and for the rest of us with our hands on our hips;

[wingborne]

John kisses him, and Dave drops the bottle.

Here it is, again: slow down, rewind, play back, let the film coil down around his feet like black snakes. John kisses him, and Dave drops the bottle. Here it is, again: slow down, rewind, play back, the movie stutters, embarrassed. John kisses him, and Dave drops the bottle. Here it is, again: slow down, rewind, play back, the static forms a crust along the sides, it is old, let it go, John kisses him, and Dave drops the bottle.

The bottle peels apart, shards flying across the floor, cutting thick scars into hearts when it barely touches skin. Dave was holding the bottle. Dave is holding the bottle. Dave will be holding the bottle. This is the most important part. This is the least important part.

It was beautiful, until it was not.



See, Dave will say later, pressing his drink to his lips, John is a good kid. That’s what he tells his beautiful sister, the one with the artificial face with dark lips and milky eyes. She pours him another drink. The wall of wine bottles tower before him, forming a stained glass window for no church. She inherited the miniature bar from her mother; that, and the predisposition for sadness. She is sad now, stroking back his hair like a child.

That’s why I can’t, he tells her, drunk. That’s why I can’t hate him, fuck, he’s the fucking Klondike bar, all gooey and dripping all over your hands and you can’t fucking help it. Goddamn. Goddamn! The drink spills on his front. She dabs. He watches.

He was there, he says, when Bro died.

I know, she says, polite.

He’s always been there, he says.

I know, she says, indifferent.

I love him, he says.

I know, she says, sad from the sadness inherited from her mother.



Bro had died early. Striders don’t live long. It’s not built into their DNA, their double helix missing that final touch. Striders died early in a bursting flame of glory, or they died miserable and alone. Striders are better in death than in life, and Dave sits in front of the tombstone and tries to grapple with small comforts. This will be his death, too, because Striders don’t live to happy old ages, portly with food and face glowing red with warmth. They died like mangy dogs, and Dave would not make the same mistake Bro did: leaving behind someone to mourn him.

“Dave?”

He doesn’t move, fingers folded into each other like an accordion. He doesn’t love John, yet. He doesn’t feel anything, not even sadness, impenetrable in his skin shell. But he can see John climbing up the steps, face comically sweaty and pink from climbing the steps. John’s wearing a suit slightly too big for his child frame, the tie draping out and his pants legs too long. He almost trips onto the dirt, but he hustles forward with his arching blue umbrella, looking too happy to be in the place of the dead.

“Hey,” he finally says.

“Hey, yourself. Everything okay, dude?” John sits next to him, and he smells like cake. He always smells like cake, something sweet and happy, a warmth in a house built from walls and rooms, and not cement blocks heavy on the floor.

“Yeah.” Short, curt. “Fine.”

“Really? Because that was an opening for you to totally screw into me. Like, of course you’re not fine, and then you call my a dumpass, and then you say I’m worse than… um, Oprah? Do you hate Oprah?” John’s shoulder touches him, and he stares into the engraved numbers on the stone.

“Nah. Oprah’s cool.”

“Are you really okay? You can cry, you know. I would cry. A whole lot. I won’t call you a wimp or anything. Except maybe a little.” John curls up and stares up at the sky. He’s a good kid. He’s always been a good kid, he’ll always be a good kid, and that’s going to be a problem when he’s twenty-three, drunk, and kissing Dave, but he’s a good kid. Dave wants to be left alone, the words raking over his skin.

John’s always right, in his little strange ways. He confuses the roads on his hometown, but he’s right. Dave wants to cry. Dave wants to scream into his hands and pound the grave, dig up his dead brother, at least see him once before the coffin had been shut and sealed. Life wasn’t going to be the same. Life couldn’t be the same, and it was so utterly unfair, the words had been kicked out of him. He can’t even feel anything, but he can feel the tears build up in the back of his head, but he doesn’t want John to see him cry.

“It’s a nice place. I mean, I’ll come with you to visit him. Every time. Except when you don’t want me to, because you probably don’t want me there a-ll the time, just some of the time. My Dad can drive you. Or you can skateboard. It might be a really, really long way, though, if you skateboard-”

“Shut up.” Dave stares at the flowers sitting damp in front of the grave.

“Oh, yeah. I should probably- yeah. Sorry.” John rocks back and forth on his heels. “Just wanted you to- I dunno. Sorry. Yeah.”

