Who: Emo and Johnny What: A painful anniversary for Emo, an awkward experience for Johnny When: Tuesday, noonish. Where: Johnny and Emo's new apartment. Warning: Typical Emo and Johnny warnings, more shmoopy fluff, some innuendo.
With the god of Emo, a melancholy disposition was something akin to a cloudy sky. A person looked at it, went "hm", shrugged and then went on about their business. You knew that there was a good chance of a storm sometime in the near future, but the fact that it wasn't raining yet lulled you into some sense of security that everything was alright. The last two or three days had been like a cloudy morning for Emo, the sense of impending downpour. But no one seemed to pay much attention to it, since it was only a degree or two worse than his default state of being.
But then Tuesday morning rolled around, the 22nd, and even though he knew it wouldn't get real bad until that night, he still wasn't looking forward to the day in any capacity. When Johnny got up to shower and get breakfast, he pretended to still be asleep. It left him alone in the quiet, sparsely-decorated bedroom of their new apartment, staring at a white wall with the covers tucked up under his chin - blue eyes hazy and grey and hollow.
All he could think about was how reckless he'd been two years ago, how he hadn't paid enough attention to the message that was getting out in his name and how one of his own took her own life; so young, with so much life ahead of her. He supposed he ought to be thankful that she was in another country and that he didn't feel that pain first-hand. But the disappointment he felt in himself was worse. This wasn't physical pain, like the results of the beatings and violence towards his followers here. It was worse - it was emotional pain. And then there was the backlash. Violence creeping from England to South America, Mexico, up through the Southern states and the centers of his music. So much violence erupted in a few short months that it almost took him out completely. Times like that, like this, he wondered if maybe the world wouldn't be better off without him.
Hours rolled past and Emo was lost in them, no grasp of time except for the change of the shadows on the walls. He heard the bedroom door open once or twice, but he didn't move from his position - curled up on his side, facing the wall. He couldn't even work up the motivation to reach for the Valium in the pillbox in his dresser to melt all the feeling away.
Johnny had noticed a bit of a change in Emo's attitude, but he put it down to the stress of moving. They'd found this place last week, moved in two days ago, and even he had been on edge. The stress was entirely overwhelming, particularly when they still had the house in Memphis to furnish and get down to when they got the time. He was calling up storage facilities left and right, trying to remember what he'd stashed where and how much it would cost to have it shipped to the house and the apartment -- Johnny had piles of Civil War-era antiquities just laying around in storage, gathering dust. Now that he had a place, two places, to live, he wanted them furnished right.
On the morning of the twenty-second he hardly realized anything was wrong at first. Most days he was up before Emo anyway, when the sun had barely risen. He was, perhaps, a little concerned when his boyfriend didn't follow him out of the bedroom and go right for his morning pot of coffee, but didn't think much of it. Only after two trips outside with the dog, four phone calls to two storage facilities, and an hour of browsing GED classes to register for did Johnny start to wonder.
Eventually, his curiosity --concern, really, but he wasn't going to admit that to anybody-- got the better of him and he quietly entered the bedroom where Emo still hadn't stirred. He frowned and sat down on the bed. Sure, as the god of this very thing Emo was expected to be like this, but he'd never been quite... like this, in the time Johnny had known him. "Bad day?" he asked at last, at a loss as to what else he was supposed to say.
Emo felt the bed dip down next to him, but he didn't move, even when it caused his body to shift backwards a little so he was resting somewhat against Johnny's side. It actually, almost, felt good like that. There was no reply form him for a while, just the steady motion of his breathing - not deep enough for him to be asleep. After a moment of wallowing in the dark, swirling pit of his own mind, he pressed his eyes closed and nodded. "Bad existence, is more accurate," he muttered, voice sounding dry and strained.
He honestly didn't mean to be so self-pitying, and he knew that it wasn't attractive, but it was just who he was - and at times like this he didn't even bother to hide that fact. Pulling a hand out from under the pillow, he rubbed at his eyes and then the bridge of his nose with his thumb and middle finger, shaking his head as he sunk back down into his pillow. He couldn't even form words to talk about it if he wanted to; he was afraid that if he started it would all spill out and he wouldn't be able to stop the emotional spewing that would occur. It was ridiculous how insecure he was and how that stunted him from opening up to his own boyfriend - or perhaps the thought of Johnny's rejection was hindering him a bit as well.
