madsviande

In Jesse's head, Jack was only ever a “bottle blonde.” Not really something most people would call a man. It's a phrase with some real connotations. Even the spelling would make the word “blonde” feminine in French. But it made sense to Jesse; it captured something true about Jack.

Which isn't to say Jack was feminine. He had that shitty little soulpatch thing. He dressed like any other man. And he had a reputation as a womanizer — maybe a little overstated, but he had his fair share of success with women. Enough that Jesse felt a little uncomfortable, seeing how lightly Jack played with their hearts.

Jesse had always felt like something was wrong with him when love and sex came up. Something wrong with his body, maybe. Lumpy and stiff, soft and bristly. Nothing fit. A girl named Allison had liked him once, enough that she even slept with him. It felt good, but it didn't feel right. Hard to imagine why Allison had wanted to do that with him.

It wasn't hard to see what drew people to Jack. Sure, Jack was kind of an asshole, but he was an asshole you wanted to like. You always wanted him to notice you, but everyone always noticed him first. He was magnetic and, like a magnet with a nail, Jack dragged Jesse around everywhere he went.

Being useful to Jack wasn't too bad. Jesse liked to be useful. He didn't like talking, and Jack did, so he listened and he remembered things people said. He didn't have ideas, and Jack did, so he did whatever Jack asked of him. He didn't like the limelight, and Jack did, so Jesse stood in the back pushing buttons and twiddling knobs, like Jack taught him, while Jack worked the crowd and brought in the foreground material.

They were a DJ duo. Sorta retro EDM, successful enough locally as long as they kept playing raves. They went by JJesture. A stupid name, but at this point they were stuck with it. Onstage Jack always looked like he'd walked off a movie set, and Jesse always looked like he'd built it.

That was part of what Jesse meant when he thought of Jack as a bottle blonde. Bottle as in bottled lightning. Jesse could have grown a full beard, but it wouldn't work for him like Jack's shitty chinscruff did for him. Jesse could bleach his hair that exact color and it wouldn't do shit for him, not in the way it had made Jack larger than life, a bigger presence than he was tall. Jesse was three inches taller and always shrank into the background next to Jack.

“You could have a costume too, you know,” Jack said to him once.

“Look, you put on the costume, and I show up in the ballcap, the t-shirt, and the jeans. You dance, and I stand there. You look good, and I look bad, and you look better with me for contrast.”

“Jesse,” Jack said, as if he disapproved.

“Dude, why are you even here?” some guy had asked Jesse once at a party. It was a fair question; Jesse didn't like parties. He didn't like shitty beer, but he liked vodka even less. And nobody was there to talk to him. It wasn't a place where he belonged at all.

“He's here because I wanted him to be,” Jack said, appearing from nowhere. “You got a problem with that?”

Of course the guy didn't have a problem with that. Jack wanted him to be there, so Jesse was there. Jesse always did what he was told. Jesse always wanted to be wanted. The other guy left the conversation in a hurry, and Jack turned to Jesse, searching Jesse's face for something he wasn't going to find.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Jesse said.

“If you want to leave, we can.”

Well, that had hardly seemed fair to Jack. “I'm good, really. I'm chillin'.”

They did leave, eventually.

“Do you need help carrying all of that? I have a hand free.”

“Nah, I'm good,” Jesse said, and this time he meant it. Six shitty beers had him feeling nice. Arms full of equipment, the van blocks away, the world felt right as rain. Emboldened by the night, Jesse began to sing.

“I wanna be your beast of burden… my back is broad, but it ain't hurtin'…”

“Those aren't the lyrics,” Jack said, smiling in the streetlamps.

“Huh?” Jesse said intelligently. “I have them wrong?”

“No, I like yours too,” Jack said. “We could do that song. You could sing.”

“Water down the EDM with dadrock?” Jesse said, and laughed. “Let's stick to things that sound good.”

