cruel things to you, to both of you, and I know I can't apologize, but please, just listen to me."
"Okay, gimme your great advice."
"Get over it."
"What?!"
"Get over it." Warren raised his eyebrows, like What can you do?
"That's your super-duper ghostly advice?"
"I'm not a ghost," he mumbled, sounding really hurt.
"Sorry." It was hard to be mad at him, when he was all dead and stuff. "So, what, just, like, forget it happened?"
"No, that's not it. You can still be upset about what happened, but stop letting it ruin your life. He," Warren started to nod toward Andrew, but stopped himself, "He's gotten over it, or nearly so." Warren furrowed his brow, "Well, he will. I dunno, it's hard to explain," he had a far- away look on his face, "I still have trouble with words sometimes…"
"But it only just happened! How am I supposed to get over it, how can he be over it? How could it be over so soon?"
Warren looked at the floor. "It's not over, just, well, this is like a turning point. Everything can still be all right. Just-"
"Just what? How can it be better?"
"Because he loves you," Warren's expression was soft, "He loves you and he knows that it will be hard, it'll hurt for a long time, but he can take it, as long as he knows you're with him, that you love him."
It almost hurt to look at Andrew, so Jonathan did so only briefly. He turned back to Dead-Warren, "I do."
"I know you do, and so does he. Just, you're not doing anybody any favors by walking around reliving it, bathing in the pain just because you think you're being disloyal to him by forgetting for a second."
"Stop fucking reading my mind!"
"I'm sorry," Warren shook his head, "I know I should be able to help it, but it's almost painful to keep it all out."
You should be in pain, Jonathan said to himself, because he knew Warren would hear it. A wave of shock ran over his face, and then he looked wounded. Warren's eyes fled to the beaten-down carpet.
"Sorry," Jonathan murmured.
"No, it's okay. I expected you to be a lot meaner, actually," he looked up again, "Anyway, the important thing is that you let go, let go of everything but him," another aborted nod, "but Andrew. He's what's important. And you're important to him; whatever you feel, he feels that, too. I know it's hard, but you have to be strong for the both of you."
"I know." Jonathan closed his eyes. "So are you gonna, like, turn into light or disappear in a cloud of smoke or get beamed up or what?"
"No, you'll just wake up and I'll be gone."
"Well that's kinda lame. Don't you guys get any neat special effects or powers or anything?"
Warren closed his eyes and laughed. "Nope- or, really, we just get one."
"What's that?"
"The mind reading thing, the knowing stuff thing."
"Oh."
"I know that he loves you, Jonathan, and I know that you love him. Don't let this get to be bigger than you. Do what you have to, but don't let it destroy you."
The little wintergreen demon that was fear sunk its claws into Jonathan's shoulders. "Could it?, uh, destroy us?" His eyes widened.
"Don't let it get to where you could find out the answer to that question."
Trying to think up something else to say, something else to ask, Jonathan let his eyelids fall. When he opened his eyes, he did so with a start. Dead-Warren was gone, and the room was fresh and fragrant with the first sighs of morning.
The problem was that ever since what had happened had happened, their little life in Mexico seemed to no longer fit. Everyday, Jonathan felt stifled, claustrophobic. He supposed that he could have been unconsciously compensating for his initial desire to curl up into a ball and hide under the sink, away from the huge, dangerous world, but theorizing about it didn't quell the feeling of tightness, fitfulness. Walking on the streets was strange, it now filled him with such a hot fear. To both their surprise, he had begun holding Andrew's hand wherever they went; this was formerly taboo, for it could attract attention and trouble that they didn't need. But Jonathan needed this now, needed to always have some kind of tangible, physical link to Andrew. Maybe that was compensating behavior as well.
They hadn't done it, made love, since what had happened. It had been nearly a month since Andrew had come home, dazed and ravaged. Neither of them talked about it, but they knew it wasn't going to happen any time soon- they weren't going to have sex. It hurt, in a dull yet insistent way, like a bruise that keeps getting poked and pressed, to feel like that part of their life was over. It was only a flat, dim ache, though, because in lieu of their usual hyperactive sex life, they were more affectionate with each other than they'd ever been. The constant handholding was a bit frantic, but the rest of it was… sweet. Bittersweet, but sweet all the same. They were always wrapped around each other, in that bed with the sagging middle and the shaking frame that looked to be constructed from the bodies of dead model airplanes, their two heads on the same pillow, bodies all the way under the big red and brown Southwestern print blanket. Nobody could hurt them, in that bed, so there they stayed.
