A/N: The story continues with a shift in POV! The song is not mine (I'm not a song writer), nor is it Helga's. The lyrics for this song are from "Gibbon" by This Town Needs Guns. Forgive my lack of creativity, I am just inspired by these songs. I will remove the lyrics upon the Artist's request. As always, R/R is welcome!
Keeping Arnold, Chapter 2: Unhappy Child, Flash Me Your Rottweiler Smile
"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." - Jane Austen
Brainy stood on the tiny balcony of the apartment he shared with Helga, silently looking down onto the street while he smoked a cigarette. Tom Waits blared from their stereo system, filling the air in the open terrace even as it came from inside the living room. He leaned against the old white-painted wrought-iron balustrade, feeling it creak under his weight. He'd gotten just a single text from Helga, but it was all he needed to know about what kind of night she had in store for him.
"Football Head."
The formerly awkward, geeky boy had grown into a tall, lithe man, who resembled to any casual observer a blonde Buddy Holly. He especially resembled the comparison now, in his cleanly starched and pressed gingham button-down shirt with extra slim tie, high-quality denim super slim-cut jeans, and spotless brown leather Winklepicker shoes. His sandy blonde hair was high and curly at the top, and kept almost buzzed at the sides and back. His thick framed black glasses - which he found in some vintage shop somewhere - gave him a contemplative look even when his eyes were passive.
Helga's friend and bandmate had lived with her ever since her parents went through the divorce. Helga was seventeen at the time, needed a place to stay, and one of his oldest and closest friends. It was trivial to Brian, whom Helga still called "Brains" or "Brainy" from time to time, to let her move in with him.
Collectively, they made good roommates. They both had a similar expectation of cleanliness and respected each other's privacy.
It helped Brian that she was still probably the great love of his life, though he was far too respectful of her friendship to make any sort of moves on her. It wasn't always easy. The nights she came to him missing Arnold were the worst. Tonight seemed like it would be one of those nights, so Brainy had already cracked open a longneck beer and was pulling from it generously between songs of "Rain Dogs" piping in its controlled lunacy from their sound system.
Brian thoughtfully tried to remember the last time Helga was upset like he was expecting her to be this time around. He could assume plenty about what was coming; Helga was nothing if not dramatic. Her mood swings were never severe enough that he was seriously worried, but Brian knew enough to know when to stay away and when she needed someone to shove around, and when she needed someone to argue with. He didn't mind doing any of that for her - in fact, the fact wasn't lost to him in the slightest that his primary role in their friendship was to listen to her and play guitar.
Brainy started playing guitar when he was eleven. Helga had drifted apart from him, no longer having any reason to sulk back and begin one of her dramatic monologues without Arnold around. He withdrew further into his hobby as time went on, eventually becoming extremely proficient. His passion for music drove him to frequent a local record store, where he now worked part time, which is where he ran into Helga at the start of middle school. They talked music, and it just so happened she played as well. Several jam sessions later, they were Orphan, the beginnings of their current band.
Over time, they attracted other members that came and went, but the core of Orphan would always be him and Helga. Their shared passion for music blossomed an intense, intimate friendship. Brainy got a job at their local record store at sixteen, and Helga was their most frequent customer. Together, they had amassed what was probably the biggest and most thoroughly maintained record collection in the tricounty area. His efforts and focus were poured into their music, and he had a perfect partner in Helga, who had no end of lyrics and no small amount of vocal talent. Together they experimented with all manner of styles, from mathrock to krautrock and riot grrl. Brainy had found his life's true calling in Orphan, and in this way he relied on Helga just as much, if not more, than she did him.
He was just finishing his cigarette when he heard her come home, the heavy thump of her messenger bag in the kitchen, the percussive stomp of her feet through their living room towards the balcony.
His hand automatically handed her the tallboy, which she snatched from his hand without looking, and drank deeply. He was still leaning over the balcony balustrade, looking down into the alley their apartment faced. The silence between them was familiar, a comforting feeling, and always welcome between two friends who made a habit of creating terrifying and new musical noises for fun. So, he would let her quietly drink and think with him until she was ready to start talking.