And he kept singing — just those two lines, which he'd apparently had wrong his whole life.

“You know,” Jack said, shaking his head and grinning, “when you do shit like this…”

Jesse stopped singing.

“Hey, what? Man, why'd you stop? I was enjoying that, Jess.”

It was alright, being funny to Jack on accident. It's not like Jesse was ever funny to anyone else, on purpose or otherwise.

Jesse didn't think very hard about why Jack kept him around all this time, because thinking about that was a huge bummer. Anyone could learn to do what Jesse did, but Jesse already knew how to do it. Anyone could do what Jack told them to do, but with Jesse, Jack didn't have to say the whole piece. He could talk fast but think faster, and Jesse would still know what Jack meant. That was enough. Not everybody had to be brilliant.

One night on tour, Jesse went to pick up some Chinese food and got turned around on his way back to the hotel. He passed a gay bar, with two dudes making out in the alley next door. One balding brunette guy, one bottle blonde. Jesse stopped despite himself.

“Jack?”

The bottle blonde whirled around. “Shit,” said Jack. The balding brunette looked at Jesse, looked at Jack, and split.

Jack sounded angry, but he looked scared. “What are you doing here, Jesse?”

“I got…” Jesse lifted his food mutely. “You're gay?”

Jack rocked back onto his heels and rolled his eyes towards the moonless sky. “Come on. You know I like girls, dude.”

“I didn't know you liked dudes.”

“This exact reaction is why I didn't tell you,” Jack said sourly. “Go eat your fuckin' General Tso's and leave me alone.”

Jesse took the hint and left. The hotel wasn't far away, but the walk felt like it took forever. All the stars you couldn't see in the sky boiled his head from the inside out. Something felt terribly wrong.

Starting with the General Tso's. The bag was paper; Jack was just guessing. Was Jesse that predictable? Of course he was. He owned dozens of ballcaps and t-shirts and jeans, and he wore nothing else. Just a loser, coasting on his friend's coattails, and he couldn't even leave the hand that fed him unbitten. Jesse wasn't hungry anymore.

Jack showed up not long after Jesse threw the food out. Either there was a question on Jesse's face, or Jack felt he had to explain himself; either way, he said, “Alan didn't wanna mess with me anymore after seeing my jealous boyfriend.“

“Shit,” Jesse said. “Jack, I'm so sorry.”

“For what?” Jack said, irritable and not looking at anything. “You barely even said anything. This had to happen sometime.”

Jesse desperately wished that it hadn't.

Was Jesse a homophobe? Maybe, but maybe not. Not by overt inclination, anyway. He would have walked past any other pair of men without looking twice. But… As a child, Jesse had been terrified of internal bleeding. Something about the concept of an injury he couldn't see… The imagined pains he'd worked himself into then felt like this, now. Seeing Jack in the arms of another man had ruptured something in Jesse in a way he couldn't explain, and it made Jesse feel lower than dirt.

They didn't talk after that. They just slept on mediocre hotel beds, facing apart from each other. It was like that for a few days, Jack cold as ice, Jesse one big bruise; and then Jack began to look like he had something to say, but he never said it. They'd gone off the old, comfortable, familiar rails, and the train was running down on gravel and grass.

Jesse had no idea what words Jack was holding back, but they haunted him. He wished Jack would just say it. Whatever it was, it looked like it hurt to hold in. And Jack just kept holding it in, at least until they got home.

“We need to work on new material,” Jack said, face drawn with dread. And Jesse always did what he was told. But Jack ran out of inspiration or something; everything got hung up. At last, Jack threw down the headphones.

“Don't you have any ideas?”

Well, that hurt. It wasn't like Jesse didn't know; but it wasn't like he needed to hear it.

“No,” Jesse said, frowning, “I don't. You know that, Jack. You don't have to rub my nose in it.”

“I don't believe you,” Jack said.

“What? What did I do this time?” Jesse demanded. “What do you want from me?”

