Andy & Roger: Alt'verse
Characters: Andy and Roger
Prompt: Alt'verse (soulmates/synaethesia)
Words: 1990
Rating: PG
There's been an orchestra in the back of Roger's head for a couple of years now.
Everyone has a different sense of their soulmate. Some people hear them, some people smell or taste them, some people see colors. Not many people feel them as a physical sensation, but everyone feels them as emotions, even if it takes some translating to figure out how the sensory input maps. For Roger, his soulmate comes across as music. But for the first twenty-five years of his life, there was nothing, not a single thing in his mind that he wasn't receiving through his own senses, and honestly he'd been afraid that there never would be.
The first time he heard the orchestra, it faded in from silence already in the middle of a movement, and Roger lost track of what he was saying halfway through an advisement session with a senior student. The kid gave him a puzzled look while he trailed off in the middle of a sentence, and Roger had no idea where the words went.
"Are you okay, Mr. Rogers? Do you need the nurse?" the kid asked, and Roger shook his head, managing to stutter something about rescheduling, hustling the kid out of his office so he could lock the door and have a quiet breakdown, tears of relief streaming down his cheeks. He'd spent his whole life thinking he was just one of those unlucky people who never felt the bond, but now he had music in his mind that he'd never heard before, and it hit him like a physical blow.
And once it started, it didn't stop. It isn't always an orchestra-- sometimes it sounds like a rock band, or jazz, or a beatbox rhythm. But usually it's an orchestra, strings and woodwinds and brass, and Roger has no trouble at all deciphering the music into feelings. He doesn't know how his soulmate senses him, but he tries to send messages all the time, because... whoever they are, they're sad most of the time. They have panic attacks, moments when the music descends into chaos, and that's when Roger tries the hardest to send something back, a litany of shh, breathe, it's all right, I'm here with you, just breathe, I love you, you're all right, and sometimes it works, the percussion pounding heartbeats slows and the frantic brass resolve into a single flute echoing Roger's reassurances, just breathe, I'm all right, just breathe, and sometimes it doesn't work and the terror crashes louder until everything goes soft and muted all at once. Roger's pretty sure his soulmate is on benzodiazepenes. He's pretty sure his soulmate is on a lot of things, even though Roger's only done drugs a handful of times in his life.
Another thing: Roger's pretty sure his soulmate is a lot younger than him. Like, probably just a teenager. The patterns the orchestra goes through match up pretty closely to the length of a school day. Roger would know, seeing as his day is marked off by the same procession of bells. His soulmate likes their morning classes, is bored by their afternoon ones, and the panic attacks tend to happen around lunchtime. Roger thinks his soulmate is probably being bullied. It breaks his heart that he's built a career out of talking to troubled teenagers and he can't help the one that his heart has a direct line to.
He wonders how his soulmate feels him. Wonders how his soul is perceived. Wonders if it's as beautiful as the music. Because the music is beautiful, even when it's discordant. He wonders so much about the person it's coming from, whether they're male or female, how old they really are, why they're so sad so much of the time. But he knows they can feel him back, because sometimes there's a dialogue, wordless but definite. Late at night when there are restless violins keeping Roger awake, he curls around his pillow and thinks soothing sleepy thoughts at them until they smooth into a lullabye. In the middle of the day when the orchestra explodes into chaos, Roger thinks his way through a meditation, aiming the calm at them until he feels them start to breathe again. And almost every day, sometimes a few times a day, the orchestra turns into throbbing guitars and frantic drums and it's so fucking unfair that his soulmate getting off sounds exactly like the kind of music Roger likes to get laid to. So fucking unfair.
So that's how it goes for a couple of years. Roger lives his life to the soundtrack of someone else's emotions, comforted by the music, by the reassurance that someone he's meant to love is really out there waiting for him too. He helps a lot of kids. He plays a lot of team sports, he teaches his bird how to talk, he gets the finishing touches put on both his sleeves and makes a lot of progress on his chest piece, wondering how the pain of the tattoo needle translates itself to his soulmate. (However they feel it, they like it. He gets the guitars pretty soon after every session under the needle.) He draws, he runs, he goes to shows.