A late summer light drizzle started, and she joined it with a frustrated sigh. He flicked his blue eyes her way, finally looking at her as she started to talk.
"Arnold is back in town," she finally said. Brainy's eyebrows went up high, and he pushed his glasses up his nose automatically, turning his body to face her and lean back against the balustrade with his hands. Helga's eyes flicked up and met his, and they looked at each other in silence. Helga finally sighed again and leaned over the edge, resting her chin on her folded arms.
Brainy watched her. She just looked out into the alley like he had been, her full lips pouting in their usual way. It was bad, he could tell by her calm silence that it was bad. No ranting, no screaming, and he hadn't been punched yet.
Wordlessly, Brian pushed away from the balcony, turned off the Tom Waits, and went to their living room to begin setting up their amps and pedals, plugging things in and tuning their guitars for them. He was reverent and careful with their instruments, in the same way he was reverent and careful with her friendship. When he was handling her guitar, Brainy always felt like he was handling Helga in a very real sense. When he ran his fingers along the frets, he couldn't help but imagine his fingers on her neck; strumming chords out felt like running his hands through her hair.
She came into the room and took her guitar from him when it was tuned with a quiet nod of thanks. She roughly jammed the cord into the amp, and started to play their most technically challenging and mathematically complex song.
Brian was immediately there with her, following the syncopated polyrhythm they had jammed out months back with nearly flawless precision.
She was playing roughly, he noticed. She kept missing the downbeats, and had sloppy picking technique, which was how she got when she was drunk or they played for big shows or when she was nervous. Brian noted that her knuckles were red and swollen, and could feel the hot pulse of ghostly impacts on his own hands as he imagined her punching the walls somewhere.
Helga, for her part, seemed lost in the song, her voice the typical scratchy, seeming unpracticed sound she cultivated after phases of melodic twee, hardcore and screamo, and finally the experimental guttural growls of grunge. Brian loved her singing voice, an uneven, rough and lilting sound that sounded all at once fierce and vulnerable. She could sound Springtime sweet if she needed to, but usually kept her typical barbed sarcasm laced within the slightly flat way she sang. Brainy listened with renewed interest in the poetic wrangling of her song, and took note of the revitalized passion behind her voice:
"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.
One more chance to second guess your thoughts.
My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.
Come back lets settle this up...
...and down my spine,
the faint tingle keeps me up at night.
So while you dream I lie awake and look to the stars.
No answers forthcoming I find myself locked in your arms."
Helga's voice was initially quiet and low, building and rolling on itself with emotion. Her playing continued to follow the complex mathrock rhythm they learned together, but her picking slipped as the clear choke of emotion threatened to undo the jam session entirely.
"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.
One more chance to second guess your thoughts.
My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.
Come back lets settle this up!
Like earth and dust,
We're one and the same; insignificant.
Well who am I to presume that we were all but gone?
Perpetually complexing the simple. I for one am done."
Brainy almost stopped playing, his hand hesitating for a second because of the way she sounded. Helga always played with emotions behind her effort. That was what she brought to Orphan; beyond her brilliant lyrics and extremely proficient guitar work, she was a creature of unbridledpassion. The drawback was that when she'd had a little to drink, and was messed up over the possible love of her life, sometimes the song got too real. He could feel her sadness clear as day in the dirty feedback of the amplifier, he could hear the frustration and emotive stalemate in her voice. As their song fell into the simple, plodding bridge, designed to connect the more complex and pattern-focused first half of the song to the explosive, kinetic eruption of the second, he noted that she kept her whole body curled over the guitar, her body bobbing with the 4:4 beat. Finally, she started to sing the last verse, bringing her voice up from her bent double form quietly.
"You brought this on yourself.
Our problems had enough time on the shelf.
We made the same mistakes,
lived our lives without the give and the take."
Helga's voice suddenly built volume and force, her previously frustrated, fragile mezzo-soprano raising into a harsh shout as she stood straight up onto her tiptoes, playing and singing directly into the air like an explosion.
"The time we spent apart
served to remind me of when we'd talk!
My one and sole regret
are the thoughts that went left unsaid!"