“Shit on a stick, Jesse, no. I'm not mad,” Jack said, squeezing his eyes shut so as not to see the obvious lie. “I don't believe that you don't have any ideas. This is a partnership, dude. Fuck. This isn't the Jack show! It's your act, too.”

Jesse got heated. “Sorry I'm not clever enough to keep up with —”

“Jesse,” Jack commanded. “Come over here and play this keyboard.”

For a moment, he hesitated; but Jesse always did what he was told. He stood over by the synth and looked at Jack warily. “Play what?”

Jack rolled his eyes and folded his arms impatiently, and Jesse felt a little worse. “Play anything. Just repeat whatever you do, and change it a bit once you've looped a few times.”

“Jack, you know I can't —”

“So lower your standards, Jess,” Jack insisted. “I'm not asking you to, to be good at it already. Just try.”

This was bullshit. He said it out loud. “This is bullshit.” But Jesse did what he was told. Five notes, seven notes, and he repeated his shitty little tune. 'Change it a bit,' huh? On the third one, he started with the seven, then the five.

“That sounds good,” Jack said, approvingly. Jesse frowned.

“You've lost your mind.”

“No. Gimme the keyboard a second.” Jack hit buttons and started a drum pattern, and then played back Jesse's messing around. It was tweaked a little bit in every timing, but it was Jesse's notes in Jesse's order.

Some repetitions in, Jack shifted his hand up the keyboard, and the melody with it. “Sometimes it's fun to start a motive like this from a different position.” He shifted it back and forth, then looped the five, the five, the five, the five, and then the seven in the new position; then the seven in the old position, the five in the old position.

“See?” Jack said.

“No,” Jesse said. “I don't see. I didn't make anything that sounded good. You did. I didn't have an idea, I just hit keys. I don't know how to do what you did.”

“You do see,” Jack said, smiling maddeningly. “The beginning of an idea is nothing. It's not impossible. It's not magic. I'm not asking you for something you can't do.”

Jesse turned to face Jack. Jack looked down at Jesse's mouth before flicking back to his eyes. The bottle-blonde licked his lips.

“You should sing this,” Jack said.

“No.”

A few days later, Jack had lyrics.

“Please try,” Jack said. And it was a plea. That was what broke Jesse's resolve, in the end. He felt fucking stupid, but he did it.

“Move across the dancefloor, and I don't need anything else,” he croaked as quietly as he could. More vapid dancefloor bubblegum bullshit. “You, me, the music makes three, and I don't need anything else. No, I don't need anything else but this, tonight. I don't need anything else, but I want the world tonight…”

“You've got the tune,” Jack said, like he was coaxing a dog to do a trick. “Now sing for real.”

Rage and hot humiliation rolled in scaly coils beneath Jesse's skin.

“Move across the dancefloor, and I don't need anything else. You, me, the music makes three, and I don't need anything else. No, I don't need anything else but this, tonight. I don't need anything else, but I want the world tonight…”

Jack looked ecstatic. Jesse was furious. He wished he was the kind of asshole who broke electronics. Instead, he began to yell, made up new, mocking words.

“I don't dance, I don't move my body, and I don't wanna need nobody. You and the music and who needs me? I don't wanna need nobody tonight. Nobody tonight but me, well maybe that's alright. Nobody here but me tonight, that sounds like every night. Move to leave the dancefloor, and I don't need anything else!”

Jesse cut himself off, shaking. Jack was wide-eyed. Jesse felt like he'd traded places with some rabid dog, some monster scanning frantically for an exit.

“Jesse,” Jack said.

Jesse stomped towards the door. “I don't wanna hear it.”

“I do,” Jack said, and he grabbed paper and pencil, writing furiously. “Jesse, that whipped!”

Something cold and hollow rang in Jesse and stopped him moving.

“I'm sorry this was stressful,” Jack said. “But I'm right about you, you know.”

