Smoking - Chapter 21
Title:: Smoking
Genre:: Drama
Fandom:: RPS Vam, Villinde, Dugera, Lindunn, others.
Rating:: R
Summary:: A story, reaching back to the beginning like a twisted, curling whisp of smoke from a slow burning fire.
Disclaimer::Most characters are property only of themselves; I own the storyline and the writing. This is a work of ficiton; treat it as such.
Links
Chapters 1 - 20
Chapter 21
“So, you have nothing to say about those pictures in the papers?”
Ville throws his head back and that geeky laugh fills the small room. Linde smirks a bit, but hides it behind a polite hand.
“Not a word!”
“Nothing at all?”
Ville shakes his head, smiling kindly at the interviewer from beneath lashes thick with mascara and eyelids painted a light pink color. His glossed lips purse as he ponders his answer.
Linde watches him with stony grey eyes.
He almost doesn’t recognize the man that he shares a bed with.
Ville veritably shines these days. He literally screams ‘sex’. He oozes ambiguity and androgyny and all those other terms of intrinsic indecisiveness.
It’s beginning to get on Linde’s nerves. Why should he have to face facts when Ville is allowed to go around flaunting his own uncertainty, doing nothing but gaining from it?
The cruel irony of the fact that he’s the quietly self-professed gay one in the group and Ville’s the one getting all the credit for it is beginning to grate on Linde.
The fact that he’s not, as he so often thought he was and always would be, the only man for Ville is beginning to hurt more than it should.
He knows its wrong to take pride in what he and Ville share - which is, as far as he is aware, the most fucked up relationship the world has ever seen - but he does; it’s the only thing in the world that he has and so he has no choice but to take pride in their stolen kisses and passionate embraces. He has to take pride in the one thing that is special to him, the one thing that he has from Ville that no one else does.
If anyone asked him about it, he’d acknowledge it in a heartbeat. Even though he knows Ville would hate him for it, he would have no choice but to acknowledge it, just to feel that swell of pride that he gets something from Ville that nobody else does. The more he thinks about it, the more Linde is sure that it’s the most important thing in his life. The one thing that’s keeping him going through the meaninglessness of increasing fame and decreasing privacy.
“Well, see, this is how I put it. I’m a bisexual man, without any experience with other men.” Ville smiles winningly at the interviewer and doesn’t even give a second glance to Linde’s face. Perhaps he doesn’t want to see the hurt that knows will be there.
“So you don’t count these kisses as experience, then?”
Ville smirks and shakes his head.
“What’s the difference between a set of lips on a girl and a set of lips on a boy? Nah, kisses don’t count. It’s the other stuff that matters. You know.”
And now… now Ville looks over at Linde. Now he casts him a glance that they both understand.
It’s the stuff you won’t give me, Lily. That’s the stuff that matters. What we don’t have. What you won’t let me have.
Linde imagines he can hear Ville screaming it at him. He hears it echoing in his head and it’s like a stab to his heart. He knows that it’s been almost 6 years to the day since their first stolen kiss and botched hand job in a broom closet. He knows that he’s been denying Ville what he really wants for 6 years. And yet he still holds true to his standard -that until Ville wants it for the right reasons, he reserves the right to name the day, the time, and the circumstances.
But Ville’s green eyes are boring into him, still, and he can’t stand it anymore. He can’t stand the interviewer’s nervous laugh. He can’t stand the smug, knowing smirk on Ville’s face. He can’t stand the fluttering in his stomach.
“So, that’s how you plan to remain is it?”
Ville breaks off his gaze with Linde and smirks at the interviewer.
“Well. If it were up to me, I’d have been able to give a different answer to that question… but these things aren’t always our own choices are they? Sometimes, other people make the choices for us, and then they’re stubborn assholes about them for the rest of their lives.”
Linde can’t stand it anymore. He can’t stand the teasing spite in Ville’s voice. The dancing of his green eyes. The smirk on his glossy lips. He can’t stand it for one second more.
“I’m out of here,” he murmurs to Mige, and he shoves his chair backwards, striding angrily out of the room, slamming the door behind him, putting as much distance as he can between himself and the interview room as he can without actually leaving the building. He leans against a wall, doubled over, his heart racing at the unusual stunt he just pulled.
Let him explain that one away. Serves him right. Serves the fucking asshole right.
“Linde?”
Linde doesn’t look up. He stares resolutely at the tiled floor. He likes the black checkerboard effect. He likes to see the patterns in it. Diamonds, squares, flowers…
“Lindström, look at me. What the hell was that stunt back there?”
Linde looks up slowly, deliberately plastering a sneer on his face.
“You know damn well what it was, Ville, and damn you for all that shit you said.”