Helga grew quiet and continued to play the last epilogue of the song's melody with explosive passion, her hands rending the notes out of the guitar in frustration, until finally they both landed on the same closing note and stood in the buzzing silence of the expectant amps.
This wasn't a performance song. This was one of the ones they had never recorded because Helga hated playing it, and got frustrated when her fingers couldn't follow the tabs she wrote for herself. The first time she showed him what she wanted to do, Brainy just cocked an eyebrow at her, shrugged, and started to play along. Her aggressive style lended itself to powerful performances, and challenging music, but it often frustrated her.
Today, he could tell, she was playing the song to frustrate herself.
Brian heard their downstairs neighbor thumping on their floor from below, and Helga looked down at the floor and stomped twice hard. The thumping stopped, and she blew a stray strand of golden hair out of her face, misted by drizzle and sweat in the apartment's temperate heat from the kitchen radiator.
Brian stood passively, looking at her hands. Helga noticed, so she put her hands in her pockets.
"I got mad, okay," she explained. Brian nodded and put his guitar down, sitting on the chair behind him. Helga remained standing, and started to pace. Brainy was ready to hear her out, and after their therapeutic jam session, she was ready to talk.
"He just showed up out of nowhere. One minute I am ranting about the Bronte sisters of all things and the next he's standing over me like he just fell out of orbit. Then he helps me up and asks me to get coffee with him like this wasn't some kind of impossible dream to me. Like he could just get coffee with me and I wouldn't die."
Helga held onto her stomach and bent double, dramatically groaning.
"Then he is all handsome and godlike in the comfy mood light, and I swear to you Brian, he was just as sweet and honest and true as he always was. It was like he stepped out of the room and then stepped back in all grown up but exactly the same. Criminy, he even winked at me like he used to. But then," Helga faltered, her voice catching with emotion as she continued to recount her awful moment with Arnold. "Then he brought up his letters and the past and our-his confession."
Brain could feel that he had started to hold his breath. He had imagined this moment once or twice, but in his fantasies Helga turned Arnold down. He didn't know what would happen if she still reciprocated feelings for Arnold in that way. What would happen to their friendship, their band, or to him.
"And I turned him down." Helga sounded so bitterly disappointed in herself. Brian's pulse quickened, too afraid to frighten this long-awaited moment away to speak. He knew he just had to be here for her now, and everything would take care of itself naturally.
"I told him it was all in the past, why did I do that? Oh God I want to take it back, I want to go find him and tell him everything was a lie and beg him to find some shred of his infinite heaven-given patience and forgiveness to accept me. Dammit, goddammit he was right there where I could touch him and all I did was wince and scowl and cry. He must think I am repulsive and awful, there isn't any coming back from this, it's the final end!"
Helga was on her knees, pounding the floor with her fists, a disappointed and angry look on her face devoid of any of the sharp fury Brian was used to. He held onto the arms of his chair for purchase, still dizzy from the fulfillment of one of his dreams.
"And then Gerald calls me and cashes in one of those obnoxious fucking magic favors he got out of me, and fucking get this, it's for Orphan to play this huge fuckoff reunion party or something he is throwing. Everybody from 118 is going to be there, Brains."
He thought she looked legitimately scared when she said that. He certainly felt scared. She didn't seem to notice.
"I can't sing any of our songs there, they're all about him. Everyone will know, they'll all hear me singing about Arnold and so will he, and it will just be over, it will all be over. Arnold will leave forever again. How could Gerald do this to me? I was never nasty enough to him to deserve this."
Her head fell back and she looked up at their ceiling, covered in old music and film posters they collected from flea markets and thrift shops.
"Gerald then spills it that he has this plan for Arnold to stay," she croaked to the ceiling. Brain sat back further in the chair, surprised. "And apparently I am part of the plan. He wouldn't give me many details, but apparently he has this crazy plan to show Arnold he has to stick around again, that he wants to stay, but step one is that I play at this party."
Brian sighed, rubbing his chin with his palm. That was heavy.
"So I agreed." Helga turned to look at him again. "I will die of shock and embarrassment when Arnold hears these songs, but, I can't help myself, I want him to stay. I just can't help myself when it's him, and so I need you to agree to play with me."