The bed had become their base of operations. They spent long days cocooned in the once-stiff white cotton sheets, gone skin-soft and floppy from constant use, the wonderful big blanket their insulation from the outside world, the air conditioning on the top setting to make getting out of bed seem even less attractive. They slept, for halves of hours at a time, or lay huddled in wordless mock-sleep. Under the tight buzz of the television, they practiced fitting their bodies together in a dozen different ways, re-learned the shapes that had long-ago been memorized. They touched, and re-touched, tickled, jostled, kissed- they were in constant contact, but not the way they had once been. It was sweet, but with a bitterness.
The bathtub was the only other place in the room worth spending time in. When they had their bath, Jonathan would unfurl the shower curtain, drawing it around the elliptical tub, so that it held in the majority of the steam. The thickened air made Andrew pant, a sound Jonathan still liked to hear, even if he was not the cause of it. It occurred to Jonathan that they were probably regressing, that the places where they spent most of their time were womb-like. This was probably not the best thing- this might actually have been what Dead-Warren had been warning him about. Jonathan found himself wishing that Dead-Warren would come back, so that he could ask him what the hell he'd been talking about, specifically.
Was it really so bad, though?- not having sex? Even when he thought about it, for a long time and not just in passing, Jonathan found that he didn't mind it, it wasn't bad. Andrew didn't seem to be upset, didn't try to initiate anything, either. When Andrew wanted something, he asked for it, in one way or another, and he wasn't asking for anything more than he was getting.
The root cause of their "problem" (Jonathan thought of it with imaginary quotation marks because it wasn't a real problem, not the kind you felt like fixing) wasn't all that easy to determine. Everyday, Jonathan asked himself the same questions. Number one, Are you still attracted to him? The answer was always yes. Number two, Are you attracted to anybody else? The answer was always no. Women had stopped interesting him since they had gotten together, and men had never interested him. He didn't like Andrew because he was a boy, he liked Andrew because he was Andrew. Number three, Does the thought of having sex with him make you feel anything negative? While he couldn't say that it did, Jonathan didn't really feel anything positive, either. He didn't really feel too much about it at all. Number four, What the hell is wrong with you? That one still went unanswered.
Jonathan awoke, as though he had been shaken by both shoulders. Another dream- he had woken to a dream of gauzy sunlight and the silver-needle chants of the birds. It was a dream, he knew, because the bedroom did not usually open out into a garden, the fourth wall cut away so that one could walk along a little path that started by the television and continued on to who-knows-where. Leaning on his elbows, he cast a look at Andrew. He was just as still as ever, eyes masked by creamy lids, body masked by the big blanket. Two fat, gleaming crows sat sentry at his head and feet. One of them cried out, making Jonathan start, but not waking Andrew. Jonathan knew, as one knows such things in dreams, that the sound the crow had made meant Go!
Tentatively, he stood, remembering dreams that he had had in the past, in which the floor was slick as wet skin and kept jerking and shifting. Under his feet, there was no ice; rather, the threadbare carpet had been transfigured into velvety grass. Taking small steps, he moved around the bed, his eyes on Andrew the whole time. Then he looked to where the fourth wall with its dusty-curtained window should be. Is this where- he began to ask, but the crow cut him off, with another Go! So he went.
The whole place was lit the way something looks if it is beheld with eyes half-closed, in the soft-focus of dusk. There were many trees, some Jonathan couldn't identify, their bark silvery under a coat of verdigris moss. The air was lit up by birdcalls, Jonathan could understand all of them. He caught, Ah, white boy, white boy, and Mind your own, Frederick, and Loves you, loves you. Shouldn't the birds be speaking Spanish, this being Mexico? He was glad they weren't though; hearing people speak Spanish still made Jonathan nervous, with the possibility that they could be saying mean things about him or Andrew.
He walked on further, his head darting to the side every so often, to shoot looks over his shoulder at the sort-of-room with Andrew still asleep in the bed. Crows had always terrified him, what kind of group of animals en masse is called a "murder" anyway?, and he kept on being afraid that they were going to hurt Andrew. They didn't, though, they just sat balanced at both ends of the bed, occasionally burrowing beaks into their fat-shined black feathers.