It's at a show when it happens. The venue is some ratty little concert hall in a strip mall, a place that puts on a lot of metal shows, a place Roger's been probably three dozen times since he's moved up to Long Island. The opening band isn't bad, but the mosh pit doesn't start in earnest until the headliners come on. Roger flings himself into the crush of bodies, but almost immediately the music in his head goes into full on panic mode, and Roger freezes for a second when he spots a kid in the middle of the pit who is clearly freaking the fuck out about where he has ended up.
A decade's worth of shows means Roger knows how to move once the chaos begins. He weaves through the thrashing bodies and grabs the kid's arm, hauling him out of the mosh pit by bulling his way straight through until they're clear, and then he keeps going, pulling the boy right to the back of the venue and out the door into the cold January night.
"Breathe," Roger says, "you're all right, just breathe." At some point in their exodus from the pit someone had split the kid's lip, and Roger cups a hand to his cheek, thumb brushing the blood under his mouth. "You're all right. Are you all right?"
"Holy fuck," the boy says, "you're the colors," and then Roger's being kissed, zero skill and one hundred percent enthusiasm in the mouth covering his. The taste of blood is sharp on his tongue as the orchestra explodes into the most victorious swell of sound Roger has ever heard. He's too stunned to move at first, but then the boy makes a soft confused sound and the music goes hesitant and Roger can't move fast enough to send it soaring again, kissing back and letting the hand on the boy's cheek slide to the back of his neck instead, holding him close while Roger licks the trickle of copper from his lips and chases it back into his mouth. They stand there like that for how long neither of them knows, and then the boy sighs and presses his forehead against Roger's, his fingers twined in Roger's long hair. "Hi," he breathes. "I'm Andy."
"Hi, Andy. I'm Roger."
"Hi Roger. Wow, you... you're um... you're really hot," Andy says, and Roger can't help laughing. "And... older than me."
"Yeah. How old are you?" It's an eighteen-plus show. Andy is definitely not eighteen by the looks of him.
"I'm uh... I'm sixteen," Andy says, and Roger exhales a shaky breath and forces himself to let go. "What? No! Don't-- come on, you're not that much older than me, are you?"
"I really am though," Roger says, and Andy whines. "Like old enough to go to jail for this."
"I'm not jailbait!"
"You kind of are."
"Please don't let go of me so quickly," Andy says, "please." The orchestra has receded to a single plaintive flute, and when Andy pulls Roger closer it's nowhere within Roger's self-control to deny him.
"Christ, I've been hearing you since you were fourteen?"
"Uh... thirteen. I um, I just turned sixteen this week-- no don't fucking let go!"
"I can't," Roger says, "we can't, this isn't--"
"I'm not asking you to take me home with you," Andy says, "just... hold me for a minute? You've kept me from losing my mind, just... hold me together for a minute longer." In the orange halogen lights of the parking lot, Roger can't tell what color his hair is, and all he knows about the eyes behind Andy's two-toned glasses is that they're fever-bright and fixed on his face. "You... you're a kaleidoscope. In my head, you're all these colors, these beautiful patterns, and I can feel your arms around me when I freak out. You don't even know, do you?"
"No," Roger says, and the ink inside his skin feels luminescent, crying out to be seen through the layers Roger's wrapped in against the cold. "You're music, though. Like a symphony, most of the time."
"Really? That's... yeah, I'm a musician, I'm uh, I play the flute. I mean I'm trying to learn the guitar and I can make do on the piano but mostly I'm a flautist."
"I'm... kind of an artist. Mostly a canvas. I mean I draw a lot but I'm, I have a lot of ink, a lot of it."
