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Legato doesn’t think anyone knows what happened to him; not really. Certainly he’s never told. But the story of a body is written on the body, and a body written by violence tells a particular kind of story, and his is telling all the time.
The dragging left foot. The dangling right arm. The way he carries himself, patrician but flinching, and his tendency to grovel. Groveling had saved his life, even if it had also ruined him beyond recognition. It had made his love like groveling; he hated himself when he loved, some part of him always on hands and knees.
What he’d like, really, is to live somewhere beyond his body—behind a curtain, discreet, that he could pull back or draw closed when he wanted to be known. Preferably he’d like not to be known at all.
—
The wedding is typical. The professions of love, the awkward speeches, the music everyone knows and no one loves. He retreats to a table in the back, eating his cake very slowly, and goes into the part of himself no one can access.
He doesn’t think anyone here knows what Nai had meant to him; not really. College friends, as far as anyone knew, art class conspirators. There was something sculptural about Legato’s crumpled body, the way a mountain is sculptural, in its rumpled slope, and Nai had recognized it from the beginning. The way his eyes had settled on Legato, the intent light of his attention—immediately Legato understood this was no ordinary mind. He wanted Nai’s respect even if he had to debase himself for it, and if those impulses were confused, that was nothing new.
They had started with sketches of his hands, alone in Nai’s cramped dorm—the way they sat curled in his lap, the way they settled around the head of his cane. He understood that he was valuable to Nai because he was peculiar, because his body told a story Nai hadn’t heard before, but he still felt a nervous rush of infatuation every time Nai glanced up from his sketch pad to study him. In his nervousness he said more than he should.
The first time he posed nude, he nearly suffocated from panic. It wasn’t the session itself—he retreated to the little place inside his head, the one he had made years ago when it all started—but afterwards, seeing the sketches, he was crushed with shame. The way one of his shoulders hitched up; the ugly shape of his back; his crooked fingers. Worst of all his eyes. He’d never told Nai what happened to him, but here it was, all of it, the years of abuse written plainly.
Nai watched him examine the pages with his cool, clear eyes. He didn’t ask what Legato thought; he didn’t care. Not because he was cruel, although there was a streak of something in him that would always remind Legato of the men who had abused him—why else would Legato be drawn to him?—but because he was utterly confident in himself, in everything he did.
“I’d like to do this again,” he said, and Legato kissed him.
—
“How’s your night been?”
Nai’s brother settles next to him, with his earnest eyes and floppy hair. His tie is loose, his dress shirt wet from dancing, and he’s familiar like an old dream. Legato’s fingers tighten around the head of his cane.
He’s always found it difficult to talk with Vash, disconcerting: Nai’s face, but everything about it means something different.
“It’s nice to see other people happy,” Legato says blandly, and continues eating his wedding cake.
He should have always known Nai would never end up with him—should never have let himself hope—but even after years of silence, the wedding invitation had stung. He had gone somewhere else in his head, a flash of darkness and heat, straddling Nai in the dorm room, his fingers tugging at Legato’s hair. But he’d never blamed Nai for it. There was too much wrong with him, too many missing parts.
He’d opened the envelope and laughed hysterically. He still kept it pinned to his fridge.
“I noticed you haven’t danced yet,” Vash says.
Legato smirks.
“What in God’s name would I be doing on a dance floor?”
“Dancing!” Vash says brightly.
I don’t need your pity, Legato wants to say. What he says is, “I don’t dance.”
In another life he thinks he knew how. The time before is blurry to him, memories of a body he could command, posing childishly in front of the mirror, running wildly down the street. But he prefers to live apart from his body now, in the deep place torment taught him to access. He takes another bite of cake.
“You don’t have to be good at dancing to dance,” Vash says. “I have two left feet and I love dancing.”
“I’m not making a fool of myself in front of all these people.”
Vash’s face is unbearably earnest.
“We could go out back,” he says. “Dance in the bathroom.”
“I’m not dancing with you in the bathroom, Saverem.”
“Well, why not?”
A hot summer night, Nai’s hands slipping under his wet shirt, nails dragging up the twisted line of his back, questioning, nearly tender. A kiss, closer than any kiss has ever gotten.
“Because this is the worst day of my life,” Legato whispers.
—
It’s a single-stall bathroom, handicapped—there’s a joke here Legato’s too hysterical to see. He sobs into Vash’s nice shirt.
“Hey,” Vash murmurs, holding him. “It’s okay. It’s all right.”
“I loved him,” Legato weeps. “I loved him and I fucked it all up because I can’t—I can’t—”
Can’t really love; can’t stop groveling. He worshipped Nai and it infuriated him. “You’re annoying the hell of out of me,” he’d snapped one day, and Legato had instinctively covered his face, which made it worse. “You think I’d hit you?” he asked, incredulous. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You didn’t fuck it up,” Vash says, pained. “Sometimes things just don’t work out. I know Nai still cares a lot about you, he’s just—he’s built a little different, that’s all.”