This really was a beautiful place, the nicest dream-place he had ever known, by far. He would have to tell Andrew about it when he woke up-
A small child of indeterminate age and gender came into the middle of Jonathan's path from within a clump of bushes off to the left. In its hand, it held a stick, a small branch actually, neatly pared and papered with moss. When it saw Jonathan, it raised the stick, as if to say, See?
"Oh, what's that?" Jonathan asked, crouching down a little to be at the kid's eye-level.
Once it spoke, Jonathan figured that it was most likely a he, a little boy. "They're going to hit me with it," the child said matter-of- factly.
This filled Jonathan with a soul-deep sadness, but he didn't let it show. He only frowned slightly, and said, "Well, what would make you feel better?"
The little boy pointed to some huge, star-shaped pink flowers growing out of a vine on the ground. Hibiscus, Jonathan said to himself, surprised that they could be found in this garden. For even if the garden were only a piece of his mind, his mind was in Mexico, and hibiscus flowers didn't grow in that part of the world, did they? He shrugged and asked, "Which one?" He hoped the little boy would pick one of the more wilted blooms, as Jonathan didn't like the idea of hurting things, even plants. It must have been his mother who had imbued him with that fear of doing damage. As a little boy, she had banned him from climbing trees, saying that what it was like for the trees was if somebody dug their heels and fingers into your skin, and wouldn't that be painful? So Jonathan had never climbed a tree in his life. Not that he had ever really been tall enough to reach the branches.
The little boy pointed to a flower with petals that were slightly mashed, copper-brown creases bisecting the damp pink. Jonathan was relieved, this one was almost dead, it wouldn't hurt so much to pull it off the vine. He stooped to pluck it, but as his fingers brushed the petals, the flower was renewed. For a period of time, either a second or an hour, he stared at it, amazed by its resurrection, at its recovered beauty. When he turned around, the little boy was gone.
Jonathan had a headache, one of those that make even the dimmest light feel like a knitting needle to the temple, the point coming out of your eye. A bright voice in his head kept snapping, Physician! Heal thyself, a phrase he'd always liked the sound of, but now, if it were a person, he would throttle it. He wasn't good for much, he knew; better to just suck it up, get out of the soft, warm bed and go to the Farmacia for some aspirina. Being sick or hurt in any way always made Jonathan frantic; he always felt like he'd never know what it was to be healthy again. In pain, he could never fathom the absence of pain.
He sat up.
"What is it?" Andrew asked. On one side of his head, the hair was matted down, on the other side it was almost vertical, from leaning on the pillow.
"I have a headache." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Oh. Do you want me to go out and get you something for it?"
"No, I'll just go."
Andrew shrugged, "Well, either way, I'm going."
Something touched Jonathan, something he could not express, something welled up in him. "Okay," he said hoarsely, and patted Andrew's hand.
God, we look like junkies, Jonathan thought when he caught a look at the two of them in the mirror behind the television. Neither of them seemed to be able to stand up straight, they were rail thin, and behind their sunglasses, their eye sockets were stained the tan of insomnia. All that time in bed, and they couldn't seem to get any rest.
Out on the street, it was mercifully dim, the sun having pissed off and retired behind a great big cloud Andrew said was in the shape of a cruise ship. Jonathan argued that it was obviously a dragon of some sort, and the discussion carried them all the way to the Farmacia. Along with the aspirin, Jonathan bought Andrew a Popsicle.
"This is my favorite flavor," Andrew said, sucking the juice right out of the ice, leaving it brittle and tinted with Popsicle blood like a woman's lips were tinted pink in an old fashioned photo.
"What kind is it?" Jonathan asked. It just looked red to him.
"I dunno," Andrew tilted his head down to catch a drip of scarlet on his tongue, "Red, I guess."
Jonathan laughed. "What does it taste like?"
"Not any kind of fruit, that's for sure. Um, like really good cough syrup."
Again, Jonathan laughed, "You are so weird."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." He took hold of the hand that didn't have the Popsicle.