Hell, he wasn't ready for this. Emo was obviously having one of those days, the sort Johnny knew all too well, and fuck if he knew how to deal with it. He didn't know what to do, or what Emo would want him to do. What would be okay. The mere fact that he was worrying about this, someone else's emotions and all, was enough to give Johnny pause. What in the hell was he doing? When had he turned into such a sap?
A few minutes passed in silence while he pondered just what he ought to do. In the end, Johnny reached out and laid a hand on Emo's shoulder. He wanted to... he didn't even know. Do something to make it better. Emo had been there for him when he needed it --after a century and a half of not realizing that he did need someone on those dark days-- so it was only fair for him to reciprocate, right? But he still wasn't sure whether his boyfriend needed or wanted someone there for him. "Do you want me to leave you be?"
Johnny was answered with another long moment of silence. Honestly, Emo had no idea what he wanted at that moment except to curl up and disappear from existence completely. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen. If Johnny was offering company, he didn't want to be alone - but he also didn't want to inconvenience the other man by taking up all his time; and at this point, he didn't feel like he was worth any of that time to begin with. But an ambivalent answer would only cause more frustration. It was a rock and a hard place sort of situation.
"I... I don't know," he answered. It was still hard to straighten his thoughts out enough to speak, but leaning a bit more into Johnny and concentrating on the hand on his shoulder was helping somewhat. "I don't... want you to do anything that... you don't want to do," he managed. "And... I can be alone," he added a moment later. Then the inevitable, "But," he continued, "it's easier... if I have something to hold on to." And gods he hated sounding so weak; hated being so weak. But at times like this he was. The very essence of what he was brought him crashing down and no matter how many times he went through it, it never got easier to cope with.
He turned his head, pressing his face to his pillow again and letting out a long sigh, gripping the sheets in one hand and the edge of his pillow in the other. It was so frustrating! He was almost sure that he was going to lose it in front of Johnny and that was the very last thing he wanted. "I'm sorry," he muttered, "that you have to see this, go through it, deal with it at all. I could be... I should be..." What, better? No, this was exactly who he was and this wasn't even his worst. This was actually a pretty good day, in comparison to some of the others. "I shouldn't be so selfish, to make you put up with this."
"All right, then." Something to hold onto. Well, he could do that. Now that he'd received an answer, sort of, as to what he should do, Johnny had no trouble following through with it. Shuffling around so that his back was against the headboard, he made himself comfortable on the bed and looked down at Emo. "That ain't very specific, something. But I got no plans on leavin' and if I'm stayin' here, may as well be that something," he said matter-of-factly.
More seriously, he continued speaking while looking at the bare windows. "Just 'cause you can be alone doesn't mean you should be. Stayin' alone with your thoughts all the time on days like this ain't never a good thing." He hadn't known that until the start of this month, when instead of recalling Richmond on his own he actively sought out company. And it had been different, so much better than all the other Richmond anniversaries before. Still painful --always painful, he knew-- but manageable when he knew that somebody cared and would be there for him. If Emo could so willingly do that for him, then maybe what he needed was for somebody to show him that they were willing to do the same.
"And you ain't makin' me do anything," he added with a touch of humor. "I'm Johnny Reb, the stubbornest most insubordinate cuss to ever come outta the South. Not a soul alive as can make me do anythin' I don't want to do." It was probably the closest he would ever come to outright saying 'I want to take care of you,' and all he could hope was that Emo would understand that. He really was doing his best.
When Johnny moved again, Emo shifted a bit as well to glance over his shoulder at what his boyfriend was doing over there. He watched the other man get settled and then just looked for a moment. With another faint huff, he managed to twist his body in such a way that he rolled onto his other side, planting a hand on Johnny's thigh to help push himself upwards and then settled against the other man with his head on Johnny's shoulder and an arm wrapped around his waist. It was slightly better than being curled up in the fetal position against a wall.