“Go away.” Short, curt. Short, curt. Short, curt.

“Well… yeah, sure. But I just want you to know that I am here for you.” John places a hand on his shoulder, and he shakes it off.

“I told you to go away, dipshit.”

“I’m going! Sorry, jeez. No need to get snippy over it.”

That’s the thing about John. He’s honest to the point of brutal, oblivious to the point of pain. Except Dave’s a child and he’s not in love, yet, so he can punch him in the face, straight in the nose, a resounding crack in the empty graveyard. John spills across the ground, nose streaming blood and coating down his front, and that’s John for you, not even skipping a beat before he lunges up and punches him back.

They’re not good fighters, or maybe it’s because they’re both good fighters, but there’s no winner. Dave is fast and quick, the same mangy desperation that killed his brother, and he’s inherited the wounds and insecurities through his blood. But John is strong and flimsy, wafting about like air before delivering solid blows to his stomach and ribs like a cornered boxer. Dave delivers quick cuts with his hands to John’s neck and chest, openings created from the comfort of being raised like a normal kid. There’s blood from both their faces, John sprouts a black eye and his arm hangs loose and terrible. Dave favors his left leg and he gasps for breath, stabbing pain shooting up his sides. They’ve got cut lips and chipped teeth and torn clothes, John’s neat little suit splattered in mud and torn in difficult places, and he doesn’t remember how it stopped, but he remembers it did.

It’s quiet in the graveyard, except for his desperate panting that fills his ears. John may be wishing for breath, too, but he can’t hear him over his own noise. He remembers his fingertips accidentally brush against John’s outstretched hand, and the clear skies over them roll away the clouds, the leaves crunch under his every rustle, and John finally sits up with his bruised eye and cut lip and chipped teeth.

“I’m hungry,” John says, and Dave loves him, now.



John is his best friend, and so he is free to fill his heart with aches. They play video games underneath the cotton blankets, their consoles bumping into each other, John would trade but only for a shiny, dumpass, you’re the dumpass, dumpass, and they sit there and play with the fake light cast upon their faces, letting Dave memorize the definitions of his face, the contours of his nose, the thickness of his eyelashes.

“I’m gonna ask out this girl. She’s nice, she’s really nice, and she’s probably going to say no.” John slumps across his textbook, squeezing his eyes closed in mock pain. His dark hair frames his face like a child.

“Why would she say no?” He had been writing rap lyrics, but the rhymes had stopped making sense several years ago. So he puts down his pen.

“Oh, come on.” John looks up, and sees something on Dave’s face that makes him scrunch up his nose. “Oh, come on! Really? You know why, I’m no catch.”

“Shit, you’re a catch. You’re the goddamn best catch, you’re Free Willy getting unfreed, the old man hasn’t got a big enough boat.”

“No way! You’re just sayin’.”

“I am just sayin. And I mean it, shithead.” He taps his pen along the paper, pretending he’s not paying attention, especially not to the brightness of John’s eyes that look at him like he’s worth something, not to the heightened beating of his heart in his ears. “You’ve got all the dumbassery of Humpty Dumpty in some weird, creepy kid form. Disney wants you to sell you off by the dozen, mass produce that winning smile of yours. Mickey probably wants to fight you for that spot, but look at you, you’re more squeaky clean and good and happy than the whole glossy eyed bunch.”

“You think too much, jeez.” John ducks his head, the sign of happiness. Dave likes to watch him. He thinks it’s creepy and weird, that he watches him so much, but he can’t stop, because there’s an addiction worse than coke lines drawn in John’s cheerful face, the way his long fingers play with the edge of the pages, how he moves like an animal underneath his clothes.

“She’ll say yes,” he says, and pretends this won’t hurt him. Jade would be angry at him, if she knew. They had dated barely long enough to break up, in the saccharine tinted time, but she always looked out for him like he looked out for her. Except she inherited her grandfather’s guns and constant happy feet, and she was lost in some part of the world, plunged deep into quicksand and never happier. But she would be mad at this, mad at him. This wasn’t like him. But when it came to John, John who could do no wrong, good and sweet John, nothing was like him.

“Yeah, well, you should start thinking about girls to ask out, too.” John props up his chin on the book, eyes swiveling to stare at the ceiling. “You’re a really great guy, y’know? Everybody really likes you. They think you’re cool, can you believe it?”