In the room, Jonathan took two aspirin. For a second, he watched Andrew through the bathroom mirror, watched him taking off his clothes, settling back into bed. How frail he was, how small and controlled his gestures were, as though even moving a little bit hurt. Pressing his hands against the counter, he wondered if Andrew still felt any discomfort. It had been a month, but maybe the sheer force of the blow to his psyche was enough to prolong the aches, keep open the cracks leaking pain that Jonathan had been sure he'd sealed up and shut down. Maybe he hadn't done a good enough job. Maybe-
"Jonathan?" Andrew's voice rang out, splitting air, splitting Jonathan's thoughts.
"I'm coming," he said and flicked off the bathroom light. His legs felt unsteady for walking, but he only had to go about ten feet. At the edge of the bed he sat, pulled off exactly half of his clothing and then got into bed next to Andrew, who pushed against him and pulled him closer.
Jonathan had a thought, just then, one of those ridiculous thoughts that either turn into innovations or get you laughed out of the room. He sucked in a breath of air, scented with Andrew, due to their proximity. "Hey, Andrew?"
"Hey, what?" Sleepily, he let his head fall on Jonathan's shoulder. Instinctively, Jonathan laid his hand on the back of his head.
"Do you think, maybe, you would wanna go back to America?"
Andrew looked at him. "We can't, though," a puzzled frown slightly twisted his mouth, "We'd get arrested, sent to jail."
"Only if we went back to Sunnydale, that's the only place where anybody knows us. Think of all the places where nobody knows us, nobody at all. We could go to New York, or to New Orleans or Chicago, anywhere."
"But Jonathan, I mean, this is like, kind of our home. We can't just leave."
"Why? Whose gonna cry about it if we go?"
"Well, nobody, but, but, I just learned how to roll my r's! See, churrrrrros. And what about Gloria Trevi? I'll never find out what's gonna happen with her and her Brazilian baby if we go back. And they don't have good tequila, either, and the soap operas there are lame… And if I were arguing with you over who's more of a girl, I would so be winning-" Andrew giggled, then became serious again, "But, really, Jonathan, it's not safe there, it's safe here. We should stay here."
Jonathan sighed, "But it's not safe. I don't feel safe here, and I know that you don't either. I mean, apart from today, when was the last time we got out of bed? All we do is lie around all day, we don't even sleep as much as we should, and we hardly eat. This isn't the way it should be."
"How should it be? I'm scared, Jonathan. This, this room, this bed, it's the only place where I know nothing's gonna happen to us. Out there, anything could happen! Anything did happen," he added, almost inaudibly.
Jonathan stroked his cheek with the back of his hand. "It's all right."
"Not, it's not all right. I thought it would be, but it's not. And it's not fair! There's always something stupid that comes around to fuck everything up! Is it ever okay?"
"I'm starting to think not," Jonathan shook his head, "I think I'm going to give up on thinking that everything is okay, I think I keep jinxing us."
"You would." Andrew snuggled against him.
"We can stay in Mexico, Andrew, but something's gotta change. This, the way things are, I think…" he remembered something Dead-Warren had said, "I think it could destroy us."
"Destroy us how?" Andrew's voice wobbled like a jump rope being snaked across the floor.
"I don't know," he almost added Dead-Warren didn't say, but was glad he hadn't. "Think about it, at least. You don't have to make up your mind right this second, but, uh, I think stuff should definitely change."
"Like what?"
"Like getting out of bed once in a while." Andrew opened his mouth to say something, but Jonathan stopped him, "To do something besides take a bath."
"Oh." Andrew pouted a little. "Can we start tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Jonathan raised his eyes to the pockmarked plaster of the ceiling, "Tomorrow."
"Hey, Jonathan," Andrew came trotting up to him with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Hey, what?" Jonathan put down the video game he had been looking at. Once, these kinds of things had been his whole life, now, it all just looked foreign. Maybe he was getting old.
"I found this guy, and he, like, tells you your future by having you sing," Andrew said, breathlessly.
Jonathan looked around. "What? Where? Where is he?" All he saw all around him were Mexican versions of the people he and Andrew had once been, boys with nothing more to do than immerse themselves in other worlds, presumably better than the one they lived in. Idly, Jonathan caught himself wondering if any of them were secretly plotting to take over Tijuana. From downstairs, he heard the crunching sounds of pixilated objects being exploded.
"He's not here," he batted at Jonathan's arm excitedly, "He's in Las Vegas!"