Ville stares at him incredulously.
“You didn’t think I was talking about…”
“Oh, Ville, come off it, don’t play innocent with me. I sleep in the same damned bed as you, I know you better than that.”
“And what a cold bed it has been these past, what is it, 6 years now?” Ville’s lips are curving upwards in a sneer to match Linde’s and together they look like a pair of hissing wildcats ready to pounce on each other with sharpened claws.
“Fuck you. That’s all it is to you, huh, that’s all you’ve been trying to get?”
“Well what was it to you, Lily?” One eyebrow is raised; Linde has no answer to that question, and Ville knows it.
“Yeah well at least I don’t have a problem with it. You’re the one that’s been covering for 6 years. Six years, Ville. And you’re still coming to terms with it? You still haven’t admitted it to yourself, have you? You want me and I’m a man and you’re still not over it after six years?”
Ville’s hand moves hard and fast across Linde’s cheek and it leaves an angry pink mark where it connects with a sharp cheekbone.
“What do you know about my sexuality?”
“Oh, nothing, Ville, I’ve only been victim to it for 6 years.”
“Well if you dislike it that much you can move out of my bed, for starters, and you can start looking for your own house.”
Linde glares at him, one hand still clutching his stinging cheek.
“I will.”
“Good. Now. Can we go back and finish this interview in some sort of civil manner?”
“Finish your own goddamn interview. You’re the one they want to talk to anyways. I’m going home.”
“And how exactly do you plan on getting in?”
Linde fixed Ville with an incredulous stare.
“Ville. You gave me a key. Like 2 years ago. When you asked me to move in with you.”
“Did I? Shame. Well then, I guess I’ll see you later. Have fun by yourself, Mikko.”
Ville is gone just as quickly and silently as he came. Linde uses the back of his hand to brush away tears that he wishes weren’t there before pushing himself quickly off the wall and making his way out front of the building to the tram stop. As he walks, he wishes he couldn’t still hear the disdain and indifference in Ville’s voice, the jeering contempt with which he had told Linde to get out of his bed, the flippancy with which he used his given name, a name that hadn’t crossed his lips in reference to Linde for many, many a year.
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Many, many times I’ve wondered just what possessed me to say those words right in front of Lily’s face.
But then, how is that different to all the times I’ve got back from a drunken interview, sobered up and read the article the next day, cringing and cursing myself the whole time?
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that I wanted something and he wasn’t giving it to me. And I simply would not have that any longer. I liked getting my own way, I liked it a lot, and when I didn’t get it, I threw a tantrum.
But instead of throwing my things around my room as I used to when Äiti used to ground me for a bad grade, I pulled what I considered a much more mature stunt: I went out after that interview and I got completely shitfaced.
As if I was feeling sorry for myself. As if I was depressed because the love of my life wouldn’t even give me the time of day. As if I was a man chased by demons of his tortured childhood, I took my selfish, spoilt, self-centered, semi-rich and half-famous leather clad ass out on the town and got so drunk I couldn’t even stand up.
And of course, since I’d scared Linde off, he wasn’t there to carry my gin-soaked carcass home, and all of a sudden, I was faced with a serious dilemma: how was I going to get home? How in hell was I going to get home? I couldn’t even remember my own name, how the hell was I going to get home?
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It was late. It was very late. Linde had a crick in his neck from trying to fit his long, lanky body on the rather short couch. His hair was caught in a tangle around the arm of the very, very uncomfortable sofa and one of his legs was so fast asleep he thought he might have to have it amputated.
And then the phone rang, and he woke with a start. His hair wrenched around the armrest and he swore loudly, grabbing at his skull to make sure he still had a scalp. He had to hop on one leg over to the phone because stepping on his other leg hurt like the devil.
“Hello?”
He was still rubbing at his sore head and the sleep in his eyes when he picked up the receiver. Ville hated answering the phone; it had become a habit for him to do it whenever it rang.
“Linde?”
“Yeah, who’s that?”
“It’s Aleksi.”
“Oh… what’s up?” Linde was confused. Aleksi owned the bar he and the guys had frequented ever since they were old enough to be allowed in. Aleksi was more than a bartender to them now, he was a friend, but it was still odd for him to be calling at - Linde groaned as he checked the clock - 1:30 in the morning.
“Look, sorry to call you this late, but Ville’s here…” Linde bristled. He had decided, as he curled up on the couch at 8 that evening after having downed two of Ville’s purloined sleeping pills, that he was not going to care about Ville anymore. If all Ville wanted from him was sex, he could find a new best friend, and a new guitarist, and a new … whatever it was that Linde was to him. He was getting out of there. Just as soon as Ville came back and he could tell him himself, he was out of there.