Helga scooted over to Brian on her knees, her hands resting on his legs, and she looked up at him.
"Please, Brian, please" she begged. Her voice was full of all the sincere helplessness she could muster. "Help me do this, because if I have to, I will go up there alone, and it'll be a big fucking mess. You have to help me."
Brainy looked up, away from Helga, and out at the open balcony where the drizzle was picking up into a light rain. He wasn't sure that this day would ever happen, that he would be forced to help Helga with Arnold again, that is directly. He had spent many nights staying up before, listening to her worry and fret over the idea of never seeing him again. He had held her hand when she had crying fits because she saw someone with the same stupidly shaped head somewhere and it wasn't him. He had even let her fistfight him once, in the alley, because Olga threw out some of her old shrine stuff. He was familiar with the Arnold Problem.
But not quite like this. Helga knew how he felt. He didn't have to say it. He never would. She knew she was asking him something that would hurt him. But Brian knew she needed him, and knew what it was like to need someone and have them not follow through. He wouldn't put Helga through the same experience.
Brainy looked down at Helga as she rested her cheek on his knee, still looking up at her friend and roommate. Brian nodded. He would help her.
Helga chewed Brainy's nachos thoughtfully at their dinner table later, her mouth full and a slight smile on her face.
"Damn, Brains. You sure can cook nachos like a pro. Not half bad at all." Brian smiled to himself, facing away from her as he washed the dish he had eaten with in their sink. Helga chewed her food happily; a nice pile of junk food always brightened her spirits, and she could usually count on Brian to have just the right thing ready whenever she was pissed off or upset.
The immediate time after she asked Brainy to help her on her knees was a little awkward for them both, of course. Helga rarely, if ever, asked Brian for help directly. Usually he was astute enough to anticipate what she would want or need, and if it wasn't too much trouble for him, he would simply do it without being asked. He'd learned a lot about Helga from the years he watched her in stealthy, wheezing silence, and that came with immediate benefits now that they lived together.
The awkwardness passed, however, when Helga had grown self-conscious of herself prostrated at her friend's feet, stood up abruptly, and started pacing the room with a serious look written in her thick eyebrows.
"We need to figure out who's going to do bass and drums this time," she grumbled, the tall blonde moving quickly from her bedroom back to the living room, slapping her open palm with a fist. "I'm not letting that crustpunk swine Harold near my stage again. If I get told how every little thing I do isn't punk at this stupid party of Gerald's by Mr. Self-Proclaimed Crustiest Punk in Hillwood, I'll wring his unwashed neck."
Brainy stood up and started making them nachos while Helga thought out loud. The duo had played with a variety of their old friends from PS118 who had ended up in the music scene of Hillwood; Harold, Cid, Stoop Kid, and even Stinky plucked his twelve string guitar with them for a show once.
"And Harold's not even that good, his bass is all over the place. What about Stoop Kid?" She was more asking herself than she was directly asking Brian, but he still shrugged his shoulders for her from the kitchen counter, nodding a little to indicate he would work.
"Yeah, Stoop's not half bad on skins, not half bad at all," Helga mused. "Think we can get him up to speed in such short notice? He's not exactly the swiftest sparrow in the tree, kid's basically a fourth grader brains-wise...but he knows his stuff, I'm sure he'll work." Helga's pacing resumed as she worked out who would play bass for their show. Brainy and her always had to do this right before a performance, work through their list of known musicians that weren't previously tied to any sort of playing obligations, and basically bribe them with beers and the threat of Helga's fists. The ritual they currently practiced, carefully stepping through the motions together, was one of comfort for Brian and Helga. It told him that she was on her way towards normalcy.
Then, he had set the nachos out on the table, and Helga ravenously tore into them.
"Bout time, Brains. I was starving." Brian chewed his plate quietly with her, and they shared a fresh, cool beer, pulling from the tallboy bottle between bites.
Finally, when they were finished eating and Brian was cleaning up, Helga slapped the table suddenly.
"I've got it! Helga, old girl, you're a genius." She flashed Brian a haughty, proud grin, her teeth showing wide from between her full, pouty lips.