Somebody walking by bumped into Jonathan, knocking him off balance. Andrew grabbed his arm and steadied him. Pendejo, he muttered in the stranger's wake. Andrew giggled, that word was still unbelievably funny to him. "So you wanna go to Las Vegas?" Jonathan asked, "So we can do what, sing show tunes at some guy so he can tell us our future? I'm sorry, Andrew, but this sounds like bullshit."
"No, no, it isn't. Cos he's not a guy, he's a, um," he leaned in close and whispered, "He's a demon."
"Dude! He could, like, eat us then!"
"No, no, he's a good demon," Andrew waved the piece of paper around, "See, look, that's him."
"What, he has his own website?" Jonathan snorted, and took the paper from Andrew.
"Everybody has a website," Andrew shrugged. Jonathan studied the picture. Green skin, horns, red eyes.
"Yep, that's a demon." Red lips, eyeliner, electric blue suit, bad bleach job. "That is one gay demon."
"Yeah, thanks, Mr. Kettle." Andrew elbowed him playfully.
"It's the pot calling the kettle black." Jonathan shoved him a little. This was as affectionate as they could be in a place like this. There was so much teenaged male rage in the internet café that Jonathan was nearly choking on it.
"Okay, Mr. Pot."
"That's better." Jonathan bit his lip. "So, what you sing and this demon guy can tell you your future?"
"Not just your future, your destiny."
"And you wanna do this?"
Andrew looked down and kind of swayed from side to side. Quietly, he said, "Yeah."
"If it's important to you, we'll do it."
"Really?"
"Really. Now come on," he took Andrew's hand, screw what anybody had to say about it, "I'll buy you an ice cream."
For a couple of days, they practiced their old stick-up routine, a relic from their first days in Tijuana, when they'd been wild and careless, gotten drunk until dawn and made it in their hotel room until sunset. Before Jonathan had woken up afraid one morning, before Andrew had been hurt. In a way, it was nice, getting up to at least one of their old tricks. Jonathan wondered if crime was something that ran through their veins, if it was in any way related to the magick they did, or the way they loved each other. On three accounts, they were pushed as far out of the respectable, normal world as one could get and still know of its existence. Once, it would have bothered Jonathan, being on the outside, but it didn't now- because he wasn't; he and Andrew were always on the inside of each other. Andrew was what colored his blood.
Very early on a Wednesday morning, when the sky was just a long wash of milk, Jonathan magicked open a car that was parked on the curb. Gets what he deserves, Jonathan thought of the car's owner, for parking like that. They weren't taking anything with them, just the money they had wrung from tourists. They got what they deserved, Jonathan thought, Looking at him that way. He cast a glance at Andrew, whose hand was lain like a magician's white glove on Jonathan's knee. It had made him furious to see horrible American men hanging around Andrew like aphids in a rose garden. The looks they had given him, their intentions chalk-scrawled across their faces… That was something he had never gotten used to. Both he and Andrew had been glad to give up that gig. It was over for good, now.
Neither of them had said anything, but they both knew that this was it. No more Tijuana. God only knew where they'd be next, after Las Vegas, in a year, two years- but Mexico was dead to them. It had this taint on it now, a thin veneer of decay, moldering anguish.
Jonathan turned his head briefly, he didn't like to look away from the road when he was driving, as he still wasn't terribly good at it, and took a mental picture of Andrew. He turned his eyes back to the road, and examined the Andrew-picture behind his eyes. His sweet Andrew- he would do anything for that boy, he thought, with a fullness and a sting in his eyes. His sweet Andrew, lazily leaning against the door, head at the window, hand on Jonathan's knee. He looked like a rag doll, as he had many times before, but the punch was never pulled, it never broke Jonathan's heart any less to see him this way. He wanted to pull over, to get in the backseat of the stolen car with him and hold him like the Virgin Mary always seemed to be holding the crucified Jesus on all those religious post cards. That couldn't be, though, he shook his head, they had to keep on going, get away, get away, get away.
He said Andrew's name, and Andrew turned to the sound of his voice, smiled weakly. The pain in him was immense, a wine red ocean snarling in his ears, but Jonathan held it back, kept driving. What he wanted to do was to tell Andrew that everything would be all right, to reassure him somehow… Was there even such a thing as "all right"? Jonathan was sure that there wasn't, but wanted to say it anyway. Sadly, he realized that it wouldn't do either of them any good.