“I thought maybe he’d come to later on so I left him whilst I cleaned but he’s still passed out on the bar and I can’t budge him, and I don’t know where you guys live.”
“You want me to come get him?” Linde groaned, incredulous at his luck.
“That’s the idea. You two live together right?”
“Yeah well… he really won’t come to?”
“Nah, I even tried putting ice down his back but all he does is start mumbling something about Barbie-dolls or something. Sorry, I’d have brought him back to mine but I have to ride my bike…”
“No, sure, it’s fine… uh… I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just… if he wakes up, tell him someone is coming but don’t tell him its me, okay?” Linde had the feeling that if someone brought him up, he might just run.
“Of course.”
Linde was out of the apartment and striding angrily down the streets just a few minutes later, pulling his coat on as he walked. His thoughts were stormy, full of resent. Just as he’d made his mind up categorically not to care, then this. He refused to be used any longer. He refused to be Ville’s toy, his Barbie doll, if you like… he refused to let Ville dress him up and do whatever the hell he wanted with him. He was more than that. He was worth more than that and if Ville didn’t know it then Ville wasn’t worth his time.
He stopped dead in the doorway of the bar. That was his mother’s voice, echoing in his head. He shook it off. He was going to get Ville and he was going to put Ville in bed and he was going to leave, and if Ville didn’t remember what had happened in the morning then it was his own fault for getting so drunk by himself. Ville never did know when to stop with the alcohol.
“Where is he, Aleksi?”
His friend nodded towards the corner of the bar, where Ville was precariously balanced on a bar stool, collapsed, as good as dead, over the counter. There was a puddle of drool under his chin. His leather pants gaped at the back and Linde could see straight down them and that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. Not that that surprised him at all. His shirt had ridden up his stomach leaving his pale back bare and Linde couldn’t help but bite his lip at the sight.
“I don’t know where his coat is, he was already pretty wasted when he got here,” Aleksi said quietly from Linde’s right hand side. Linde had forgotten he was there, he was so busy staring at Ville laying passed out on the wooden bar and wondering just what about the picture made it feel like something inside him was stretching out very very tight. It was almost like someone had grabbed a hold of invisible strings attached to his heart and was pulling on them as hard as they could. It was all he could do to stop himself from clutching his chest.
Linde sighed as a pang of cruel realization hit him like a lightening bolt.
There was no way in hell he would ever, ever be able to leave this man behind.
“It’s okay,” he said, shaking himself, forcing himself to tear his eyes off of Ville’s body. “He’ll live.”
He crossed the room and pulled up a stool next to Ville and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Eyeliner was smudged down his sharp cheekbones like nobody’s business and his lip gloss had long since worn off. There were dark circles around his eyes and his hair was matted with sweat and sticking to the drool on his face.
But to Linde, Ville had never looked more beautiful. He was perfectly peaceful, his eyelids fluttering with drunken dreams, his breath causing his hair to flutter a little bit in front of his lips that Linde was dying to kiss.
Even though silently he was kicking himself for the total lack of determination and willpower, for the amount of subconscious control this man had over him, he quietly resigned himself to self-hatred, because he knew he wasn’t man enough to even bother trying to get out.
“Ville? Ville, come on, wake up.”
He started rocking Ville’s shoulder gently, in the way he knew from more than 8 years’ experience always woke Ville up sooner or later.
Sure enough, after just a few seconds Ville’s eyes were fluttering open, blurry and unfocused, and he was coughing as he sat up.
“Where’m I?”
“Aleksi’s,” Linde said quietly. Ville’s eyes focused on him and he smiled uncertainly, waiting for the blow, waiting for him to shout… waiting for something bad. But it didn’t come. In fact, Linde almost swore that he saw a look of relief on Ville’s gin-slackened face.
“What’re you doin’ here Barbie?”
“Aleksi called me. Said you’d passed out and wouldn’t wake up. I’m taking you home.”
Ville smiled and nodded happily, trying to get up.
“Whoa, hold on, lemme help you.”
Linde helped him off of the stool and guided him out of the bar, one of his arms slung over his shoulders. Despite this, Ville still stumbled over his own feet, but Linde held him up, smiling at Aleksi as he held the door open for them.
“Thanks, Aleksi.”
“No problem. Just get him home.”
They made their slow way home, Linde hoping that he wouldn’t crumble under Ville’s surprisingly considerable weight and Ville giggling and singing to himself the whole way.
Finally, Linde was taking Ville’s sweaty clothes off for him and laying him down on the bed. As he was about to withdraw, Ville’s eyes, which had been slowly sliding together, snapped open and fixed on him in a fiery green blaze. Linde stood transfixed.
“What?”