"You-- fuck, is that what that was? You getting tattooed? Jesus fucking Christ, I had no idea what was going on but it was hot as hell. Now it makes sense."
"Oh my god, you've-- no, I can't even think about that, that's..." Roger drops his head to Andy's shoulder, eyes pressed tightly shut. "You're killing me, kid."
"Don't call me kid," Andy says, "and don't be so fucking weirded out by it, okay? I'm-- I can't help how old I am. I'm getting older," he adds stubbornly, and Roger breathes out a weak laugh. "Anyways age of consent laws are fuzzy about soulmates for a reason."
"You're sixteen. You're barely sixteen. I'm twenty-seven."
"Wow really? I didn't... shit, you've been waiting a long time for me, haven't you?"
"I really have," Roger says, "and I'm gonna wait longer."
"Yeah but we... we can talk, right? We can see each other? You're not gonna just disappear until I'm eighteen, are you?"
"No... no, Andy, I'm not going to vanish, I swear to god. I couldn't do that to you."
"I'll be good. I promise. But I want to see you. I can't... my life kind of sucks, you know? You know, don't you?"
"I know how sad you are," Roger says softly, and Andy nods. "I don't want you to be so sad."
"You can make me happier," Andy says, just as softly, and when he presses his lips to Roger's it's all Roger can do to keep the kiss chaste. "You already make me happier, but now we can actually talk to each other, it's not just kaleidoscope patterns any more. You'll talk to me, right? You'll let me call you?"
"Yeah, of course."
"And anyways the age of consent in New York is seventeen," Andy adds, grinning, and there's a hint of guitars at the back of Roger's mind when he laughs helplessly and turns his face into Andy's neck. "So... that's like three hundred and fifty-nine days. I can be good for that long."
"Can you really?" Roger asks.
"Nah, probably not. But I'll try really hard," Andy says.
"We'll make it work," Roger says, thinking I'm so screwed when Andy makes a happy noise and clutches him closer. "We'll figure something out."
Prompt: Alt'verse (soulmates/synaethesia)
Words: 1990
Rating: PG
There's been an orchestra in the back of Roger's head for a couple of years now.
Everyone has a different sense of their soulmate. Some people hear them, some people smell or taste them, some people see colors. Not many people feel them as a physical sensation, but everyone feels them as emotions, even if it takes some translating to figure out how the sensory input maps. For Roger, his soulmate comes across as music. But for the first twenty-five years of his life, there was nothing, not a single thing in his mind that he wasn't receiving through his own senses, and honestly he'd been afraid that there never would be.
The first time he heard the orchestra, it faded in from silence already in the middle of a movement, and Roger lost track of what he was saying halfway through an advisement session with a senior student. The kid gave him a puzzled look while he trailed off in the middle of a sentence, and Roger had no idea where the words went.
"Are you okay, Mr. Rogers? Do you need the nurse?" the kid asked, and Roger shook his head, managing to stutter something about rescheduling, hustling the kid out of his office so he could lock the door and have a quiet breakdown, tears of relief streaming down his cheeks. He'd spent his whole life thinking he was just one of those unlucky people who never felt the bond, but now he had music in his mind that he'd never heard before, and it hit him like a physical blow.
And once it started, it didn't stop. It isn't always an orchestra-- sometimes it sounds like a rock band, or jazz, or a beatbox rhythm. But usually it's an orchestra, strings and woodwinds and brass, and Roger has no trouble at all deciphering the music into feelings. He doesn't know how his soulmate senses him, but he tries to send messages all the time, because... whoever they are, they're sad most of the time. They have panic attacks, moments when the music descends into chaos, and that's when Roger tries the hardest to send something back, a litany of shh, breathe, it's all right, I'm here with you, just breathe, I love you, you're all right, and sometimes it works, the percussion pounding heartbeats slows and the frantic brass resolve into a single flute echoing Roger's reassurances, just breathe, I'm all right, just breathe, and sometimes it doesn't work and the terror crashes louder until everything goes soft and muted all at once. Roger's pretty sure his soulmate is on benzodiazepenes. He's pretty sure his soulmate is on a lot of things, even though Roger's only done drugs a handful of times in his life.
