Chapter Text
On August 31, 2022, Glauco realized he was screwed.
He had a big, spacious house to himself, the kitchen table uncrowned with beer cans and the freedom to place himself in front of the computer all day if he wanted.
Glauco had always been a lone wolf, either by his own choice or by life's dictation, and like every member of his lineage he loved solitude.
In the end, life was a game of who could keep their eyes open for the longest time without wishing their souls to exhale, and to win it Glauco had spent his twenty-six years of life between four walls and with a yellow plaid on his shoulders; a hawthorn herbal tea and a nineteenth-century novel next to his heart.
And no one else.
Glauco had always been a set man, consistently logical all his life, and the advantages this had brought him were countless. His job, money for bills, right friendships.
Loneliness had become his employer and respite.
And that summer of 2022 had been both an accomplice and an exception to it.
Glauco was with Joel, everyone knew that, and that everyone was a dozen or so people who helped make both of their worlds go round.
Joel went around Finland making his dark grey soul the parachute for hundreds; Glauco had locked himself inside his home with a few inky words in his hand and a handful of dreams plucking at his heartstrings. They had been as close as they were distant for months, and that was fine with Glauco: his balance remained mite, his eyes open, and his affection for him could only increase because of it.
Then came the end of August.
It was evening and Joel had too many suitcases to load onto their bus. They were on their driveway and the sky was starless but moonlit. Glauco watched him discuss with the other boys where and how to put what, and the knowledge that he would not see him again for almost two months was a glass of wine emotions whose year he was slow to catch.
Joonas closed the hood, got on the black bus, and it would not be long before Joel did the same and disappeared from inside his eyes.
Loneliness was a friend that held his hand during the worst situations, and when Joel approached him with such a deep expression of emotion he had to cling to it with both hands.
"Well... Now you'll have the whole bed to yourself," he said amused, his voice bitter. His fears were a dark halo only visible to Glauco and a select few others, but at that moment they flowed only over his skin, wrapping around him like a rattlesnake. These here tasted like pillows imbued with other scents, other feelings, others. Glauco hated them, hated them but not him. Not him, never him. Joel would let that other invisible one there let go of his hand.
So he sighed, serious in the face, and touched his cheeks tenderly.
He cherished him so much, as well as loved him.
He cherished him so much that he wanted to pinch his skin, and he loved him so much that he would kiss it right then and there.
And he kissed him.
"The sheets will be waiting for your perfume," he told him, his mouth close to his ear, "And so will I."
And as Joel's heart embarked on the new chapter of his career, overflowing with confidence, Glauco returned to his walls with the invisible arms of loneliness around his neck.
He searched for his balance between the pages of a few books, in the calls of some writer wannabe, and on walks to get supplies.
They texted each other, even a lot when work wasn't suffocating them both. They had not been able to go beyond texts for days, though, and the truth was that Glauco did not yearn for it.
His equilibrium was restored, and his affection had not changed, but his rationality suggested that he should stay grounded because this was different. It would not be a matter of days, they could not always contact each other so frequently, and perhaps sometimes they could not even want to. Caught up in their jobs, their circumstances and this stupid game that was life.
Logically consistent, Glauco, for all his one.
But on August 31, lying in his bed, he slapped that phantom body attached to his that he occasionally found annoying, intrusive. He went onto Instagram, noticed a story of his, and opened it.
He had the darkest, most perturbing eyelids and the happiest smile he had ever seen on him.
Glauco wrinkled his eyebrows, defenceless as more stories scrolled by.
The milestones he had achieved, the places he had seen. The praise he had received, his dreams of eucalyptus and inkwells. The rewards to which his lonely life had led him blurred by the longing for a shared breath, a touch of his fingers.
And on that evening of August 31, as Joel got rid of every weakness on that stage, Glauco became overwhelmed by his own, now estranged from the embrace of solitude.
Craving. Glauco was craving.
He woke up craving, got up craving, worked craving.
He was a selfless guy: he had never put himself before anything, and to crave there was no time, no chance.
This feeling, this bad habit he had picked up was foreign.
It had been foreign during Joel's national tour, it had been foreign during the first days of his world absence.
They kept texting each other, they kept calling each other, they had even had a disastrous video call with the whole band rotten drunk after the show in Milan. Joel a little less wrecked just so he could properly talk to him.
Yet he couldn't stop.
He craved brushing his teeth and doing laundry, craved lying on the couch and watching a stupid TV series. Once he had even craved while drunk, he couldn't remember how he got there but he remembered that. Because the new sensations were the last to leave his head: they decided to implant themselves there, waiting for someone to relieve them, and perhaps Glauco should be grateful for that.
That's how he fell in love with him.
But craving... Night and day, in his dreams, in the reality that day after day he tried not to let fall apart, lost now his balance... No.
Then, like the coward he was, Glauco pursued solitude.