“Where you goin?”
“The couch…” Linde said, frowning a bit. Even with a gallon of gin in him, Linde didn’t think Ville would have forgotten their little spat earlier that day.
“Lintti, don’t…”
“But…”
“Don’t, I can’t sleep…”
“It was your idea I move, remember?” Ville waved his hand in front of his face, dismissing that.
“I’m an asshole. C’mon, Lintti, don’t leave me. Please?”
Linde bit his lip, sighing. Never had he ever seen Ville act this vulnerable before. He had no idea what was bringing it on. He couldn’t help but give in to those quivering green eyes. They had more control over him than they could ever imagine.
Ville smiled happily when Linde pulled off his shirt and his pants and slid into the bed in his boxers, and he waited until Linde was propped up comfortably in the multitude of pillows that Linde’s mom had insisted on giving them before snuggling happily into his bare chest and pulling one of Linde’s arms around his shoulders.
“Lintti, I’m a fucking idiot,” he said, his words still slurring, his voice oddly childlike and endearing. Something was pulling at Linde’s heartstrings again. He wondered if those green eyes had hands.
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean that shit I told him, you know.”
“Don’t lie, Ville.” Linde kept his voice carefully flat, meticulously stony.
Ville pouted but sighed in resignation.
“Okay, so I did, but I can’t help it Lintti, we sleep in the same bed and you’re so hot and I’ve wanted you since I was like 14 I can’t help it, I’m a man I need sex.”
Linde raised his eyebrow and brushed those comments out of his mind just as he brushed Ville’s matted hair out of his eyes.
“Yeah well, sorry, I’m not into sex for sex’ sake.”
“It’s not just for sex’ sake, it’s like… it’s like, rendering a service or something.”
Linde just shook his head.
“Ville… when I want you to fuck me, you’ll know. Until then, just back off.”
“When’s the last time you had sex, Lintti? It’s not good for you, you know, you’re a man too you gotta have sex.”
“I get along fine. It’s none of your business anyways.”
Ville sighed again and nuzzled farther into Linde’s chest.
“You know you’re my best friend, right Lintti?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Good. I’m really drunk.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
The sat in silence for a while. Linde thought Ville was asleep until he rolled over and onto his pillow.
“I just had a good idea for a song,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. We gotta put it on the new album.”
“You haven’t written it yet, Ville, and we’re recording like, next week.”
“Yeah I have. It’s all up here.” Ville tapped his head knowingly, nodding and grinning in a way Linde hadn’t ever seen him grin before. It was as if he was a three year old again, sweet and innocent, not the blatant, lecherous Ville he’d come to know and love over the years.
“What’s it called then?”
“Sigillum Diaboli. Means like, Devil’s signs. Wanna hear the chorus?”
“Hit me.”
Ville grinned, sitting up and leaning his head on Linde’s shoulder.
“I’m your Christ and I want you, I just rose up for hers and you know it as well as I do.”
Shivers ran up Linde’s spine. It was about him. Almost. Sort of. Not really. He knew Ville would twist it so that no-one would ever be able to tell, not even himself after a while, but he knew… he knew from the way Ville sang it into his neck whilst he kissed his way up to his earlobe, that line… it was about him.
Of course Ville knew how Linde idolized him. Of course he had always known just how much store Linde had set by him. Of course he knew that in Linde’s eyes, he could do almost no wrong. And of course he was going to flaunt it, because to Ville, it seemed only natural.
And Linde saw no point at all in denying it.
“Kiss me, Lintti,” Ville whispered into his lips, and Linde almost laughed at the stupidity of that request, since they were practically kissing already, but he smiled anyways and, wrapping an arm around Ville’s shoulders, he lay them carefully down on the bed so that he was on top and began to kiss Ville’s begging lips.
Sometime in the kiss, which was more a soothing, gentle caress of lips and soft tongues than anything else, Ville began to fall asleep, and Linde pulled back to let him do so, leaning back against the pillows again, somehow not at all tired. He contented himself with watching Ville’s eyes flutter shut and his breathing become slow and regular and the sweet faces he made as he dreamt of Linde could only imagine what… and along with watching his peaceful, calm sleep came the gradual, quiet dawning of realization.
For of course, as clichéd as it was, Linde had just fallen in love with him. In the time it had taken Ville to close his eyes and fall asleep, Linde had fallen face first from affection to downright love, and he’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.
Cursing himself quietly, he leant over to give Ville’s pink lips a soft ghost of a kiss before he turned over, bundling the pillow under his ear and willing sleep to come, calling himself every kind of idiot he could think of in the mean time.
Because of course… it was Ville Valo. Ville Valo simply didn’t do love. And Linde knew from the very first moment that his would be a long, silent suffering.
