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“Imagining my cock is what made you stare into the middle distance like an anime character on a long internal monologue?”
“No, but it’s what I’m asking about.”
Jag traced my bottom lip with his thumb, sending a shiver through me before he dropped his hand to his side. “I always wanted to make music.”
I was confused for a moment why he was talking about music now. Oh, right! I had asked about his dickstrument.
“My family couldn’t afford music lessons, so I taught myself what I could on a piano at the public library. I was never very good because I had no one to help me. Some people become very skilled when self-taught, but I didn’t. So in high school, I signed up for band and was excited to finally learn music for real. I played the trumpet, but I hated it. I wanted to sing and play together, but my school only had brass and wind instruments.”
I took his hand for support. “For what it’s worth, lessons made me hate piano.”
He smiled, small and sad. “I just wanted to be able to make the music I heard in my mind. I could hear all the notes, all the lyrics, all the emotion, but I just didn’t know how to make it exist in the real world. Whatever I played or sang was a shadow of a turd of what I imagined. So, I went to school for pre-med because that’s what my family wanted, and I wasn’t good enough at music to get into college for it.
“But I didn’t care for biology and dropped out. I auditioned for bands and orchestras, but I never got hired. I got some gigs playing piano in restaurants, but they never lasted. It was just elevator music crap, not what I wanted. So, I gave up. Got a job in construction. Hummed my songs to myself but never tried to play them or sing them.”
I squeezed his hand. “That’s so sad.”
But it was also as common as the cold. Most everyone gave up their dreams so they could earn a living, but here I was feeling bad about it, like some kind of idealist who didn’t know better. Like Moe.
Jag squeezed my hand back. “Thirty came around, and I thought, what the fuck am I doing with my life? I hadn’t played music in years, though, so I was even worse than before. I tried and tried to get better, but I could never make the music in my head exist in the real world. But I had heard of people who went to a crossroads and made a deal with the devil to play music.”
“Oh, no…”
Jag nodded. “I didn’t believe it. My family isn’t magical, and I didn’t know supes existed. But I was desperate and depressed, so I started stopping at random crossroads and asking for musical powers.”
“You found some jerkass, self-important demon, huh?”
“Worse. A djinn. She was long-lived and bored, and I was naïve about magic.”
I nearly gasped. “Even when my gang was robbing every type of supe in the world, we stayed away from the djinn.”
“Yeah, I know why! But I don’t regret it. My dickstrument also removed the veil that blocks magic from humans. I got to enter an amazing realm I didn’t even know existed. And I got what I wanted, though not in the form I expected. I can put the songs in my head into the world now.”
I remembered the snippet of JEM’s music from the video. “What I heard was beautiful.”
Jag smiled with his eyes going soft and tender. “That means everything. I’m going to keep playing, even if Elliot doesn’t want to anymore. I will not hide my talent.” His voice hardened. “I spent a lot of my life hiding what I wanted and who I was. I’m done.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me what you were in prison for?”
He sighed. “I had to appear tough to protect Moe and Elliot, so I didn’t want word to get around that we were arrested for cock exposure. But I hated it, and I’m not pretending to be someone else ever again.”
Though I barely knew Jag, I felt proud of him in a way I rarely felt toward anyone.
“I never hid being different, though I hid my intentions a lot. I didn’t know how to appear normal like people wanted from me, and it made life harder.”
Jag took both my hands, letting his pants flutter to the floor. “I’ve done both. Hiding is safer, but it rots the soul.”
The way the world treats you can rot you too, if you’re not careful. If you’re not strong enough. I was still trying to come back from that.
“You have that internal monologue look again,” Jag said.
I smiled a little. “It’s a long, long story. Too long for right now when I have a beaver to set loose, a friend to free from a bubble dimension, and ninety-three other friends who might need rescuing.” If they weren’t already dead.
Jag pulled me into a hug and kissed the top of my head. “We.”
“What?”
“You said you have people to save. We do. You’re not doing this alone, even if my only magical abilities involve growing strings on my cock.”