Legato laughs wildly.
“Nai’s perfect,” he says, “and I’m—and I’m—”
“No one’s perfect,” Vash says. “Believe me, Nai’s not perfect.” He holds Legato a little closer, tucking his head under his chin. “You’re a good person,” he says. “You deserve to be happy.”
Legato laughs.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough,” Vash says.
The old story again: the shape of his body, the weight of his eyes. He doesn’t want to be known like this.
Or he wanted one person to know him like this.
“You have good lines,” Nai had told him, so casually, and he’d carried it all the way home with him, burning, burning. He’d stood at the mirror looking for it, all the things Nai could see.
“The offer still stands, you know,” Vash says.
Legato looks at him, time-blind, bewildered..
“I can teach you,” Vash says. “I think you’d like it.”
“I’m not dancing material.”
“Everyone’s dancing material,” Vash insists, taking out his phone. “You can pick the playlist. Anything you want.”
“This is the worst day of my life,” Legato repeats.
“Yeah,” he says. “But it doesn’t have to be.”
—
His shoulder hitched, Nai’s hot mouth pressed against it, sharp-toothed, seeking. His hands fanned across Legato’s back, finding scars. He followed them the way an artist followed anyone, architectural, looking for lines.
“This one’s a burn,” Legato said softly, moving Nai’s hand to the back of his thigh.
Nai looked at him impassively.
“I know,” he said. He’d already written his own story of Legato’s body—drawn it out in sharp, clean lines. He didn’t need Legato’s.
And there was something wonderful about not having to say anything, the way it always was with Nai; but terrible too, to know that Legato’s stories meant nothing to him. Nothing to anyone, maybe.
—
The phone set on the ledge, the tinny music playing, Legato’s cane laid carefully next to it. He slumps against Vash, arms slung over his shoulders, exhausted.
“I like this one,” Vash murmurs. “Very danceable.”
“It’s a song about how humanity should be wiped out by thermonuclear bombs,” Legato says dully.
“Well, it’s got a great beat.”
There’s something steadying about the way Vash moves, humming to himself as they dance. He smells sweet and warm, some confused image of tangerines in the sun. Legato breathes him in. With his weight resting on Vash like this, his foot doesn’t even drag. Maybe this is what it’s like to be normal.
“You’re not bad, you know,” Vash says, turning them slowly. “You’ve got a good sense of the rhythm. I bet you listen to music all the time.”
He does; he writes his own. It’s how he got his name, his new name, the one Nai gave him. “Legato,” Nai murmured, stroking his dark hair, and the sound was so lovely he didn’t even ask if it was a joke, something about being slow. He was, a little—he didn’t have a normal education, and walking was a chore, Nai always waiting for him.
“A little,” Legato says.
Sometimes Nai would draw him sitting at the small upright piano in the basement of the music building, capturing something he didn’t even think he had, grace and fluidity but also peace. Those were the drawings he found hardest to look at. The intensity of his expression, the pencil mauled by his teeth. He knew where he was going then. Some part of him had felt sure of it.
“Our mom used to take us to dancing lessons as kids,” Vash says. “Well, both of us but it was mostly for me.” He shrugs, touching his prosthetic. “I had to figure out how to keep my balance again. And Nai had to go because Mom didn’t want me to feel singled out.” He laughs. “Which Nai resented.”
“Did it help?” Legato asks, from somewhere in Vash’s shoulder.
Vash considers.
“I think so,” he says. “At that point I needed to be around people, you know? Like I still fit somewhere.” He hums. “Sometimes you just have to figure out how to be in a body again.”
“I’d prefer not to,” Legato says, and Vash laughs in his ear.
“Yeah,” he says, his hand settling on the small of Legato’s back. “I can understand that.”
The slump of his weight, the low sound of his voice. This is the closest Legato has been to anyone in years, swaying in the bathroom stall. The confused feeling again, holding Nai but not—similar but slimmer, with a shape Legato doesn’t know by heart. For a moment he’s out of time.
The mistake he made, he thinks, was telling Nai everything, narrating every thought. And here he is, cheek pressed to Vash’s shoulder, wanting to do it all again.
“When I was young,” he begins, “I was—I was—”
And Vash waits patiently, but he doesn’t finish. He can’t.
“Song’s over,” Vash says, breath warm in his ear. “Wanna pick another? Or play this one again?”
In his head he’s already trying to explain it, how he would finish the sentence if he could. When I was young I was abused. When I was young I let your brother do things to me I should never have allowed. When I was young I wished I could blow up the world and slaughter everyone in it. I don’t feel safe in my body. I don’t feel safe anywhere.
“Play it again,” Legato says, and lets someone take his weight again.