Genre:: Drama
Fandom:: RPS Vam, Villinde, Dugera, Lindunn, others.
Rating:: R
Summary:: A story, reaching back to the beginning like a twisted, curling whisp of smoke from a slow burning fire.
Disclaimer::Most characters are property only of themselves; I own the storyline and the writing. This is a work of ficiton; treat it as such.
Links
Chapters 1 - 20
Chapter 21
“So, you have nothing to say about those pictures in the papers?”
Ville throws his head back and that geeky laugh fills the small room. Linde smirks a bit, but hides it behind a polite hand.
“Not a word!”
“Nothing at all?”
Ville shakes his head, smiling kindly at the interviewer from beneath lashes thick with mascara and eyelids painted a light pink color. His glossed lips purse as he ponders his answer.
Linde watches him with stony grey eyes.
He almost doesn’t recognize the man that he shares a bed with.
Ville veritably shines these days. He literally screams ‘sex’. He oozes ambiguity and androgyny and all those other terms of intrinsic indecisiveness.
It’s beginning to get on Linde’s nerves. Why should he have to face facts when Ville is allowed to go around flaunting his own uncertainty, doing nothing but gaining from it?
The cruel irony of the fact that he’s the quietly self-professed gay one in the group and Ville’s the one getting all the credit for it is beginning to grate on Linde.
The fact that he’s not, as he so often thought he was and always would be, the only man for Ville is beginning to hurt more than it should.
He knows its wrong to take pride in what he and Ville share - which is, as far as he is aware, the most fucked up relationship the world has ever seen - but he does; it’s the only thing in the world that he has and so he has no choice but to take pride in their stolen kisses and passionate embraces. He has to take pride in the one thing that is special to him, the one thing that he has from Ville that no one else does.
If anyone asked him about it, he’d acknowledge it in a heartbeat. Even though he knows Ville would hate him for it, he would have no choice but to acknowledge it, just to feel that swell of pride that he gets something from Ville that nobody else does. The more he thinks about it, the more Linde is sure that it’s the most important thing in his life. The one thing that’s keeping him going through the meaninglessness of increasing fame and decreasing privacy.
“Well, see, this is how I put it. I’m a bisexual man, without any experience with other men.” Ville smiles winningly at the interviewer and doesn’t even give a second glance to Linde’s face. Perhaps he doesn’t want to see the hurt that knows will be there.
“So you don’t count these kisses as experience, then?”
Ville smirks and shakes his head.
“What’s the difference between a set of lips on a girl and a set of lips on a boy? Nah, kisses don’t count. It’s the other stuff that matters. You know.”
And now… now Ville looks over at Linde. Now he casts him a glance that they both understand.
It’s the stuff you won’t give me, Lily. That’s the stuff that matters. What we don’t have. What you won’t let me have.
Linde imagines he can hear Ville screaming it at him. He hears it echoing in his head and it’s like a stab to his heart. He knows that it’s been almost 6 years to the day since their first stolen kiss and botched hand job in a broom closet. He knows that he’s been denying Ville what he really wants for 6 years. And yet he still holds true to his standard -that until Ville wants it for the right reasons, he reserves the right to name the day, the time, and the circumstances.
But Ville’s green eyes are boring into him, still, and he can’t stand it anymore. He can’t stand the interviewer’s nervous laugh. He can’t stand the smug, knowing smirk on Ville’s face. He can’t stand the fluttering in his stomach.
“So, that’s how you plan to remain is it?”
Ville breaks off his gaze with Linde and smirks at the interviewer.
“Well. If it were up to me, I’d have been able to give a different answer to that question… but these things aren’t always our own choices are they? Sometimes, other people make the choices for us, and then they’re stubborn assholes about them for the rest of their lives.”
Linde can’t stand it anymore. He can’t stand the teasing spite in Ville’s voice. The dancing of his green eyes. The smirk on his glossy lips. He can’t stand it for one second more.
“I’m out of here,” he murmurs to Mige, and he shoves his chair backwards, striding angrily out of the room, slamming the door behind him, putting as much distance as he can between himself and the interview room as he can without actually leaving the building. He leans against a wall, doubled over, his heart racing at the unusual stunt he just pulled.
Let him explain that one away. Serves him right. Serves the fucking asshole right.
“Linde?”
Linde doesn’t look up. He stares resolutely at the tiled floor. He likes the black checkerboard effect. He likes to see the patterns in it. Diamonds, squares, flowers…
“Lindström, look at me. What the hell was that stunt back there?”
Linde looks up slowly, deliberately plastering a sneer on his face.
“You know damn well what it was, Ville, and damn you for all that shit you said.”
Ville stares at him incredulously.
