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The scar’s still there.
Makes sense it would be. Shit like that doesn’t just go away. But it’s getting warm out again, and Joey can’t stop staring at other people’s forearms at school. Is that weird? It’s definitely weird.
Paul told him not to worry about it. It’s not like people are looking, not unless he gives them reason to by constantly holding his arm in that odd way he’d started to. So he’s in his regular t-shirt, trying to just… be.
But then Paul is stretching out, arms behind him, smiling up at the sun in his shades, and Joey’s eyes are running down his pale, untouched skin. The way his used to be.
It’s stupid. He makes himself laugh at the joke Corey’s making. Settles into an argument with Shawn that ends in Shawn throwing the nearest thing at hand at him. Unfortunately for him, it’s a chocolate bar, and Joey gets half of it down before Shawn catches up to him, the two of them running rings around the two benches they’re occupying.
So it’s fine. It’s normal. He forgets about it until Shawn’s talking him into a trade-off and he makes sure to hand his chips over with the other hand.
~
The scar on his arm isn’t the only one. He doesn’t start to notice until after he’s been at Paul’s a few weeks, when he lets himself look in the mirror for more than a minute.
It’s got to be the best he’s looked in a while. It still stings when he spots a mark on his hip, able to remember exactly where that came from. It’s kind of worse when he finds the one on his shoulder and has to wonder which time that one was. At this angle, he can’t tell if it’s from a sharp corner or a cigarette end, or what.
He doesn’t try to look any closer.
It’s still better. The only reason he has time to spot them now is because he’s not dodging his reflection, not trying to avoid the glaring evidence of the latest injury.
Sometimes he’s glad they’re there, in a twisted way. When he wakes up panting, expecting to see himself bloody or bruised in the cold bathroom light. Sometimes he feels like he should be, cause it hurts that much. The stark lines are almost not enough, then, but they’re there, and he knows it happened, can remember how it bled.
Other times, he wants them off, can’t bear to look at himself, starts holding his arm that way again.
He should be grateful. He’s not going to get any more – or, if he does, it will be from Sid making him try a stupid skateboard trick, or some asshole’s knuckles in a moshpit – something with a story, something real. He wishes that could be enough. But he stares at that smooth, unmarked skin, perfect and alien, something he’ll never get back, and it sticks.
~
Paul comes in sooner than he’d expected. Or, well, he’d got distracted.
Joey jumps up from the bed, grabbing at a hoodie and shoving it over his head. When he emerges out the top, face warm, Paul is just chuckling. He shuts the door behind him and heads over to grab his pyjamas.
“If you don’t wanna share, man, remember mom cleared out the study.”
“You made me jump,” Joey mutters. His defensiveness only makes Paul grin harder. Joey slips back onto the bed and tucks the hoodie over his knees. “I was gonna get dressed.”
“I wasn’t that fast,” Paul says, raising his eyebrows. “But whatever, dude. ‘S not like you had your dick out, n’ I’ve seen the rest. Just sleep like that if you want.”
He’s pulling off his own top, casual because that’s the way it should be, but it leaves Joey staring a little too hard at Paul’s bare chest. The expanse of skin looks soft. There isn’t a mark on it unless he counts the freckles on his arms.
When Paul comes out the other side, Joey makes himself look down, tugging at the hem of the hoodie as Paul throws on a baggy top. The hoodie’s Paul’s too – one of his biggest and softest. And it was Paul who suggested he keep it on, anyway.
So Joey slips his bare legs from under it, ignoring the mirror opposite which he had been lost in a moment ago, and walks around the bed.
Paul turns off the main light. They’re both on their backs under the covers when he speaks again.
“Is something up, Joe?”
Joey stares at the yellow circle of light on the ceiling. Can feel Paul’s eyes on him in the dim lamplight. He shifts awkwardly, running the soft fabric of Paul’s sweater between his fingers.
“I dunno. It’s the fucking scars, man.”
“It’s okay, Joe. You know no one even notices…”
“I do.”