Another thing: Roger's pretty sure his soulmate is a lot younger than him. Like, probably just a teenager. The patterns the orchestra goes through match up pretty closely to the length of a school day. Roger would know, seeing as his day is marked off by the same procession of bells. His soulmate likes their morning classes, is bored by their afternoon ones, and the panic attacks tend to happen around lunchtime. Roger thinks his soulmate is probably being bullied. It breaks his heart that he's built a career out of talking to troubled teenagers and he can't help the one that his heart has a direct line to.
He wonders how his soulmate feels him. Wonders how his soul is perceived. Wonders if it's as beautiful as the music. Because the music is beautiful, even when it's discordant. He wonders so much about the person it's coming from, whether they're male or female, how old they really are, why they're so sad so much of the time. But he knows they can feel him back, because sometimes there's a dialogue, wordless but definite. Late at night when there are restless violins keeping Roger awake, he curls around his pillow and thinks soothing sleepy thoughts at them until they smooth into a lullabye. In the middle of the day when the orchestra explodes into chaos, Roger thinks his way through a meditation, aiming the calm at them until he feels them start to breathe again. And almost every day, sometimes a few times a day, the orchestra turns into throbbing guitars and frantic drums and it's so fucking unfair that his soulmate getting off sounds exactly like the kind of music Roger likes to get laid to. So fucking unfair.
So that's how it goes for a couple of years. Roger lives his life to the soundtrack of someone else's emotions, comforted by the music, by the reassurance that someone he's meant to love is really out there waiting for him too. He helps a lot of kids. He plays a lot of team sports, he teaches his bird how to talk, he gets the finishing touches put on both his sleeves and makes a lot of progress on his chest piece, wondering how the pain of the tattoo needle translates itself to his soulmate. (However they feel it, they like it. He gets the guitars pretty soon after every session under the needle.) He draws, he runs, he goes to shows.
It's at a show when it happens. The venue is some ratty little concert hall in a strip mall, a place that puts on a lot of metal shows, a place Roger's been probably three dozen times since he's moved up to Long Island. The opening band isn't bad, but the mosh pit doesn't start in earnest until the headliners come on. Roger flings himself into the crush of bodies, but almost immediately the music in his head goes into full on panic mode, and Roger freezes for a second when he spots a kid in the middle of the pit who is clearly freaking the fuck out about where he has ended up.
A decade's worth of shows means Roger knows how to move once the chaos begins. He weaves through the thrashing bodies and grabs the kid's arm, hauling him out of the mosh pit by bulling his way straight through until they're clear, and then he keeps going, pulling the boy right to the back of the venue and out the door into the cold January night.
"Breathe," Roger says, "you're all right, just breathe." At some point in their exodus from the pit someone had split the kid's lip, and Roger cups a hand to his cheek, thumb brushing the blood under his mouth. "You're all right. Are you all right?"
"Holy fuck," the boy says, "you're the colors," and then Roger's being kissed, zero skill and one hundred percent enthusiasm in the mouth covering his. The taste of blood is sharp on his tongue as the orchestra explodes into the most victorious swell of sound Roger has ever heard. He's too stunned to move at first, but then the boy makes a soft confused sound and the music goes hesitant and Roger can't move fast enough to send it soaring again, kissing back and letting the hand on the boy's cheek slide to the back of his neck instead, holding him close while Roger licks the trickle of copper from his lips and chases it back into his mouth. They stand there like that for how long neither of them knows, and then the boy sighs and presses his forehead against Roger's, his fingers twined in Roger's long hair. "Hi," he breathes. "I'm Andy."