“You didn’t think I was talking about…”
“Oh, Ville, come off it, don’t play innocent with me. I sleep in the same damned bed as you, I know you better than that.”
“And what a cold bed it has been these past, what is it, 6 years now?” Ville’s lips are curving upwards in a sneer to match Linde’s and together they look like a pair of hissing wildcats ready to pounce on each other with sharpened claws.
“Fuck you. That’s all it is to you, huh, that’s all you’ve been trying to get?”
“Well what was it to you, Lily?” One eyebrow is raised; Linde has no answer to that question, and Ville knows it.
“Yeah well at least I don’t have a problem with it. You’re the one that’s been covering for 6 years. Six years, Ville. And you’re still coming to terms with it? You still haven’t admitted it to yourself, have you? You want me and I’m a man and you’re still not over it after six years?”
Ville’s hand moves hard and fast across Linde’s cheek and it leaves an angry pink mark where it connects with a sharp cheekbone.
“What do you know about my sexuality?”
“Oh, nothing, Ville, I’ve only been victim to it for 6 years.”
“Well if you dislike it that much you can move out of my bed, for starters, and you can start looking for your own house.”
Linde glares at him, one hand still clutching his stinging cheek.
“I will.”
“Good. Now. Can we go back and finish this interview in some sort of civil manner?”
“Finish your own goddamn interview. You’re the one they want to talk to anyways. I’m going home.”
“And how exactly do you plan on getting in?”
Linde fixed Ville with an incredulous stare.
“Ville. You gave me a key. Like 2 years ago. When you asked me to move in with you.”
“Did I? Shame. Well then, I guess I’ll see you later. Have fun by yourself, Mikko.”
Ville is gone just as quickly and silently as he came. Linde uses the back of his hand to brush away tears that he wishes weren’t there before pushing himself quickly off the wall and making his way out front of the building to the tram stop. As he walks, he wishes he couldn’t still hear the disdain and indifference in Ville’s voice, the jeering contempt with which he had told Linde to get out of his bed, the flippancy with which he used his given name, a name that hadn’t crossed his lips in reference to Linde for many, many a year.
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Many, many times I’ve wondered just what possessed me to say those words right in front of Lily’s face.
But then, how is that different to all the times I’ve got back from a drunken interview, sobered up and read the article the next day, cringing and cursing myself the whole time?
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that I wanted something and he wasn’t giving it to me. And I simply would not have that any longer. I liked getting my own way, I liked it a lot, and when I didn’t get it, I threw a tantrum.
But instead of throwing my things around my room as I used to when Äiti used to ground me for a bad grade, I pulled what I considered a much more mature stunt: I went out after that interview and I got completely shitfaced.
As if I was feeling sorry for myself. As if I was depressed because the love of my life wouldn’t even give me the time of day. As if I was a man chased by demons of his tortured childhood, I took my selfish, spoilt, self-centered, semi-rich and half-famous leather clad ass out on the town and got so drunk I couldn’t even stand up.
And of course, since I’d scared Linde off, he wasn’t there to carry my gin-soaked carcass home, and all of a sudden, I was faced with a serious dilemma: how was I going to get home? How in hell was I going to get home? I couldn’t even remember my own name, how the hell was I going to get home?
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It was late. It was very late. Linde had a crick in his neck from trying to fit his long, lanky body on the rather short couch. His hair was caught in a tangle around the arm of the very, very uncomfortable sofa and one of his legs was so fast asleep he thought he might have to have it amputated.
And then the phone rang, and he woke with a start. His hair wrenched around the armrest and he swore loudly, grabbing at his skull to make sure he still had a scalp. He had to hop on one leg over to the phone because stepping on his other leg hurt like the devil.
“Hello?”
He was still rubbing at his sore head and the sleep in his eyes when he picked up the receiver. Ville hated answering the phone; it had become a habit for him to do it whenever it rang.
“Linde?”
“Yeah, who’s that?”
“It’s Aleksi.”
“Oh… what’s up?” Linde was confused. Aleksi owned the bar he and the guys had frequented ever since they were old enough to be allowed in. Aleksi was more than a bartender to them now, he was a friend, but it was still odd for him to be calling at - Linde groaned as he checked the clock - 1:30 in the morning.
“Look, sorry to call you this late, but Ville’s here…” Linde bristled. He had decided, as he curled up on the couch at 8 that evening after having downed two of Ville’s purloined sleeping pills, that he was not going to care about Ville anymore. If all Ville wanted from him was sex, he could find a new best friend, and a new guitarist, and a new … whatever it was that Linde was to him. He was getting out of there. Just as soon as Ville came back and he could tell him himself, he was out of there.