He actually cracked a small smile, and instantly felt guilty for it, at Johnny's not-quite-joke. Closing his eyes, he turned his head a little and nuzzled against the other man. "And yet, you still somehow managed to get mixed up with me." It was still hard to fathom, but there they were. He understood the intention hiding behind Johnny's words and pulled himself a little tighter to his boyfriend's body, draping a leg across one of Johnny's just to feel like more of him was touching more of the other man. For some reason it kept him from losing control, being able to touch something that was there because it wanted to be, not because it had to be.
"I know you probably don't have much of a concept of how it feels to lose just one of your followers, since you lost so many so fast. But do you think you could understand the feeling of returning from the war and trying to bring everyone in and strengthen everything back up and then having one person who you never knew, never met, so unable to handle the tension that they just... ended it. Would you feel that? Would you... know? And what if that one death caused so much outrage that more of your followers were hurt and killed? And there's nothing you can do about it. Except know that it was your fault, because you weren't strong enough or aware enough to stop it from happening..." He wasn't sure how much sense he was making or if he was just babbling stupidly about nothing, but it was all he felt he could do.
"Only because I wanted to be. Just took me a while to figure it out, is all," Johnny was quick to counter. He wrapped one arm around his boyfriend's shoulders and left his other hand on the arm around his waist. He'd never been too big into all this touchy-feely nonsense, but this entire relationship was proving to be quite the liberating experience for a former soldier stuck in his past. It was really rather tame right now, just this simple cuddling, and if he was entirely honest with himself, he enjoyed it as much as all the kissing. Not that he would ever admit that to... well, anybody. Ever.
It was true, he had lost his followers by the thousands in fairly rapid succession. It had hardened him to loss quickly, though they'd never hurt any less. He just got used to loss in large quantities as opposed to one at a time. And he didn't want to say it, but he couldn't understand what Emo was saying. He'd lost, he'd lost his war and tens of thousands of his boys, and what was one more death among so many? They'd been bitter and in pain after, and the only single death he'd ever felt was his last soldier's, the unfortunately named Pleasant Crump. Johnny had no idea how to relate to what Emo was suffering, but hell if he wasn't going to try.
"It wasn't your fault," was all he could say, tightening his hold on the boy in his arms. That was all he could think of Emo as today, a boy. He wasn't a god, a man, a musician, or any of that. He was just a poor hurt boy who needed help and comfort, and damned if that didn't awaken the oddest protective urges in him. "We can't all stop what goes wrong. Sometimes there just ain't nothin' you can do. Believe me, I know."
The idea that it wasn't his fault just wouldn't sink in because he had himself so convinced that it was. He struggled to form some complete thought again, something short-circuited in his brain from the overload of emotions and trying to keep them all in check. After a moment he just shook his head, making it clear that Johnny wasn't the only stubborn one in this relationship. He started to speak a couple of times, stopping himself immediately and rethinking what he was about to say. None of it sounded right. It all sounded like the same self-pitying bullshit he'd been spewing for years.
"I could have done better," he said. "But no, not only am I weak because I don't see the point in hiding the way I feel or the pain that everyone goes though, but apparently I'm also weak because I can't even handle those emotions. And because I couldn't stop someone from killing herself. All because of an album I wrote that was about overcoming death. Fucking ironic, isn't it?"
Emo gave a self-deprecating chuckle and lifted his hand for a moment to rub at the side of his face before he wrapped his arm around Johnny again. "I'm upset and pissed and it hurts and I fucked up so bad..."
"Okay. You fucked up," Johnny agreed. He may have been here to comfort his boyfriend, but even he could realize when talking and trying to make him realize that it wasn't his fault was going to do a whole lot of no good. Time to try a different tactic, then. "You fucked up and a girl killed herself. You coulda done better, yeah."
He craned his neck to look down at Emo, moving his hand up the boy's arm and up to his jaw. "But there's fuck-all you can do about it anymore except remember and be upset, and that's gonna do you even less good. I'm not sayin' you should forget about what happened, but you can't always keep beatin' yourself up over it." Later on, he would look back at what he was saying and realize that he was talking to himself just as much as he was talking to Emo. God, they were both so fucked up. This was surely not destined to be any kind of healthy relationship.
