Henry and Victor

Henry always argued that writing endings was supercilious, “-as if any story is one that properly ends. Just stop on a half-decent sentence and people will call you an artistic genius,” he would blither about it for ages anytime Victor brought it up, half-drunk in the crimson heat. Victor suspected it was just because Henry was shit at writing them. 

Those weren’t their real names of course; real as in social-security, birth certificate, government document names he means. Real in terms of things that are of little importance, the rose is just as sweet, and all that nonsense. But they chose them in university, when they were even more pretentious than they are now, and it was too late. They fit the dynamic too well. Henry was actually approachable, and Victor was an arse who didn’t deserve him.  

Sitting in the dressing room and drinking French-press coffee, Victor badly wanted something interesting to happen.  

They were at Henry’s place. Henry had rich dead parents or some other such windfall a few years back, and had used it to buy the cozy yellow cottage. Cozy being an innuendo for minuscule, but the lack of a stingy landlord or roommates shitting in the shower made the prospect extremely attractive, especially with recent events. 

Victor hadn’t worked a proper job in eight months and had only written something half-decent twice in that time. He was having the worst writing block of his life, and was blaming it on anything but himself. And himself.

Yes, he knew, important things were happening, protests and radical change and “unprecedented times” coming out of the wazoo. He’d been there, Henry dragging him along as Victor desperately tried to shield his hair from the pepper spray.  

Sure, we were in ‘a moment in history’, but in the end, there was way too many people. A person could be fascinating, you could spend your whole life on a person. But everything becomes so broad when discussing people that anything interesting becomes diluted. Exceptions are mended over, the unusual is eliminated, anything that captivates is erased, and we’re left with DNA. If people were dull, the protests were downright boring. Some chanting, the psychology of a crowd, cops being stereotypically cruel: this same story had been told a million ways before. As time surrendered, all the people just became roving numbers, statistics to shout out in outrage too. He was too tired of the viscosity of the world to scream about numbers. 

But he kept going, because Henry took him. And Henry was interesting.  

Henry pours over his writings as the espresso does into him, now he's the type to write about the important things that effect people. The many person, big-picture scenarios, the things that will be written about years afterward. He is tapping his pen incessantly and is so earnest about it that Victor couldn’t be annoyed at him, even if he tried. 

“What are you writing about?” 

And he rambles on about minority groups and gaps in wage or diagnosis or-Victor is sure it is extremely important but can’t help but become stuck in those amber eyes. He is fossilized by them. 

Henry is writing- again. He is always writing now, there is no stop to the pen taps.  

And Victor is trying to force this idiot to eat. 

“I need to send this out by tonight.” 

“And you can probably work better on it if you are actually nourished.” 

Victor places the plate before Henry and glowers at him until he replaces his pen with a fork. This same trick is how he forces Henry to sleep at an appropriate intervals; spiting him into health. 

It’s only after Henry is asleep, or has eaten, or has similarly been annoyed enough to keep himself alive, that Victor can will himself into scrawling something. Not that it’s much, those amber eyes have yet to release his mind. 

This is unhealthy, he knows, his thinking is unhealthy, but so is only spending your days with another human. It’ll get better, once things ‘go back to normal’. Snidely, he wonders if that will finally happen once he’s in the grave. Snidely, he wonders if he is in love. 

Somehow, life goes on, and they're busy just trying to survive it.

Henry has gotten worse this last week or maybe it’s Victor, or perhaps both. Plates of food go untouched and they both jitter with that French-press coffee they ran out of creamer for ages ago. 

And that excessive pen tapping, it has infiltrated Victor’s brain so badly today, he breaths in tandem with it. 

“Will you just stop it already? I’m so tired, can you just stop it?” 

“Oh, and I’m sure you would love that, wouldn’t you? If I stopped? So we would both be unproductive frauds?” 

Those eyes are freezing him.

“You’ve been in my house, sighing over me for months now, doing nothing. Making nothing. God, when I met you, you seemed unstoppable, but you’re just stuck here. God, you’re so-dull, now.” 

His vocal cords are unlatched,

“Yes, because you are ever so interesting, this is all ever so interesting, documenting and watching is just fascinating, isn’t it? Tell me, have you turned the sky green yet? Have you made all the people good with you ‘hypotheses’ about them? Do you actually think your writing will control it, change it? All the same words circulating between duplicate people?” 

There was only silence then, but Victor knows it means "Leave."

And he does, shivering from the heat on the stone steps. 

He watched the cars circle past, winding away. One after the other, after the other, at what point do we stop seeing humanity? What number makes us too exhausted to consider? 

Maybe he would walk through them. But-he couldn’t. He didn’t take a mask he realized, so he stayed there, glued on the spot. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t go forward.  

This is a moment in history, and he was petrified within it. Perhaps he should wait on a flood to budge him, he pondered vaguely, displayed across the rocks. 

Henry is too good for Victor, that had been obvious since the first time they’d met. Victor had looked into that face and knew he didn’t deserve him but would indulge anyway; because he was selfish and Henry was too alluring to go without.

This thought woke Victor, curled onto the couch, pages floating around him in the debris. 

Henry was asleep and strewn in the chair beside, soft and beautiful and terrified. Everything was colored with the sunrise raining through the window, everything was transfixed in it.

Victor’s papers were littered around the golden home, Henry had overflowed the place with him. It was a gift, and he didn't know what to do with it.

Victor could have ended it there- he could have left. With the dawn-disappeared and stopped it all. Running away from his own creation. 

But he should probably wait until everything goes back to normal.