Chapter Text
From: [email protected]
Date: Sep 2 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: happy fuckin’ monday
Aren’t we cheerful and optimistic. Over-dramatic as ever. It doesn’t matter, though. I actually kind of like it. It’s endearing. Well, you’re endearing, but you know that. Everyone thinks so, and you’ve told me enough stories that I know you use that charm.
As I write this it is Monday night and I am sitting in my room, silence all around me in every direction. My guardians aren’t home right now, so it’s just me. I was tempted to listen to music, but couldn’t think of anything I wanted to hear (if you have suggestions, I promise I will listen to them) so I decided to write to you.
Re the math test you mentioned: I bet you did fine. You're smarter than you think you are. I just hope you've done your homework already, before checking your email. When I have enough self-restraint, I always do, because as soon as I check this email, I want to write back, or, if you haven't written, write another email, ask you more questions. I want to know everything about you (besides the obvious, name and appearance and all that, to preserve anonymity).
Honestly, I’m having trouble thinking of anything else you want to hear. I know you’re rolling your eyes and thinking something like anything you tell me is good, darling, (and I am cursing myself for the fact that my skin isn’t dark enough to erase my ability to blush) but my brain is fried from school and I don’t go to parties enough to have good stories. Besides, the more I tell you about school, the more likely it is that you’ll figure me out.
What are you thinking about? There, now that I've asked, you'll have something to say to me, and it'll be easier for me to think of something to say to you. I'm thinking about silence. I love silence. It's a space I can use to create something beautiful with my music (you do remember I play the violin, right?), an arena for conversation. A thing made to be broken.
You know I'm bored out of my mind when I start getting philosophical. I'll stop here.
-Vio
From: [email protected]
Date: Sep 2 2:48 AM
Subject: Re: re: happy fuckin' monday
Hello, darling.
I'm imagining you blushing, even though I don't actually know what you look like (but you said dark skin, which informs my scrambled mental perception of you a tiny bit. I didn't know that before.)
Before I checked this email, I was thinking about equations and all the ways I definitely failed this test. My father will be angry with me, but it's fine. I deserve it anyways. (If I’m lucky, I won't get hit.)
But now that I've read your email, I'm thinking about silence too. I'm the opposite-- I hate silence. I prefer loud crowds, pounding music, being able to scream at the top of my lungs. (And all of those things go along with drinking, and beautiful people who are often interested in me to some degree, which makes it even better.)
I don't like metaphorical silence either. Secrets, lies, dishonesty. Which is a problem, because my life is absolutely chock-full of metaphorical silence.
Seems like I never say anything I really mean. Even to you-- I don't lie to you, though, you're one of the only people I've never lied to. But I don't tell you everything.
They say people should open up, let their feelings out, be honest. I don't do that. If I open any of the doors in the ramshackle building that is my heart, it'll all collapse to the ground. I'll shatter. Or someone else will shatter me first.
Well, this is a downer of an email. I don't mean to bother you and I don't mean to worry you. I'm going to take a break from this. Maybe I'll do my homework (no, I didn't do it already).
***
Well, it is about two AM and I am in a much better mood. Before you ask, I am not at a party on a school night. I'm just sitting in my room, not doing much of anything, but I finished my homework and stole my sister's leftovers (one of her friends can cook, and they made pancakes yesterday, and she absolutely won't notice that I took a few.) I'm blasting music. Everyone always says that I'll go deaf by the time I'm twenty-five if I keep playing it through my headphones so loudly, but I really don't care. That's an issue for the future adult me to figure out (if he even ever makes it that far).
I've just remembered that you asked me to recommend you music. I don't know what you like, so I'll just give you the first songs that come to mind when I think of you.
Adelaide by Fire Fortuna. I suppose it's technically about a woman, but you cannot seriously tell me the singer isn't actually talking about a guy he met on the subway or in the street or something who gave him his number, met up with him a few times, and then disappeared on him, leaving him heartbroken but still better having met him.
exhuming yr memory by roller disco firepower. It's sad, I guess, but it sounds so neat, with all these harmonies, and this badass electric violin solo in the middle of it. I feel like you'd appreciate it (and of course I remembered that you play the violin). It's one of those songs with intellectual and poetic value, but who can pay attention to that when the music itself is so captivating you can't help but dance? It makes me think about falling in love (not that I’m in love, but if I were-- well, my heart belongs to you).
And finally, because I've already gone on for far too long, Frozen Blood by Arizona & the Jackpines. It's a ballad of some sort, and actually where I got both my email and my alias. If you do actually listen to them, tell me what you think.
-Pierre
Monty Montague had been getting through the day, and everything had been as perfect as possible as far as he’d been concerned. He’d gone to bed at three AM after writing to Vio (by the standards of normal people, he should've gone to bed earlier, but with enough coffee and a stolen sip of gin from his father’s bottle he managed to be functional in the morning). Unluckily for him, he had a free period first thing in the morning, which in Monty’s opinion was far too early to be functional. He should be studying, but he would much rather linger at one of the library's student computers, refreshing his secret email inbox in hopes that Vio has written back.
He’s a bit attached to Vio, if by 'attached' one means that he cares more about him than he’s ever cared about a significant number of people whom he’s actually met, and definitely more than anyone he’s ever actually kissed. Even though Monty and Vio have never met in real life, and both refuse to tell each other anything significant about themselves, Monty at least knows they go to the same school.