“I am cool, dipshit. I run a blog.”

John snickers, and the conversation fades. Three days later, John stands in front of the lockers with his hands stuffed in his pockets, asking out a girl made from sharp angles. When she says yes, John turns to give him an exhilarated thumbs-up.

It hurts more than he thought.



It’s because they’re drunk, one night. It’s his brother’s death anniversary, which they celebrate by drowning themselves in liquor. They sit on the couch in John’s living room. The urn watches over them, and Dave drinks. They’re warm and sitting under the same blanket, and John’s talking about ghosts. He’s talking about real ghosts, not those shitty ghost reality television shows, those chumps don’t know what’s up, and he’s waving around his aluminum bottle. There’s a ghastly reflection of the fireplace in his glasses, and Dave watches it with a daze.

If his brother had been alive, he wonders what he would tell him. His brother would probably be ashamed of him, and the thought squeezes his heart tight. He drinks again. It goes down hot.

John talks about ghosts, hand movements wiggling around, and his shirt’s fallen open in a small V at the top. It’s enough to see the sliver of smooth skin, gaze drawn down by the Adam’s apple to his chest. Dave loves him in the sexual way, the way that makes him feel guilty when he touches himself at night, but it’s worse because he loves him in the non-sexual way.

But John likes girls, he loves girls, his life has been climbing up the steady path towards a white house and a dog and a beautiful buxom wife and three loving children, and John had been born a father. He’d be good with them, like he’s good with Dave, like he’s good with their whole lousy bunch of friends who can’t manage to keep it quite together because the reality hits them too hard and fast. John is oblivious. They manage reality. He manages them.

Dave can’t say he loves him. He can’t, because he doesn’t know, he tells himself he can keep it to himself, keep it down like the drink he swallows rapidly. His brother would be proud of that. Or maybe he wouldn’t be. He can feel the distortion of his own memories, stretching and pulling. He wasn’t even remembering his brother, just a phantom brother shape, who he fills in with his own disappointments. He would never know his brother as an adult, he would never see if his brother would be proud, never know if he failed, never have a happy family life where he could go home to someone who would always love him, never hear the familiar clanging of swords, except the constant reverberations in his head, but there were other children out there who loved and played and smiled with their brothers who lived quite well and fine, and the unfairness of it hits him like he is a child all over again, and he turns to bury his head into John’s shoulder. He smells like cake. John puts a hand over his head, and starts to stroke his hair, and Dave cries.

His brother would be ashamed of that.



He says it.

The world’s spiraling down a drain, and he spirals along with it. They’re alone in John’s childhood room, except John is only a child inside. They’ve both grown adult bodies, and it’s like they’re showing off to each other, see, I grew taller, look, I am stronger, but they’re both children sitting on a small bed. The sheets are thin, the ghost pattern faded over the years of sunlight hitting their ghoulish faces. Dave feels faded.

“Remember that time, when I asked out that girl? God, I was so nervous. Jeez, I was so stupid back then.” John grins in his infectious grin, feet sticking out over the bed. “But I had a really big crush on her, the whole… like the type you see in cartoons? Remember those? The big hearts, floating over their heads?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You? Know? I’ve never seen you fall in love with anyone. Dave Strider, heart of stone, that’s the tale.” John leans against him, and Dave will miss this. The trust, the affection, the friendship in the air, but the words slip out by accident, making his heart jerk tight against his chest.

“I loved you.”

John doesn’t say anything, not at first. He sits up, and looks at him. And he laughs.

Dave wishes he could hate him for laughing. He resents him—he’s angry with him—he’s ashamed, hot and heavy in his stomach—but he can’t hate him, because he loves his laugh, the way John’s teeth show up in white, the way he tosses his head back, the smile that curls all the way to his face. Dave’s the subject to his own mockery, but even as he feels something crumble inside him, he knows he is lost. It’s his first love, it’s his last love, it’s the moments of sitting inside with him on rainy days and the smell of cake wafting into the room and a hand on his head, he was losing all that, to the empty disdain of a boy who kisses girls.

“Really? Me? Wow, that’s… Wow! Me!” John shakes with laughter still canned up inside his adult body, and Dave manages to offer an apologetic smile. He’s the cool guy. He has to play the cool guy, even if he feels cold all over.

“Yeah. Pretty stupid. Especially for a shitty guy like you.”