Paul’s quiet after that.
“Don’t worry.” Joey shuffles onto his side, facing the darkness. “Makes no sense.”
“No, it does. I just… it doesn’t mean anything bad. About you.”
Joey swallows.
“I know that. I know, but I… I dunno. You know?”
Paul doesn’t reply, but Joey guesses that’s fair. He sighs and tries again, bundling the hoodie tight in his fists.
“No one else has this many. It’s weird. It’s all over me, man. What happened, it’s… I can’t get it off. And sometimes I don’t want to, but I just… I hate it,” he finishes weakly.
“Come here, Joe.”
Paul’s voice is suspiciously thick, but Joey’s not faring too well either, so he says nothing, just flops over to face Paul. He shimmies the short space between them, lifts his head up awkwardly for Paul to get his arm underneath, trying not to catch his hair. Then he’s finally pulling Joey into him, pressing them together with his arms on Joey’s back.
Joey lets his head fall onto Paul’s chest, his hands balled between them.
~
Paul is excited when they get home from school a few days later.
Joey throws himself down on the bed, raising a brow his way, but Paul doesn’t say anything yet. Does he think he’s being subtle?
Apparently so, because he gets the controllers out and they’re halfway through the level before Paul speaks.
“Y’know, we did this Japanese thing in art class,” he says, watching the screen. “It was… well, I can’t remember what it was called, man, but they, like… say a pot gets broken, yeah? They put it back together, but they fill in all the cracks with gold so you can still see where it got broken. It was cool.”
“Huh. Sounds it.”
They finish the level, and Paul turns around to him, cross-legged, knees bumping Joey’s.
“I nicked some of the pens from the closet. These cool gold ones, and I have some others around here somewhere.”
Joey tosses down his controller. He didn’t really get it when Paul first brought it up, but he’s had a minute and it’s starting to click.
“What are you saying, man? Is this about… y’know, what I said the other night?”
Paul’s still sort of gripping his controller in front of him. One of his knees is bouncing. He’s got that hopeful look of his, but he bites his lip.
“Not that– I’m not saying you’re broken, or anything. I just mean…”
“It happened,” Joey offers.
“It happened.”
Paul stops fidgeting. He looks down at Joey, his dark eyes steady and soft. He doesn’t smile, hardly moves at all, but one corner of his mouth shifts up, a sad kind of smile Joey shares.
“So you wanna make me into a pot?”
A grin does spread over Paul’s face, then.
“Dunno, I could, like, draw on you. Give you a better memory of the scars, or something.”
“Sure, I guess. You’re not using me for extra credit in art, are you?”
Paul laughs as he hops off the bed, rummaging in his backpack.
“No, this is just for us.”
Joey’s glad Paul has his back turned, because something twinges in his chest when Paul says that so casually. He swallows thickly and looks down to toy with the bedcover until Paul returns, throwing a handful of pens in front of him.
Joey swipes one, uncaps it with a click. As Paul hops back onto the bed, mattress dipping, Joey presses the nib to his finger. It comes away with a gold streak. He turns it under the light, watching the way it glints back at him, glowing warm against his skin.
When he looks up, Paul’s watching him.
“Should I… What am I meant to do?” Joey asks, shifting a bit.
“Just…” Paul shrugs. Joey guesses there isn’t really a non-weird way for him to tell Joey to take his clothes off. “Stay there. Show me one, and I’ll draw on it.”
Joey flops backwards to kick off his pants. Like Paul said the other day, they’ve seen enough of each other.
“What are you gonna draw?”
“I’ll figure something out. I’m not that good, I dunno.”
“You’ve had enough practising fucking doodling in math,” Joey teases, poking Paul with his toe.
“I don’t think you wanna end up looking like my math book,” Paul chuckles.
By now, Joey’s stretched out on the bed, and maybe it should feel more weird, but then Paul’s lying on his stomach too, readying a pen at Joey’s calf, and maybe it’s fine, actually. The cool tip of the pen tickles at first, so Paul plants his other hand on Joey’s ankle to stop him squirming.