Johnny did realize, though, that whatever event sparked today's mood had probably happened recently -- even if in his mind, "recently" meant "sometime in the last half-century or so." He didn't feel quite that amount of hurt at his anniversaries anymore because he'd had so long to adjust to the pain, but Emo probably remembered this like it had just happened. He pressed a kiss to the top of Emo's head to hide his frown. "Not now, though. When you're ready and all that."
He pulled away a little, shifting and looking up, blinking in a sort of stunned, trying-to-process way. No one had ever spoken to him like that before. It was either someone telling what a useless little fuck he was and how he should just crawl off somewhere and fade away or it was everyone else blatantly ignoring him and leaving him to his moods. No one had ever actually put it out there like that or even attempted to help him cope with this.
Emo swallowed thickly and nodded, "You're right, of course. Getting stupid over it is just going to make things worse. But I'm not ready to just... move on yet. I feel like it would be a disservice to her memory if I didn't mourn her." He settled back against Johnny, still feeling the tension and tightness in his chest, but feeling like he was back in his own head a bit more. He wasn't free-falling emotionally. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, fingers curling in Johnny's shirt. The crisis wasn't quite over, but he wasn't going to lose it.
"I should be recording this conversation so I can play it back for you in a couple months when you need it," he said with a small chuckle.
"Never said you had to move on just yet. When you're ready and not a day sooner. Took me damn near a century to face down days like Richmond and Antietam without goin' outta my head in misery." And he still couldn't face Gettysburg and the combined anniversary of Ft Sumter and the surrender at Appomattox --his birth and what should have been his death, on the same day-- without becoming a drunk, emotional wreck. But Emo would have the chance to find out about that soon enough; why offer more trouble?
He smirked when Emo joked about Johnny's own tendencies to mope on days like this, pleased that the god was feeling well enough to be humorous. "I ain't been this bad on those days in decades, I'll have you know," he replied, falling silent after that. Now that Emo wasn't on the verge of falling apart, this was nice. Just sitting and holding him, with no expectations either way and no plans that would make them leave this nice warm bed anytime soon.
"You want anything?" Johnny asked after a while. "Coffee or somethin'? You ain't moved all day."
"Well," he answered with a glance upwards at Johnny, "I'm only... thirty-something... barely... so you can't expect me to be mature about these kinds of things." In terms of gods, Emo was really still a baby. Even the other young ones had been born two, sometimes three decades before he and his brother. And that was still a fraction of Johnny's century and a half. Sometimes, like now, that age difference became really apparent to him. But at least he could admit that sometimes he was a little too stupidly wide-eyed and naive; even if he was also young and extraordinarily powerful. It all made him a bit reckless and impulsive (not to mention poorly adjusted).
He shook his head, "Don't need anything except you right now," he said. He could think of a lot of things that would be nice, things to dull the pain he was still feeling and make it all just slip away. But he didn't need them if he had Johnny with him. Emotional dependency was something that sort of came with the territory with him, it was unavoidable, regardless of how much he was trying to avoid letting it happen. Somehow he didn't think Johnny would mind too much if he found out about that little fact, he seemed to need Emo just as much as the young god needed him.
"If you have something you need to do, though," he added after a moment's thought, "I can unattach myself from your side for a bit and let you get to it."
Johnny laughed. "Way to make me sound like some kinda creepy cradle-robber. Some thirty-somethin' boy of a god livin' in sin with a dead country's soldier more'n four times his age." Put like that, it really did sound all sorts of wrong. Age differences between husbands (older) and wives (younger, usually much) in his day had been common, but in this day and age he hadn't seen those age gaps as often. They didn't look much different in age appearance-wise, but the difference was definitely there. Johnny acted like an old man half the time, while Emo was all wrapped up in modern culture.
"Gimme a minute and then you can stay attached all day," he said, leaning in for a kiss before getting up and leaving the room. Just as quickly as he'd left, he returned with his laptop, a soda, last night's takeout, and Beau trotting happily behind him.
He set the food on the nightstand and rearranged himself in bed, propping a pillow up behind his back and setting the laptop on his knees. Beau hopped up onto the bed, turned around twice, and curled up on the pillow on Emo's other side. While one hand turned the computer on, the other arm pulled Emo back to him and he grinned in satisfaction. "Now I'm set for the day -- ain't no reason to get up that I can figure."
