Chapter Text
How did you end up friends with your favorite indie song artist? You had found him online months ago, and after hearing one of his darker tracks, you’d instant messaged him to ask if he was okay. You had expected many things-- for him to refuse to talk to you, interact with you at all, or for him to outright tell you to mind your own business.
Now, he was your best friend. He was so many things. It had been the most pleasant surprise of your life to chat with him, not once, but almost constantly over the next four or five months. You talked about everything together. No stress, as you were never likely to meet in person, and after a while you grew to trust him. More importantly, he grew to trust you as well.
The first time you’d suggested video chatting, he’d refused without hesitation, and it hurt a bit. You’d never even seen pictures of him-- his music channel was void of any pictures of him, as well. You had no idea what he looked like, though you certainly imagined, secretly.
The months were still passing, and the two of you were talking just as much-- and he brought up video chat again. You hadn’t expected him to, with how adamantly he’d refused before.
“What made you change your mind?” You asked.
He didn’t answer for a long time. Finally. “I want to believe you won’t stop talking to me if you see me.”
That stung. Did he think you were that shallow? “Why the hell would I stop talking to you?”
That had been the first time he sent the phrase you’d be waiting to hear every day henceforth. “Call me.”
You, of course, had panicked. “Uhhhh, one moment!” and run off to fix yourself. Hell, you were afraid if he saw you like you just rolled out of bed (which you had) he’d stop talking to you.
When you came back, you wavered a moment longer before hitting the call button and trying to get comfy even though you were dying from stress. You were going to meet your best friend. You were going to see him, hear him in something other than his music.
You were stoked and on the verge of a stroke.
“Can you see me?” He asked, and his voice alone made you smile-- and then you caught sight of him. He was a skeleton. A living, breathing(?) skeleton, with pips of light in his dark sockets. How did he manage to have bags under his eyes?
“Woah.” You whispered. “Holy shit.”
“Heh… I get that a bit.” He said, looking a bit sheepishly up at the camera. Your heart thudded, though you were conflicted. How did his mouth move like that?
“You’re a…”
“Monster, yeah.” He said it softly, as if waiting for you to panic. He was tense.
“Woah.” You didn’t know what else to say, but it was a lot to process. “I totally understand now. Shit, wow, you…”
He watched you carefully, waiting for you to finish the sentence.
“Holy shit.” You gave up on finding words.
You had no idea how much that smile you were wearing meant to him. Even if he couldn’t glean how you felt from your words, you weren’t afraid of him-- you weren’t disgusted. It gave him hope… but he had to be sure.
“That okay with you?” He asked.
“Holy fuck man, yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?” You asked. “I mean, it’s not what I expected, by any means, but…” You rushed to continue the sentence. “I totally understand why you waited.”
At first, it had been jarring to get used to. Reconciling the deep, almost primal voice with the figure it came from had been the biggest step. It baffled you, how so much presence could come from a literal skeleton in clothes. As to that, he almost exclusively wore tanktops, though he had worn a couple graphic tshirts. It was so strange to see how the fabric laid. It was a surreal reminder that there was only bone.
Even more startling was how emotive his face was. He was incredibly emotive, and you supposed that was the beauty of being a monster. What would apply to humans is less of a rule and more of a suggestion.
He was incredibly patient through the usual questions. Do you eat, do you sleep, etc. There were other questions though, and he seemed reluctant to think much on the topic.
“What are the scars for?” You’d asked, and he had absently traced the one trailing up from his eye. You became aware that they weren’t just cracks. They were too substantial. He could almost pry into them with his fingertips. With how gingerly he touched them, you wondered if they hurt. You were afraid to ask, with how pensive he looked.
“I don’t know.” He said, voice airy and absent. “They’ve just always been there.”
“And… the holes?” You asked, gesturing to your hand, which you raised to show on camera.
The holes in his palms were roughly two inches in diameter. “Make it hard to play peek-a-boo with kids.” He said.
You laughed, and the smile he rewarded you with made you happy to finally see him. You realized now that you might have a tiny crush on him. You came for the music, but stayed for that smile.
He looked so shy, so vulnerable-- and you wondered if that meant he felt the same way as you did. Had he been that afraid that you wouldn’t want to talk to him again? Did you mean that much? The prospect made you even more shy.
It was an everyday thing, after that. The chat log was filled with “Call me” and you based your schedule off when the two of you could talk. You could almost set your watch by him. He had a job, and then he’d work on his songs when the inspiration struck. He’d always message you, when he knew you were off work as well.
Timezones be damned, it took a while to get into the swing of things, but considering he hardly ever slept, it was easier. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy sleeping.” He told you once, his sockets drooping from exhaustion. “It’s that if I sleep more than a few hours at a time, i get a headache. And it lasts for fucking ever.”
“Is that what happened last night?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need me to get off here so you can medicate or whatever it is you do?”
“I just have to wait it out. Sleeping again usually evens it out.”
“So it starts hurting because you overslept and… goes away because you sleep?”
“Makes enough sense, doesn’t it? I also get them if I just don’t sleep at all.” He was holding his head.
“Hey, are you sure you don’t need to get off?” He chuckled a bit and you blushed. “Not like that, you pervert.”
“Heh. I’ll be just fine. Not going to die or anything. Having too much fun.”
You didn’t want to admit that his smile made your stomach turn in a very pleasant way. It was getting hard to deny that he meant something to you. A lot of something.
One day, he sent the message, and you found him on the other line holding his acoustic guitar, tuning it, pick clamped between his jaws.
“Whatcha doing there?” You asked, and he grinned wider around the piece of plastic in his mouth. He stopped tuning and grabbed the pick before answering.
“Been waiting to write a song all day at work.”
You were a bit confused. “Uh, won’t I distract you or something?” He never asked you to chat during his creative time.
“Nah, you’re good.” He said, and reached off camera for a cup of what you knew by now to be peppermint tea. He had a headache again, then.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
He shrugged. “Tell me how this sounds.” He said, and did an experimental strum. It was tuned well enough, apparently, because he nodded and took a deep breath, as if to calm himself.
He began playing a song that sounded softer than most the songs you’d heard from him-- but considering you’d never known him to play acoustically, you weren’t surprised. It was always a shock to hear his voice, but this was going to be the first time you heard him sing outright aside from the occasional humming.
His voice was rich and dark. It felt like it could wrap around you a hundred times and squeeze you to death slowly and you’d be too blissed to care. It was a voice made to say dark things in the ears of lovers, a voice made to make people second guess their actions. He had a voice made for suggestion.
Even with the shoddy microphone he used for the chat, you found yourself shivering. You didn’t say a word as he played. You couldn’t hear the words clearly over the strumming, and he wasn't taking pains to enunciate. You guessed he was still working on the lyrics, but you were still too surprised that he was doing this at all. It was like a private concert. If this had happened when you had first started talking to him, you would have been beyond starstruck-- you might have just died from the honor.
This was different though. He wasn’t a stranger. Sure, you still looked up to him, you admired him. You loved his music. But there was a fondness that had grown with time, and you found yourself hanging on his voice, straining to hear the words, to glean a little more of him.
The fondness showed on your face. You couldn’t know that that night, after the call ended, he lay awake, holding that guitar, strumming it out over and over, working out the lyrics with fresh inspiration and remembering that glow on your face, how you smiled and your eyes crinkled at the corners with warmth. When at last he fell asleep, snuggling the damn guitar, it was after he recorded an alternate final chorus on his phone. The recording lasted the rest of the night, capturing his tiny noises and deep breaths.
And maybe a whispered name.