“I thought maybe he’d come to later on so I left him whilst I cleaned but he’s still passed out on the bar and I can’t budge him, and I don’t know where you guys live.”
“You want me to come get him?” Linde groaned, incredulous at his luck.
“That’s the idea. You two live together right?”
“Yeah well… he really won’t come to?”
“Nah, I even tried putting ice down his back but all he does is start mumbling something about Barbie-dolls or something. Sorry, I’d have brought him back to mine but I have to ride my bike…”
“No, sure, it’s fine… uh… I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just… if he wakes up, tell him someone is coming but don’t tell him its me, okay?” Linde had the feeling that if someone brought him up, he might just run.
“Of course.”
Linde was out of the apartment and striding angrily down the streets just a few minutes later, pulling his coat on as he walked. His thoughts were stormy, full of resent. Just as he’d made his mind up categorically not to care, then this. He refused to be used any longer. He refused to be Ville’s toy, his Barbie doll, if you like… he refused to let Ville dress him up and do whatever the hell he wanted with him. He was more than that. He was worth more than that and if Ville didn’t know it then Ville wasn’t worth his time.
He stopped dead in the doorway of the bar. That was his mother’s voice, echoing in his head. He shook it off. He was going to get Ville and he was going to put Ville in bed and he was going to leave, and if Ville didn’t remember what had happened in the morning then it was his own fault for getting so drunk by himself. Ville never did know when to stop with the alcohol.
“Where is he, Aleksi?”
His friend nodded towards the corner of the bar, where Ville was precariously balanced on a bar stool, collapsed, as good as dead, over the counter. There was a puddle of drool under his chin. His leather pants gaped at the back and Linde could see straight down them and that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. Not that that surprised him at all. His shirt had ridden up his stomach leaving his pale back bare and Linde couldn’t help but bite his lip at the sight.
“I don’t know where his coat is, he was already pretty wasted when he got here,” Aleksi said quietly from Linde’s right hand side. Linde had forgotten he was there, he was so busy staring at Ville laying passed out on the wooden bar and wondering just what about the picture made it feel like something inside him was stretching out very very tight. It was almost like someone had grabbed a hold of invisible strings attached to his heart and was pulling on them as hard as they could. It was all he could do to stop himself from clutching his chest.
Linde sighed as a pang of cruel realization hit him like a lightening bolt.
There was no way in hell he would ever, ever be able to leave this man behind.
“It’s okay,” he said, shaking himself, forcing himself to tear his eyes off of Ville’s body. “He’ll live.”
He crossed the room and pulled up a stool next to Ville and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Eyeliner was smudged down his sharp cheekbones like nobody’s business and his lip gloss had long since worn off. There were dark circles around his eyes and his hair was matted with sweat and sticking to the drool on his face.
But to Linde, Ville had never looked more beautiful. He was perfectly peaceful, his eyelids fluttering with drunken dreams, his breath causing his hair to flutter a little bit in front of his lips that Linde was dying to kiss.
Even though silently he was kicking himself for the total lack of determination and willpower, for the amount of subconscious control this man had over him, he quietly resigned himself to self-hatred, because he knew he wasn’t man enough to even bother trying to get out.
“Ville? Ville, come on, wake up.”
He started rocking Ville’s shoulder gently, in the way he knew from more than 8 years’ experience always woke Ville up sooner or later.
Sure enough, after just a few seconds Ville’s eyes were fluttering open, blurry and unfocused, and he was coughing as he sat up.
“Where’m I?”
“Aleksi’s,” Linde said quietly. Ville’s eyes focused on him and he smiled uncertainly, waiting for the blow, waiting for him to shout… waiting for something bad. But it didn’t come. In fact, Linde almost swore that he saw a look of relief on Ville’s gin-slackened face.
“What’re you doin’ here Barbie?”
“Aleksi called me. Said you’d passed out and wouldn’t wake up. I’m taking you home.”
Ville smiled and nodded happily, trying to get up.
“Whoa, hold on, lemme help you.”
Linde helped him off of the stool and guided him out of the bar, one of his arms slung over his shoulders. Despite this, Ville still stumbled over his own feet, but Linde held him up, smiling at Aleksi as he held the door open for them.
“Thanks, Aleksi.”
“No problem. Just get him home.”
They made their slow way home, Linde hoping that he wouldn’t crumble under Ville’s surprisingly considerable weight and Ville giggling and singing to himself the whole way.
Finally, Linde was taking Ville’s sweaty clothes off for him and laying him down on the bed. As he was about to withdraw, Ville’s eyes, which had been slowly sliding together, snapped open and fixed on him in a fiery green blaze. Linde stood transfixed.
“What?”
“Where you goin?”