"Hi, Andy. I'm Roger."
"Hi Roger. Wow, you... you're um... you're really hot," Andy says, and Roger can't help laughing. "And... older than me."
"Yeah. How old are you?" It's an eighteen-plus show. Andy is definitely not eighteen by the looks of him.
"I'm uh... I'm sixteen," Andy says, and Roger exhales a shaky breath and forces himself to let go. "What? No! Don't-- come on, you're not that much older than me, are you?"
"I really am though," Roger says, and Andy whines. "Like old enough to go to jail for this."
"I'm not jailbait!"
"You kind of are."
"Please don't let go of me so quickly," Andy says, "please." The orchestra has receded to a single plaintive flute, and when Andy pulls Roger closer it's nowhere within Roger's self-control to deny him.
"Christ, I've been hearing you since you were fourteen?"
"Uh... thirteen. I um, I just turned sixteen this week-- no don't fucking let go!"
"I can't," Roger says, "we can't, this isn't--"
"I'm not asking you to take me home with you," Andy says, "just... hold me for a minute? You've kept me from losing my mind, just... hold me together for a minute longer." In the orange halogen lights of the parking lot, Roger can't tell what color his hair is, and all he knows about the eyes behind Andy's two-toned glasses is that they're fever-bright and fixed on his face. "You... you're a kaleidoscope. In my head, you're all these colors, these beautiful patterns, and I can feel your arms around me when I freak out. You don't even know, do you?"
"No," Roger says, and the ink inside his skin feels luminescent, crying out to be seen through the layers Roger's wrapped in against the cold. "You're music, though. Like a symphony, most of the time."
"Really? That's... yeah, I'm a musician, I'm uh, I play the flute. I mean I'm trying to learn the guitar and I can make do on the piano but mostly I'm a flautist."
"I'm... kind of an artist. Mostly a canvas. I mean I draw a lot but I'm, I have a lot of ink, a lot of it."
"You-- fuck, is that what that was? You getting tattooed? Jesus fucking Christ, I had no idea what was going on but it was hot as hell. Now it makes sense."
"Oh my god, you've-- no, I can't even think about that, that's..." Roger drops his head to Andy's shoulder, eyes pressed tightly shut. "You're killing me, kid."
"Don't call me kid," Andy says, "and don't be so fucking weirded out by it, okay? I'm-- I can't help how old I am. I'm getting older," he adds stubbornly, and Roger breathes out a weak laugh. "Anyways age of consent laws are fuzzy about soulmates for a reason."
"You're sixteen. You're barely sixteen. I'm twenty-seven."
"Wow really? I didn't... shit, you've been waiting a long time for me, haven't you?"
"I really have," Roger says, "and I'm gonna wait longer."
"Yeah but we... we can talk, right? We can see each other? You're not gonna just disappear until I'm eighteen, are you?"
"No... no, Andy, I'm not going to vanish, I swear to god. I couldn't do that to you."
"I'll be good. I promise. But I want to see you. I can't... my life kind of sucks, you know? You know, don't you?"
"I know how sad you are," Roger says softly, and Andy nods. "I don't want you to be so sad."
"You can make me happier," Andy says, just as softly, and when he presses his lips to Roger's it's all Roger can do to keep the kiss chaste. "You already make me happier, but now we can actually talk to each other, it's not just kaleidoscope patterns any more. You'll talk to me, right? You'll let me call you?"
"Yeah, of course."
"And anyways the age of consent in New York is seventeen," Andy adds, grinning, and there's a hint of guitars at the back of Roger's mind when he laughs helplessly and turns his face into Andy's neck. "So... that's like three hundred and fifty-nine days. I can be good for that long."
"Can you really?" Roger asks.
"Nah, probably not. But I'll try really hard," Andy says.
"We'll make it work," Roger says, thinking I'm so screwed when Andy makes a happy noise and clutches him closer. "We'll figure something out."