"Gerald wants us to play so bad," she started, and Brian saw where this was headed. Trouble, but that was typically Helga's style. "I happen to know Froboy slaps a mean bass. We'll just tell him that he has to play, or the show's off. It's perfect either way! Froboy will either chicken out and then we don't have to play the stupid party, or he goes up and we get to kick his ass with our tunes. And if he does agree, we get the better part of a week to figure out what his plan is. Oh-ho-ho man, Helga, old girl, you are just too devious."
Brian didn't mention to Helga that she had made it clear that she very much wanted to play this show, or that she previously begged him to help her. Helga had to convince herself of the difficult actions she had to take, or else her heart would falter. If bullying Gerald into playing bass with them was what she needed to go through with this, then Brainy would just play along.
She was his lead guitar anyway, and always was.
Helga reached over at Brain, pawing for the bottle of beer they were sharing. It was their fifth now, several records into the evening and plenty of Helga's rants behind them. Brian obediently passed the baton, figuring that she should be pretty sloshed right about now. They'd split four bottled 24oz. tallboys, and only eaten junk. Helga was hardly a lightweight but drinking was still a new hobby for them both, taken up because Brian's boss at the record store preferred to give bonuses in cases of beer rather than money. It was infrequent enough of an event that the pair had only ever gotten really drunk - sloppy, confession drunk - once. But he could tell that they were headed there quickly tonight, going through their supply in the fridge quickly.
Helga screwed up her face. "Beer's warm." Brain looked at her, his less-than-gentle buzz lifting his spirits and making him contemplative. Hereally wanted to push himself over into her personal space and start kissing her.
He dismissed the thought as soon as he was able, which unfortunately for him took several moments of him looking at her full, pouty lips. Helga noticed.
"D-don't stare at me like that," she slurred, pointing at him with the hand that held the bottle. "Y'stay over there, right there. Don't move a muscle, Brains." She held her hand up for emphasis, here eyebrows going high. "Stay."
Brian would listen to her. The last thing she needed was one of her best friends and roommate complicating what was an already complicated day by throwing his romantic, more-than-friendly feelings into the mix.
Brian also was pretty sure that if he started to make a move on her now, she'd reciprocate, and they'd end up tangled in limbs and lips and reallyscrew things up. Helga was passionate, and physical. She was in the gym often, and boasted abundant energy and critical verve. As far as he knew she'd never been touched by a man in that way, and had to imagine that her hormones and needs were piling up. All the frustration from the day, all the tragedy of Arnold's return, and all their years of closeness of heart and nearness of physical proximity no doubt meant that Helga was surely thinking the same thing he was.
What would happen if they just fooled around a little as friends?
The thought had occurred to Brian many times before, and he was sure it had to Helga. How could it not enter her head, when they shared everything, lived together, and were both obviously attracted to each other. It was always on his mind, anyway, what his life would be like if they stopped being roommates and started being lovers. But he wouldn't make the first move - he knew that she had to come to him, or he would be overstepping the boundaries of their relationship they outlined together when she moved in with him.
So Brian kept his distance and solemnly, physically ached for Helga while she tortured herself over another man. So he was surprised by the sudden flop of her bare foot in his lap, followed by powerful flex of her toes and ankle. She sniffed and leaned on a single elbow, taking a pull from the bottle.
"Footrub?" Her toes waggled for emphasis. Brian's pulse raced. Was this it? Was this the moment the line was crossed, and he could touch her? Was she inviting him in?
His hand reached for her foot, stopping an inch away when they both heard the dramatic, harsh buzzing of her phone from her messenger bag inches away from where they lounged in the room.
Helga's foot shot off his lap as she rolled tipsily to her bag, fishing for the phone with one hand, the beer bottle in the other. Brian's hand hovered in the spot where her foot had been, watching her with a bitter feeling of being cheated out of something.
"Yes! Hello! What is it?! Talk!" Helga's voice was full of aggression, the way she got when she was embarrassed or got caught doing something that she felt threatened her reputation.