Joey messes with the gold pen he picked up earlier, drawing a spiral on one palm. They bitch about the math teacher, and how lunch tasted like dogfood, and hatch a plan to bunk out and go to Dunkin tomorrow instead. When Joey twists around, the little scars on his leg have all sprouted lopsided little doodles. A curving one has become a grinning mouth for a stupid face, a flat one has grown wheels and a skateboarder riding on it over his knee, and a particularly weird-shaped one has turned into a guitar.
He contorts to look even closer.
“D’you like them?”
Paul grips his bunch of pens nervously under his chin.
“They’re… they’re cool,” Joey says, still looking. It’s quiet for another moment. “How come you can draw a cat and not a snail?”
“Hey! Stanley’s beautiful!”
“You named my scar-snail?”
“He named himself.”
“Weirdo.”
“Fine, I won’t do any more snails. I think I’ve done them all down here. Do you want me to keep going?”
“Sure, if you want.”
Joey flops over, hikes up his hoodie over his hip. The one there is a bit bigger. Paul shuffles up onto his elbows and nudges closer. He chews his lip as he looks at it, rolls the pens in his hand.
“Feel like I’m in a tattoo bar or some shit, dude,” Joey says.
Paul laughs.
“Dude, I’d get fired.”
“Just tell them no if they ask for a snail.”
Paul sniffs and gets to work, forcing Joey still. He drops his head onto the pillow.
“You should at least name him something better.”
“What’s wrong with Stanley?”
“Why couldn’t you call him Satan?”
“Snails don’t go to hell.”
“Who told you that?”
“Dude, I went to church longer than you. I know these things.”
By the time they settle on naming him Stanley Sultan Satan the Second, Joey kind of wants to look again at him again, even if it is the worst drawing out of all the ones on his legs. He picks at his sleeve as he waits for Paul to finish on his side. Pictures the little drawings he’s already done.
Joey didn’t look down and regret it. Didn’t have to tear his eyes away before he started thinking too hard. Didn’t… didn’t hate how it looked. He even looked closer.
He wants to see them. Wants to inspect every little line, because Paul chose to put it there, because he’s scrawling away with a faint smile and his tongue poking out in concentration, and Joey can feel every mark he makes. Because it feels good, to have art on his skin instead of just cracks.
“Done!”
Joey has to get up and angle himself in front of the mirror to get a look, peering around his arm as he holds his sweater out of the way.
He steps closer. Paul’s watching from the bed. This one’s thicker, so he filled it in with little shapes: a star, a dancing stick-man, a cat reaching its paw over the scar-line. He’s drawn little sun-rays around it too, a border, like it’s meant to be there.
Joey smiles.
“No snails.”
“Did I get better?”
“It looks sick.” He can’t contain his grin.
Paul shuffles upright, legs crossed.
“More?”
Joey sits in front of him, lets Paul tug his hoodie off and set to work on his back and shoulder. With his legs in front of him like this, he can see the first drawings even better. Twists to see them until Paul scolds him for not keeping still.
It’s harder to see the new ones in the mirror, but he does his best. His eyes are still tracing over them when he lies down, hoodie discarded, to let Paul have a go at his arm. His neck complains about the angle, but he stays looking over his shoulder, enthralled by the way Paul’s clumsy pen-marks fill in the gaps his dad dug out.
Maybe he should ask Paul to take a picture. He wants to get a view close-up, but the way the drawings sweep across his back are pretty enough to look at as they are. Paul drew them bigger here but it’s still busy, splodges of colour and jagged lines running asymmetrically over his skin. Joey kind of loves it. Kind of loves that, though his skin isn’t smooth and perfect, it feels exciting to look at, now. Like he’s something prettier than those scars, something complete, something to be decorated.