It was the orange equinox and the air Joel breathed he imagined tasted of paella and joy of life.
He didn't know, he hadn't asked him. He had not spoken to him for two days, in fact.
As soon as he would come to his senses he would have called him back, answered his messages, made up some very stupid excuse that he wouldn't feel guilty about, just this once. He would come to his senses and stop feeling that stabbing pain in his stomach, stop having those selfish thoughts in his head. Joel seemed so busy, anyway, and he certainly wasn't his constant thought, with his dream becoming substance in his clenched hands around that microphone.
Thank God.
He had worked so hard on himself to make this relationship work, and he couldn't let these unknown emotions ruin everything. He had the best intentions, and because of them, for a few hours, his pattern system came back into balance.
He returned to breathing air pleasantly just his own and even managed to work without third thoughts. Midnight came and autumn had no more escapes.
And when the phone rang, neither did he.
It was him. He had avoided the possibility of a phone call for two days and now it was him. His phone was inches from him, yet the fear of that feeling returning once he heard his voice made it seem like he was on the other side of the world. Just as Joel was.
Finally, he accepted the call.
"Ehy-"
"What the fuck are you doing?!" some yells, and honestly he was not surprised.
At first, he pretended not to understand, hoping that Joel's wrath was just one of his momentary outbursts and that that returning stomach twinge was just the ghost of the missed dinner.
"Um, I just turned off the PC and..." he hesitated, caught up in listening to the noises in the background on the other side of the phone. His breathing was erratic, as if he had been running. Or drowning.
And he was aware that no well-spoken sentence could help him. This was not surprising either.
"Listen..."
"Glauco," Joel interrupted him, and suddenly he felt like a worm, "Glauco stop it. What's going on?" he asked, and though he couldn't see it Glauco could sense it, that dark halo. He regretted wishing for feelings he was used to, because that was what he was used to, and also to the hatred that brought him to his knees.
But he had already brought himself to his knees.
A seething panic shook him all over and he widened his eyes. Stupid, he was a moron.
"Nothing, nothing Joel," he whispered, and he knew he should have sounded more confident.
Joel's halo now turned from black to blue, dark as the summer sky, and his breaths became tears. He could see him, even though he was not there with him.
Because wherever Joel was, his soul was with him.
And he, like the fool he was, only found himself craving harder.
"Listen, babe, listen... wait a moment," he begged Joel when it was he who had to return to this earth, who had to pull the handbrake of his thoughts for a moment to set things right. But, if his soul was really with Joel, then he hoped he would feel it as well.
He ran his fingers through his hair, just hoping Joel would not ended the call. No, he wouldn't: he wouldn't have cried for him if he hadn't felt so needy of his reassurance. Fucking idiot, how could make him cry?
They ended up making a video call.
Joel seemed to have locked himself in a hotel bathroom, and from outside could be heard Niko and Olli's voices railing against him. Okay, he deserved it, yes.
Joel bit his lip, not pointing his big blue eyes into his ones, and Glauco could have died of it, damned with the greatest of punishments.
"Joel... I'm an asshole," he said, finally, running a hand over his forehead, not stopping to look at the barely tarnished image of Joel on his screen. Impalpable, as he had been all those weeks.
Yet always there. Always there he longed for Glauco. A combination that simply seemed unacceptable to him.
Knowing how fast Joel's mind was whirling, he hurried to speak again.
"Nothing happened, I'm just stupid, just stupid," he murmured. Honestly, he didn't think Joel would understand, and thank fuck, because he didn't understand himself either.
"And you disappeared because of that?"
"Yes."
"Because you're stupid?"
The bitterness in his voice did not go unnoticed, and Glauco longed to punch himself.
"Yes," he clung firmly to the sides of the desk that Joel could not have seen, "I am a fool who cannot handle his stupid enormous love for you."
He felt like crying. For the first time in days, hours, seconds, he felt like crying. Another stupid thing in a stupid situation he had created.
He hoped Joel wasn't about to burst, but from the look he was giving him now, he realized that something inside him had already shaken. He knew Joel did not understand him, but he also knew that his heart had squeezed at his words. As did his own.
And he couldn't make an enemy of it.
"Fuck..." Joel murmured, squinting and running his white wrist under his cheeks, thankfully not smeared with makeup, "I don't want...you to suffer."
And oh, if only he had known of the sweet taste of those words, with which Glauco would have filled amphoras, as if they were honey.
He tried to breathe, breathe to speak, to put his emotions in writing, once and for all.
"I'm not."
He wasn't suffering, he couldn't. His heart squeezed and his chest heaved. He was craving, but he was not suffering.
Although he could not explain it in words, Glauco knew it now.
He knew that Joel's soul also reached him wherever he was, knew what had driven out his transparent, icy friend.
He learned to crave for him with love that pressed his throat.