“The couch…” Linde said, frowning a bit. Even with a gallon of gin in him, Linde didn’t think Ville would have forgotten their little spat earlier that day.
“Lintti, don’t…”
“But…”
“Don’t, I can’t sleep…”
“It was your idea I move, remember?” Ville waved his hand in front of his face, dismissing that.
“I’m an asshole. C’mon, Lintti, don’t leave me. Please?”
Linde bit his lip, sighing. Never had he ever seen Ville act this vulnerable before. He had no idea what was bringing it on. He couldn’t help but give in to those quivering green eyes. They had more control over him than they could ever imagine.
Ville smiled happily when Linde pulled off his shirt and his pants and slid into the bed in his boxers, and he waited until Linde was propped up comfortably in the multitude of pillows that Linde’s mom had insisted on giving them before snuggling happily into his bare chest and pulling one of Linde’s arms around his shoulders.
“Lintti, I’m a fucking idiot,” he said, his words still slurring, his voice oddly childlike and endearing. Something was pulling at Linde’s heartstrings again. He wondered if those green eyes had hands.
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean that shit I told him, you know.”
“Don’t lie, Ville.” Linde kept his voice carefully flat, meticulously stony.
Ville pouted but sighed in resignation.
“Okay, so I did, but I can’t help it Lintti, we sleep in the same bed and you’re so hot and I’ve wanted you since I was like 14 I can’t help it, I’m a man I need sex.”
Linde raised his eyebrow and brushed those comments out of his mind just as he brushed Ville’s matted hair out of his eyes.
“Yeah well, sorry, I’m not into sex for sex’ sake.”
“It’s not just for sex’ sake, it’s like… it’s like, rendering a service or something.”
Linde just shook his head.
“Ville… when I want you to fuck me, you’ll know. Until then, just back off.”
“When’s the last time you had sex, Lintti? It’s not good for you, you know, you’re a man too you gotta have sex.”
“I get along fine. It’s none of your business anyways.”
Ville sighed again and nuzzled farther into Linde’s chest.
“You know you’re my best friend, right Lintti?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Good. I’m really drunk.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
The sat in silence for a while. Linde thought Ville was asleep until he rolled over and onto his pillow.
“I just had a good idea for a song,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. We gotta put it on the new album.”
“You haven’t written it yet, Ville, and we’re recording like, next week.”
“Yeah I have. It’s all up here.” Ville tapped his head knowingly, nodding and grinning in a way Linde hadn’t ever seen him grin before. It was as if he was a three year old again, sweet and innocent, not the blatant, lecherous Ville he’d come to know and love over the years.
“What’s it called then?”
“Sigillum Diaboli. Means like, Devil’s signs. Wanna hear the chorus?”
“Hit me.”
Ville grinned, sitting up and leaning his head on Linde’s shoulder.
“I’m your Christ and I want you, I just rose up for hers and you know it as well as I do.”
Shivers ran up Linde’s spine. It was about him. Almost. Sort of. Not really. He knew Ville would twist it so that no-one would ever be able to tell, not even himself after a while, but he knew… he knew from the way Ville sang it into his neck whilst he kissed his way up to his earlobe, that line… it was about him.
Of course Ville knew how Linde idolized him. Of course he had always known just how much store Linde had set by him. Of course he knew that in Linde’s eyes, he could do almost no wrong. And of course he was going to flaunt it, because to Ville, it seemed only natural.
And Linde saw no point at all in denying it.
“Kiss me, Lintti,” Ville whispered into his lips, and Linde almost laughed at the stupidity of that request, since they were practically kissing already, but he smiled anyways and, wrapping an arm around Ville’s shoulders, he lay them carefully down on the bed so that he was on top and began to kiss Ville’s begging lips.
Sometime in the kiss, which was more a soothing, gentle caress of lips and soft tongues than anything else, Ville began to fall asleep, and Linde pulled back to let him do so, leaning back against the pillows again, somehow not at all tired. He contented himself with watching Ville’s eyes flutter shut and his breathing become slow and regular and the sweet faces he made as he dreamt of Linde could only imagine what… and along with watching his peaceful, calm sleep came the gradual, quiet dawning of realization.
For of course, as clichéd as it was, Linde had just fallen in love with him. In the time it had taken Ville to close his eyes and fall asleep, Linde had fallen face first from affection to downright love, and he’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.
Cursing himself quietly, he leant over to give Ville’s pink lips a soft ghost of a kiss before he turned over, bundling the pillow under his ear and willing sleep to come, calling himself every kind of idiot he could think of in the mean time.
Because of course… it was Ville Valo. Ville Valo simply didn’t do love. And Linde knew from the very first moment that his would be a long, silent suffering.