“Shut up, I am not shitty, I’m the opposite of shitty.” John bumps his shoulder playfully, smile still growing on his face. “So, do you still love me?”

Yes.

“No,” he says.



Rose tells him not to go, but it’s his brother’s death anniversary. He can’t stand the thought of his brother’s shame, so he dresses himself in his nicest outfit, combs down his hair, pretends not to love John, and goes down to the bar. Because John is dating a nice girl and she isn’t there, tonight, so it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s cool, though. He has a blog to run, the comic needs him to sit there in the dark and draw out the pixels. He has a blog, and not John, and that’s fine.

“Dave! Oh, wow, what a coiiiiinkydink.” John’s drunk, and that’s a good thing. Three steps into the bar and John’s hurling himself on him, arms wrapped around his neck and nuzzling him. His hands shoot up to hold him up, and he can feel the muscles under the warm sweatshirt. John’s already drawing back, though, taking the warmth with him. His face is ruddy, blotched red to his ears, but he’s still handsome. His eyes are bright beneath the dark framed glasses, and he’s holding a bottle that he presses into Dave’s hands.

“Wait,” John says, “Wait, no hugs, because no… no smooch, I don’t… I am a heterosexual, Dave.”

“I know, big guy.” Dave slaps him on the back, and sits down at the bar. John slumps into the chair next to him, giggling into his hand. The room is too close, and too hot. The outside air occasionally flows in like a chilling breeze, but the crowd blocks most of the air. It’s stifling. He can’t breathe. A fire burns in his stomach, and he stares at the bottle because it’s offering him a challenge. He wants to back down, but he can’t.

“You came to pick me up.” John grins up at him, like a child.

“You can’t text for shit when you’re drunk.” Dave holds the bottle up in the air, and he can see John’s lip marks across the rim. He’s distracted for a moment, because a particular light fits right into the bottle. If he holds it up just right, at the right angle, the green bottle looks like it’s filled with light, and it was beautiful.

“You picked me up because you loved me. Me, loved me.” John grins again, stupid. Dave puts down the bottle and drinks from it, defiantly. He doesn’t know who he’s defying. John loves girls, and Dave sits in hot bars and drinks and pretends he doesn’t want a life where he wakes up with John and his mussy hair smiling up at him every morning, John kissing him across his face, John whispering to him with their fingers close together. His heart is hot.

“I don’t love you anymore,” he says, taking another hot swig.

“But you did.” John laughs into his arms, teeth bright and shining. His face is too red. “We should kiss.”

“No.” The word slips out, fast and easy, and John is a child who laughs and kills dreams. This was a mistake. Rose had told him this was a mistake, and he stares down at his bottle, and John is laughing too loud in this loud room. This was a mistake. He needed to get out, before the hotness destroyed him, but John was leaning forward and holding tight onto his wrist and he could only stare helplessly down.

“It’ll be funny. Really funny. Really, really funny.”

“No.”

“You drank my bottle.” It comes out as an abject cry, and Dave knows John isn’t trying to convince him. Still, he clutches at the bottle’s neck. One small weakness leads to another, and he can feel himself crumbling by the edges, first, slowly, then all at once, and he would drink from the same bottle because he’s desperate and he would let him kiss him because he’s desperate, because he loves him, because he wants the one second of hallucinations in the air, where every anniversary, John sits by his side and kisses him all over and he can believe his brother loved him and he wants all the days, for the rest of his life, to be with John, even though he knows John will marry a nice and kind girl.

He turns his face, and it must be enough, because John lunges to kiss him. Dave almost drops off the counter, his hand loosens on the bottle, and it drops. John kisses him, and Dave drops the bottle. It’s a sweet moment, and he doesn’t want to think about what happens next, keep the video on pause, let the movie stutter and blush in embarrassment for him, in that moment where his eyes are half-closed and John’s lips are sloppy and he can believe John loves him with all his heart, and they are together and happy, winters together under the blankets, games left unplayed by their television set, John laughing next to him in his glee because he has inherited the innocence of the earth without the knowledge, he never bit the apple, but Dave can pretend they won’t stop kissing. But he knows what comes next, he has seen the film, he knows the bottle breaks and John slumps forward and does not love him, and he will be left with his own hatred stewing inside him.

But it’s not the moment the bottle breaks that hurts him. It’s the moment before, when he holds the bottle up and the light is captured inside just perfectly. That image burns inside his eyelids, and makes his heart throb.