Jesse turned around, his joints feeling like concrete on concrete. “Right about what? I'm a trained monkey who does tricks on command? Both of us knew that.“

“No,” Jack said. “What?”

“Then what do you mean?”

“You do have ideas, Jesse,” Jack said. “And I want to know about them.”

The air froze still as glass.

“I'm sorry about that night on tour,” Jesse said, and he didn't know why he said it now. It didn't have anything to do with this.

Jack rubbed his forehead. “Ugh. Don't worry about it. I've… always been afraid of telling you, so I overreacted.”

“No, I mean,” and Jesse stopped. Jack waited. What did he mean?

Again, without knowing why, Jesse changed the subject. “Why have you kept me around all this time, if you wanted me to contribute more to the act than I did?”

Jack looked pained. “I didn't wanna push you. You seemed like you didn't want to. You still seem that way, actually.”

“What changed?” Why isn't that good enough anymore?

Jack shrugged. His mouth twisted, the line jagged. “A dozen little things piled up. I started thinking you don't think very highly of yourself. And I do. I always have.”

Jesse felt like a balloon fit to pop. He swung his arms around. “Why?“

“Who cares?” Jack gestured at Jesse and the keyboard and the lyrics he'd just scribbled on the pad in one loose arc. “I was right about you, what's it matter why?”

Jesse felt shaken and clean. He didn't understand anything anymore. He walked towards Jack. “Then what do you want from me? Should I start wearing costumes for shows? Should I be more fun at parties?”

Jack sighed. “Jesse…”

“Should I take my hat off, so everyone can see I'm balding as well as ugly?” Jesse asked. Angry words, a gentle, wistful voice. Jack turned away, and now it was the bottle blonde's turn to make for the door. Jesse grabbed his arm to stop his escape. “Should I bleach it all blonde?”

Jack turned back. “No,” he said urgently, and pulled Jesse down with his free hand to face Jack from closer up. “No.”

For a long moment they breathed, looking at each other hesitantly. Then Jack kissed him.

“Oh,” Jesse said when Jack pulled away, and pulled him back.

Something was definitely still wrong with Jesse. The wrong shape, lumpy and stiff and soft and bristly. But his nerves sang when he was kissing Jack, and there was a new, urgent, immediate, pressing certainty that whatever was wrong with his body didn't matter and didn't stop this from being right.

Whatever madness drew Jack to touch a loser like him, Jesse felt it too. No boundary could be left standing between his profane mediocrity and Jack's bottle blonde brilliance. He wanted more. His hands crawled up Jack's shoulders and onto his head. Jack's hands ran down from Jesse's collarbones, wrapped around to his hips.

They broke apart. Jack spoke first. “I thought you were straight.”

He did too. Jesse's head fell heavily onto Jack's shoulder, and his breathing became shallow; Jack's hands spread onto Jesse's back in pre-emptive comfort. Jesse's heartbeat was a bass drum that nobody had bothered to EQ, spectrum-dominant, unfiltered, and much too high in the mix.

What Jesse had just felt… if this was what a kiss could feel like, it became clear that whatever he'd felt with Allison was not real. Her touch was something he'd accepted, not something he'd wanted. And if this was what wanting could feel like, he'd never wanted a woman in his life.

“I don't… Jack, I can't answer that.”

“Shh. Don't, then. I'm sorry I asked.”

Jack's hands roamed Jesse's broad back. This beautiful, magnetic man kept touching Jesse's awful, hulking body, and Jesse… could not bring himself to feel bad about it for even a second. He didn't care why Jack wanted this. None of that mattered.

“We can make new music later,” Jack suggested. “Do you want to cuddle? I want to cuddle.”

“Okay,” Jesse answered, feeling dopey. They pulled apart, but Jack took Jesse's hand shyly and pulled him out of the studio, up the stairs to his bed.

Jesse's long limbs didn't seem to fit quite right around Jack. Jack didn't seem to mind at all.