He takes comfort in that, in knowing that he can walk these hallways, sit at battered desks and worn lunch tables, and know that Vio is there too. The prospect of actually meeting him is terrifying, but somewhere in these crowds, he's out here.
After about twenty minutes, he gives up. Vio's competent and studious; most likely, he spent whatever spare time he had before school studying or practicing his violin, and had no time to reply. Monty’s often impressed by his ability to be perfect in absolutely every way, but he can’t say he isn’t a bit bothered that Vio prioritizes other things over emailing back (which, when he looks back at it, sounds very possessive. Monty considers that perhaps he thinks of himself as the center of the universe a bit too much. Vio doesn’t even know who he is, and Monty prefers it that way.) Regardless, there's no point in sitting here reloading the page anymore, so he gets up from the computer chair, collapsing onto a couch among the bookshelves. With luck, he’ll manage to drift off to sleep.
The ten minutes of relative piece and quiet Monty is granted before his mess of a life plunges even more sharply downhill is not nearly enough for him to get any significant rest. In fact, he’s barely dozing when someone kicks the couch and says his name, far too loudly and far too close to his ear for anyone to be comfortable with. “Monty! Monty, wake up!”
“I’m awake,” he grumbles, rubbing his eyes. The person who disturbed his rest leans over him, only a few inches from his face. Without actually recognizing them, Monty can tell it isn’t a teacher, as his name is listed in all their attendance records as Henry Montague, so he doesn’t hurry, instead stretches dramatically and groans several times to express his displeasure at being bothered.
When the face above him comes into focus, Monty recognizes him as Richard Peele (or so he’s pretty sure, a kid who sat next to him in math class a year or two ago.He’s got a strange expression on his face; determined, but with a bit of bite to it, as if he knows exactly what he wants and has enough power to get it.
“What d'you want from me?” Monty asks, a bit more harshly than necessary. “Get to the point, it’s too early to dance around it. And if you’re just here for a friendly chat, I’m not interested in talking about the weather or the history homework.”
"All right, then. You left your email open on your computer."
"What? No, I didn't." Of course, this is untrue. Monty had left the computer desk without logging out or turning it off, but he realizes this a second too late, and by now he’s dug himself deep enough that he finds it unwise to go back. “You must be thinking of someone else.”
“I saw you sitting at the computer, and then I needed the computer. Shattered dot aftermath. I don’t know the song you said it’s referencing.”
“Doesn’t matter to you,” Monty snaps, then realizes the implications. “You read my email?”
For a moment, Peele looks almost apologetic. “I couldn’t help it. You left it out.”
“How much did you read? And why?”
“Oh, a few. But I also took a few screenshots.”
Monty stifles a few choice words and pulls Richard Peele by the collar down towards me until he can hiss into his ear. “You what.”
“I took screenshots,” he repeats. “It seemed like the thing to do. You’ve been untouchable for years, Monty Montague.”
The way he says it makes Monty want to laugh, or cry, and for a moment he’s tossed roughly back in his mind to a thousand occasions, and specifically the day after he’d returned home from summer camp in upstate New York. Me, untouchable? “What are you trying to do? Is this blackmail?”
He tilts his head. “Those emails are a bit… revelatory, don’t you think? I sent them to myself, but I could easily send them somewhere else, or post them online.”
“You’d be an awful person if you did. That’d ruin my life.” Even straight boys like Richard have to know that being queer in this particular area isn’t a cakewalk. Monty isn’t in the closet, per se; there are people who know, mostly boys he’s been with at parties when both of them were drunk out of our minds. He doesn’t advertise it, and most likely hasn’t said the word bisexual out loud in years. If he ever tells people he isn’t ashamed of it, he’d be lying. But regardless of his feelings on the subject, his life would be over, metaphorically speaking (and even literally, if things get so bad in the fallout that he could no longer take the strain of being alive) if his father found out. Monty is starting to panic.
“What can I do to keep you from doing that?”
He smiles; it’s the most genuine expression he’s revealed during the entirety of their conversation. “Now we’re talking.”
Richard, who Monty’d barely known before today, has now revealed himself to be an utterly awful person. In his words, he's "straight but interested in experimenting ”, and on the condition that Monty agrees to do various things with him for some unspecified amount of time, he won't publish the screenshots that spell his doom. He’d said he could could have a day to think about it, but as soon as he leaves, Monty knows exactly what he’ll have to do: whatever he wants to keep him from posting the stolen emails, which would out both him and Vio. Monty hasn’t been searching for Vio, out of respect for his privacy, but his father or his friends or the entire school could easily compare notes and smoke him out.
The only real question Monty considers is whether to tell Vio what's going on. The ethical thing to do would be to tell him. By all rights, he deserves to know that Monty’s carelessness has put both of them at the mercy of Richard Peele. But somehow Monty can't bear it. At home, in his cold bedroom with silence rushing against his ears, he drafts email after email explaining everything, and deletes all of them.
If Vio knew they’re being blackmailed, he would freak out, which he has every right to do. But more likely than not, he would stop emailing. And Monty is certain he simply can't let that happen. Some part of him thinks that he’d lose all desire to function if there would never again be an email to look forward to. I can't lose him.
So Monty forces himself to do his homework and waits for Vio's innocent, unknowing reply with an ache deep in the pit of his stomach.