An absent smile plays on his face as he takes it in. He thinks the one on his shoulder is meant to be a dragon, with its big, sweeping streaks of gold for wings. On second thoughts, maybe the slightly wonky face is best admired from a distance–
There’s a jolt of the felt pen on his arm, and suddenly his palm is full of Paul’s forehead.
Joey twists around, his neck complaining. Paul’s lying on his front, face planted into the comforter. Well, half into the comforter and half Joey’s hand. The pen Paul was using is limp in his grasp, bleeding golden ink into the bedcovers.
Joey blinks. Paul’s shoulders are shaking.
When Paul turns his face, pressing harder against Joey’s hand, he feels moisture. Eyes widening, Joey scrambles up onto his elbow, though he leaves his hand for Paul to slump into.
Paul’s crying.
For a second, Joey’s free hand hovers, stunned, before landing on Paul’s shoulder.
“You okay, dude? …Paul?”
Swallowing, he’s suddenly aware that he’s practically stripped right now. Haltingly rubbing Paul’s shoulder, he lays there awkwardly at his side, feeling the shudders travel up his arm, the gasps Paul lets out into the covers by Joey’s hand.
“Hey… It’s all good… Paul…”
Finally, Paul draws back with a deep, shaking breath. He lets the pen fall from his hand and plunges his head into both his palms, but not before Joey sees his red, shining eyes.
“Sorry, dude, I–”
Paul makes the mistake of lifting his face, and looking down. He dives back into his hands with a little, bitten-off sob.
Joey’s heart sinks. He lets his eyes drop to the big, ugly scar on his forearm, the one between them. Except – it isn’t big and ugly anymore. Paul’s almost finished, by the looks of it. He’s edged it in gold and, filling every inch of it, he’s scribbled overlapping leaves and flowers, green and red and orange, warm and smiling. Just like Paul. Nothing like the night that gave it to him.
Maybe Paul doesn’t see it like that. Maybe it will always be painful to him.
“I’m sorry,” Joey whispers, still running his hand down Paul’s arm. “You don’t have to. What you did was really cool, but I know it’s gross. You don’t have to look at it, I can– oof!”
Paul tackles him in a hug. There’s an arm around his neck, and his waist, and a body on top of him, clinging to him tightly in the mussed bedding.
“No, it’s not that. There is nothing wrong with you, yeah?” Paul says fiercely, though muffled in Joey’s shoulder.
Joey pats his head a bit, squeezes him back with the arm that isn’t trapped under Paul’s chest. Waits until Paul lifts his face. There’s a wet patch where he was buried in Joey’s shoulder, and he sets his chin down on it to look up at Joey. His lips tug downwards, and Joey feels him swallow, his neck bobbing against his chest.
“I just wish I could make it better. I’m sorry I couldn’t- couldn’t do anything, before…”
Joey stares in a kind of helpless horror as Paul dips his eyes. He shakes his head.
“It was never yours to do anything. I mean, you have– you’ve done… fuck, you’re the reason I got out of there at all, y’know?” Joey has to stop. He takes a breath, which gives him away, juddering through his throat. He huffs. Why does he have to get teary-eyed too? “I’m sorry I put you through that.”
That makes Paul sit up. He looks Joey right in the eye.
“You don’t have to apologise, not ever.” He takes a ragged breath to match Joey’s. “I love you, Joe. You’re my best friend. I just– you nearly left…”
“I know.”
Joey doesn’t have the words to say how he feels about that. Just lets his inadequate response sit between them. But Paul sits with him. He always does.
Paul lets out a breath, laughing weakly.
“Sorry for– urgh. I just wanted to help. Thought I could get you to stop being ashamed of them, make them look cool. Kinda backfired, huh?”
“They do look cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
With swollen eyes, Paul traces along Joey’s forearm. Along the scar that nearly took Joey from him.
Joey decides he likes it better like this, covered in Paul.
“Do you like the flowers?” Paul asks.
Joey breathes out, eyes never leaving Paul’s face. He catches Paul’s eyes when they lift to his. Runs his hand down Paul’s back.
“I love them.”