Adulthood on the Couch (Eddie)

The following fictitious events take place in Reality A (Purple)

Today, VJ looked at him differently.

  It was subtle and uncertain, but when Eddie offered VJ a place to stay, he had taken Eddie’s keys.

  The symbolism felt profound. Eddie tried not to make too much of every glance, every casual statement VJ made for the remainder of the visit. The wait to leave Niels’ apartment was agony, but finally they were in the hall.

  VJ had on a unicorn rainbow onesie outfit with a kangaroo pouch full of glitter. The cotton candy look offset his shaggy brown-haired rockstar look in a way that utterly destroyed it.

  Eddie knew VJ. They’d shared a home since childhood, been raised as adoptive brothers since Eddie was nine. He knew him inside and out, but he could not for the life of him discern this one thing: What did VJ mean when he took the offered keys?

  “You’re welcome any time, you know,” he told VJ in the hall.

  VJ nodded, like taking Eddie’s keys was no big deal. “I’m coming by,” he promised. “I don’t need to sleep in Niels’ sex cave.”

  After months of mourning, Niels had finally met a girl. Eddie didn’t want to think about that too hard. He wanted to think about VJ, about rainbows and glitter and destiny, about intention.

  “But,” VJ warned, “beware of my impending glitterbomb.”

  Eddie laughed. The glitter from VJ’s outfit would be all over his apartment in mere moments. The thought made him warm. “Bright colors help me compose.” He offered his hand to VJ, ready to show him an entire new magic. Ghosts were the world of yesterday; transportation magic was the world of tomorrow. “Can I show you something?”

  VJ’s eyes widened, but he took Eddie’s hand. His fingers were calloused from years of guitar-playing, his palm warm and welcome.

  Eddie smiled. He transported them to his apartment. One instant, they were in the hall of Niels’ building; the next, they stood in Eddie’s kitchen. “You don’t need my keys.”

  VJ, seer-of-ghosts and believer-of-the-extraordinary, barely worried. He stepped around Eddie’s apartment like it held an answer to why and how they had transported. “Whoa.”

  Eddie could have kissed him, for the wonder in his eyes. “It isn’t just ghosts. It’s…the world is so much bigger than we knew.”

  “Wow. What do you know?”

  Eddie grinned. “Fairies, witches, different types of magic, whole other worlds you can get to just by imagining them. And that’s where we were last week when you couldn’t find us. Someone stole Jace and we left Earth to find him.”

  VJ nodded, like none of that was insane.

  “Can I get you anything?” Eddie asked.

  VJ shrugged. “Whatever you’ve got.” He sat, waiting for more explanation.

  Eddie took his time in the kitchen. He poured them each a shot and got out a tray of crackers, cheese, tomato, and spinach. He brought the shots and snacks over, as well as the bottle of schnapps.

  “Tell me everything,” VJ said as he built himself a cracker sandwich.

  Eddie did. He went through their entire adventure, from discovering Jace was missing, to their time in Sylem, Glavnaya, and the Dells. He concluded with travel packs, with fire magic, with the endless list of realms he knew of already.

  VJ listened, eating steadily the whole time. When Eddie finished talking, VJ rounded off one last cracker sandwich before he lamented, “And you didn’t include me. Jace okay?”

  “He’s annoyed,” Eddie said. “But not with me.” He glanced at VJ. “He’s one of them — a fairy.”

  VJ nodded. He angled himself toward Eddie in a way that shifted their bodies annoyingly farther apart. “And,” he said with slow deliberacy. “You’re…seeing Fara still. Right?”

  Eddie’s hands shook. “I realized recently that I gave my heart to someone else a long time ago. Why could he not be open? Why could he not share his feelings, bare his truth to the one person who knew him better than anyone in the world?

  He guessed the difference was because it could change everything. If VJ didn’t feel the same, if it made him uncomfortable to know Eddie felt that way about him…

  VJ raised an eyebrow, teasing. “Ja? Fangirl?”

  Eddie downed a shot. He poured another and downed it too. What did Americans call it? Liquid Courage?

  Eddie could never have enough courage. “Not a fangirl,” he said.

  “Cille?” Viggo guessed, his sister’s name.

  This was so painful, like climbing the steps to an execution must feel. It was inexorable and torturous at the same time, and worse for the faint hope that kept the nausea at bay.

  “Not her either,” Eddie said. “Do you want to watch something? I have eight different streaming services.”

  VJ shifted to face him, arm over the back of the couch. “Who?”

  Eddie met his eyes, which looked golden-brown in the light. “Someone I don’t think is an option.”

  “Ja?”

  “Ja.”

  VJ scooted closer to him. “I have the same problem.” He angled back toward the television, scrolling through video options. “Single isn’t that bad.”