"Yeah, I did. He did. How do you know that?" Helga still sounded like she'd been caught doing something, but he thought he could recognize the voice of Phoebe on the other end of the line. He couldn't hear what she was saying over the record they were playing, and had to settle for eavesdropping in on Helga's side of the conversation.
"You knew? You knew he was coming and didn't tell me?" That sounded bad. Her voice took a dangerous pitch, her volume rising significantly.
"Yes, well, you'd better explain fast, before I hang this phone up and come kick your ass," she started to threaten Phoebe, before she was interrupted by something Phoebe said.
"So you know about Gerald's plan too? How do you figure in? Talk fast, Pheebs, this better be good." Brian stood up from his spot, and Helga looked up at him with a scowl on her face, then apologetically smiled at him. It was a surprisingly tender gesture from Helga. Brian leaned down and took the bottle from her, and walked to the kitchen to get some physical space between them.
"Oh so its your plan too? Alright, look, I trust you, but only just barely enough to play along. I want Ice Cream to stay," she used her old code for Arnold with Phoebe almost all the time, even when it was just Brian listening. "but I don't intend on making a damn fool of myself in front of everyone we've ever known to do it. So you'd better, you know, fucking include me when you make plans that fucking involve me."
Helga sat up, rubbing at her temples. She was sobering up, and getting cranky from the uncomfortable feeling of her thoughts being far more lucid than her brain could keep up. Brian put the beer on the counter, and started to pour her a water. Striding across the room in silence, Brian handed Helga the glass of water, which she started drinking as she listened to Phoebe talk, nodding a thanks to him for the offer.
"Alright, that sounds good. Let's meet at Bigal's. I need pancakes and waffles. Plus I gotta tell you what happened, Jesus Christ it was awful, Pheebs. Yeah, I already told Brainy. Yeah. He's right here…You want to talk to him?" Helga's last question had the clear note of surprise in it. She looked up at Brain, and he shrugged, reaching for the phone when Helga offered it to him.
"Uh...hello." Brian never knew how to start a conversation over the phone, and sounded as uncomfortable as he was.
"Brian," Phoebe started. "Arnold's doing something incredibly ill-advised, short-sighted, and irreversible in an ever decreasing amount of time. I need you to promise me, for Helga's own best interests, that if you somehow discover, uncover, or unravel the truth that you won't tell her."Brian's eyebrows went up high. He looked down at Helga, who was looking up at him, genuinely confused and concerned.
"Uh...okay." He agreed, Brian had kept things from Helga many times in the past to keep her happy. It wasn't something he enjoyed doing, but things became muddled and murky when she was involved.
"Excellent. All that is required of you is to keep doing what you do for her, provide her moral support and the ear of friendship, and remember not to tell. No matter what, Brian." Her voice was as serious as he'd ever heard it. "If she finds out at a critically unstable juncture in time it will be disastrous. Everything will be jeopardized, all of it, including your friendship to her, to everyone. We'll lose Helga."
Brian felt his breath stop short in his throat. What on earth was Arnold doing?
"Uh...I understand." Brian finally breathed out.
"Good. Now, Helga is going to have questions for you regarding the tense and secretive nature of our conversation. I have advised Helga to keep a safe barrier of distance between you two in the past, so if you fall on that excuse she won't suspect anything. We'll handle the rest at the diner. Rendezvous with us there ASAP."
"Uh...Us?" Brian was more and more confused.
"Gerald and myself. It's time to illuminate you both on the plan. And please, Brian, don't tell Helga." Brian then heard the other line go blank. Phoebe had suddenly hung up. He'd never heard such urgency in her before, even considering how high strung she was.
"What the hell was that?" Helga's strong, dark eyebrows were as high as they could manage to go, vanishing beneath her blonde bangs swept to the side.
"Talk on the way," Brian struggled to answer her. He knew he'd get the third degree the entire span of their short walk to the diner. Helga gave him a look that promised his premonition was correct.
Brian handed Helga her phone, and helped her up from her spot on the floor. He reached over and pulled his corduroy sportcoat off their vintage brass coat hanger, and got his keys to lock up. Helga, taking his cues, shoved her feet into her pink converse and grabbed her bag.
The two of them left their apartment, and headed to the diner.