Emo almost grinned, stifling the expression and looking away to hide the almost bashful, almost amused look on his face. He was still biting his lip and trying to adjust the covers when Johnny excused himself a moment later. Oh sure, he was still depressed as all hell, but there was just a moment of purely selfish happiness in his bipolar brain that cast a little ray of sunlight through his storm cloud of a mood. He liked the age difference. Johnny wasn't so old that he was all high and mighty, but he was also old enough that he could give good advice and share wisdom and knock some sense into the stupid boy when he needed it.
By the time Johnny got back, Emo had pretty well adjusted himself and the blankets and everything and was more than ready to curl up against Johnny's side again, waiting until the older man's arm was around him and pulling him in before he did so. "If you do need to get up, you just have to ask you know," he said as he wrapped an arm around Johnny's middle again and sunk down against him. "And by the way, I feel you ought to know that I don't have any problem with being the practically-teenage scene kid boyfriend of a very attractive, albeit old, Southern gentleman." He paused and nuzzled against Johnny's neck, "And trust me, you don't have to worry about that 'livin' in sin' thing. There are Christian deities doing far worse than what you and I are doing. I know, I get to hear all the juicy details. I think you ought to find a new god to pray to anyhow," he continued, referring to himself, obviously.
So maybe he was doing just a little bit better, what with the teasing going on between them. It was a damn good way to get him to perk up a little, getting his mind off of what had him so down. And usually he bounced back easily enough if it was plain to him that no one was just going to let him wallow in his misery. Besides, how could he be miserable when Johnny made him happier than he'd ever been before?
"That description's not helpin' the creepy cradle-robber thing, you know. Now I just sound like some kinda sick old man who likes preyin' on helpless young things in tight clothes," Johnny said, pretending to sulk. That moment passed and he adjusted his grasp to curl his fingers into Emo's hair. "Which is true, I guess. But I'm not old. There's plenty of your kind around older'n either of us; you're just young still. Wait 'til you get to be my age and see what kinda young upstarts are runnin' around then." By the time Emo was his age, though, Johnny might not even be around at all. He figured he would be lucky to reach two-hundred years, let alone the close of this century.
Thoughts like that wouldn't help matters any today. Johnny opened the internet browser to the GED websites he'd been looking at earlier, but didn't look at it just yet. Today was about his boyfriend, who needed to hold onto him to keep things from getting too bad, and so long as he was registered for those classes by the end of the month he figured his family would be happy. He could delay things for a while. "A new god, hm? Well, I never been much of one for prayer or church services, truth be told. I prefer to do my worshippin'... privately," he said, finishing off what was quite possibly the most suggestive comment he'd made yet with an innocent look and shrug.
Emo's head tilted back a bit as Johnny's hand gripped his hair and he finally let himself smile. "I don't think I'll be much by the time I'm your age; if I'm here at all. At best, I'll be like Grunge and Punk: weakened to half-dead, bitter and clinging to my last scrap of power. We aren't made the way we used to be. Fads come and go, phase out... I know my time here is limited." He shrugged nonchalantly. It was just a fact of life for Emo. His brother would be here forever in some capacity, but he would no doubt fade away. Or at least he always believed he would. Who knew; maybe he would be proven wrong. "But," he said, leaning in and kissing Johnny softly on the chin. "I could have ten years or I could have a hundred. I could have five hundred, for all I know. And in five hundred years you could still have people saying that the South will rise again."
He tilted his head up and pressed another kiss to Johnny's neck this time, nuzzling against the warm skin there as he reached out and blindly closed Johnny's laptop, nudging it to the side and onto the bed. "I know one way to get a little blood flowing back in the South, at any rate..." he teased, nose brushing against the edge of Johnny's earlobe as he continued to kiss up his neck. Maybe he wasn't in a better mood exactly but Emo was definitely trying to push all the thoughts of his misery to the back of his mind and take advantage of Johnny's suggestive mood - the opportunist that he was. "Besides, this new god of yours is pretty fond of being worshiped privately as well. Or," he paused, lips brushing the skin he'd just kissed as he continued speaking, "in mobs of sweaty, noisy, exuberant bodies... but that's more of a revival thing if we're sticking with the church metaphor."