  “You would know.” Please stop being single. I’m right here. Please see me.

  VJ laughed. “Do I have to ask Edvard if Viggo knows?”

  Talking to their ghost fathers meant traveling back to Denmark — substantially easier now they had magic — and visiting them in the home they haunted.

  “If Viggo knows what?” Eddie said. He couldn’t figure out how they’d gone from talking about dating to addressing the matter of abandoning their fathers’ ghosts in Denmark.

  “Who stole your heart,” VJ said.

  Oh, they hadn’t changed subjects.

  Eddie ducked his head. “I don’t think he knows. I didn’t even know until recently. Who stole yours?”

  Eddie braced himself. He had a feeling that hope or disappointment would have the same net feeling in his gut, that tumultuous swirling like he’d been on too many carnival rides after eating nothing but fried dough and cotton candy all day.

  “My best friend,” VJ said.

  His roommate at boarding school, he meant. 

  Eddie was wrong: Devastation and disappointment were worse than hope.

  “Jerome,” he said, to confirm.

  VJ laughed and pressed his lips together to hold in his drink. He swallowed. “No, you,” he said, like it was no big deal.

  Eddie’s heart fluttered.

  Hope was so, so much better. 

  “But I can control my feelings,” VJ promised. “See?”

  Eddie met his eyes again, and this time they were dark and full of hunger. 

  “What if I don’t want you to?” Eddie asked.

  VJ brushed his calf against Eddie’s. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

  Because he was blind. “I didn’t even realize it until Tulsa.”

  There it was, out in the open: He loved VJ, and VJ somehow miraculously loved him too.

  “What happened in Tulsa?” VJ asked, leaned more forward.

  “We shared a hotel room,” Eddie explained. Jace and Li had shared (even though they ‘weren’t dating’), and Niels had flown out within an hour of the concert, choosing to sleep on the plane home to Addie in the hospital. “You were sleeping, and…looking at you, so relaxed and comfortable and tender…made me want to cry.”

  He could say things like that to VJ and know VJ would understand.

  They shared their ghost dads, after all: No one else could see them.

  “Because I looked dead?” VJ joked softly.

  Because it was so unjustly inappropriate for Eddie to climb into bed and cuddle that night in Tulsa. Because VJ looked— “You were beautiful. Perfect.”

  VJ nodded. “I knew when I couldn’t call you my brother.”

  Eddie and Niels had done everything they could manage to get kicked out of boarding school. They’d finally stolen the school van and taken it on a joy ride through Copenhagen. Niels had wanted to be home in western Denmark; Eddie had wanted…things he didn’t understand.

  In the car on the way back to their townhouse in Copenhagen, Niels had fought with his mother and somehow it had culminated in VJ begging to be sent away to boarding school, and running away when their mother refused.

  That was because of Eddie? Because he didn’t want to live in the same house as brothers?

  “You’ve waited a long time,” Eddie mused. He touched VJ’s knee, a test, and then rested his palm against VJ’s thigh. “I got kicked out of school so I could spend time with you,” he admitted.

  VJ laughed under his breath. “It’s about time you figured it out. Fucking Fara.”

  Fara had been an excursion in futility, a cascade of regret. He leaned toward VJ, ready to forget. “I loved you since forever, I just didn’t know it yet.”

  VJ nodded. He rested his hand on Eddie’s where it sat on his thigh, twined their fingers together. “So? Can I keep the keys?”

  “Please,” Eddie breathed. He kissed him, out of curiosity more than anything. He’d imagined it a thousand times, but the pleasure of VJ’s warm, eager lips pressed against his ignited a fire Eddie knew would never die.

  VJ lifted Eddie’s shirt off, testing, so Eddie unzipped VJ’s unicorn onesie (glitter flew everywhere) and gazed at the beautiful slant of his pectoral muscles, the hook under his ribs, the splay of his hips. He ran his hands over them, stopping just at the edge of his waist. “Is it creepy that I’ve dreamed about this?” He was too shy about it.

  “Were they creepy dreams?” VJ considered. His breath was coming in quick bursts, his hands steady as they explored Eddie’s chest and back.

  “No,” Eddie laughed. He kissed down VJ’s chest, memorizing with his lips a body that he had imagined a thousand times. “But your nipples are darker in real life.”

  “You’ve seen my nipples before,” VJ pointed out, his back and neck arched.

  Eddie blushed. “I kind of have avoided looking at you. Ever.”

  VJ laughed and pushed Eddie to lie down on the couch. He kissed down Eddie’s neck, chest, and abdomen, stopping where Eddie had, on the waistline. “Look at me,” he said. Eddie wasn’t sure if it was permission in general or a request for that second.

  He looked at VJ, at his quiet determination and his jokes, his softness and his edge, his light and his dark. He saw him.