Joga
Ville Valo x Linde Lindström
Touring while yearning for ur childhood friend and being married at the same time must suck dick and balls 👎👎👎 dis angsty asf #soz
They were boys when it began. Too young to understand what longing meant, too unguarded to hide it from themselves. Ville had been magnetic even then: too fast, eyes too sharp, voice already carrying a weight it had no right to.
Linde orbited him naturally, instinctively, as if his body had decided something his mind had yet to articulate.
They shared everything - music, cigarettes, secrets whispered into the dark. They shared beds when they were too cold and shared jackets.
There were moments, too many to count now, that hovered on the edge of something more.
Lingering looks.
Accidental touches that didn’t feel accidental. The heat of Ville’s body pressed against his side for reasons neither of them ever named.
But the truth followed him relentlessly:
Linde wanted him.
The wanting was constant, an undercurrent beneath every chord he played. It was there in rehearsals, in hotel hallways, in shared laughter over drinks that tasted worse the older they got. It was there when Ville leaned over his shoulder to comment on a riff, breath warm against his ear, presence so familiar it made Linde’s chest tighten painfully.
And every time it surfaced, guilt followed close behind.
Linde was married.
He loved his wife. His Manna. His Mariam. That was the truth. He loved the way she laughed when she forgot to guard it, loved the quiet domestic rhythms they’d built together. Coffee in the mornings, shared groceries, the mundane tenderness of a life that didn’t demand too much of him. Loving her felt responsible. It felt adult. It felt like a decision he could stand behind.
What he never told her, what he barely admitted to himself, was that he had already been in love for most of his life.
But again, he was married.
The word felt like an anchor and a shackle all at once.
During performances, it was hardest.
The stage stripped away his defenses. Everything was too loud, too bright, too immediate. There was no room to look away when Ville’s voice curled around a lyric that sounded like a confession. No escape when their eyes met across the stage, held for half a second too long.
Those moments were unbearable.
They were fleeting, deniable, and devastating.
Ville would sing, eyes locked on Linde with an intensity that made his fingers falter on the strings. The crowd would scream, unaware that something private and ruinous had just passed between two men they thought they understood.
Linde felt like a fraud standing there.
He was betraying everyone at once. His wife, his friend, himself.
At night, alone in hotel rooms that all looked the same, Linde replayed moments he wished he could forget. A glance held too long. A joke that landed a little too close to the truth. The way Ville’s voice softened when he said Linde’s name, stripped of irony, stripped of performance.
He thought about Manna then. About the life waiting for him at home. About how wrong it felt to carry this other love inside him like a secret organ, pulsing and alive.
He remembered when he proposed to her, part of him wished she would have said no.
Love didn’t always need to be acted upon. Wanting wasn’t the same as doing. He had made a choice, and choices meant sacrifice. This quiet misery was simply the cost.
But some nights, the guilt curdled into something uglier.
Resentment.
Not at Ville. Never at Ville. Never at Manna.
At himself.
For not being stronger. For not being braver. For not having chosen differently when it might have mattered. For marrying someone without fully understanding the shape of his own heart.
He wondered, sometimes, if this was his punishment, not for loving Ville but for loving him quietly. For choosing safety over honesty. For mistaking endurance for virtue.
He wondered if Ville ever laid awake thinking the same thoughts.
He would never ask.
Asking would require courage he no longer believed he possessed.
So he stayed. He played. He smiled. He would go home to a marriage built on partial truths and did his best to be good, to be kind, to be enough. To be a father.
And somewhere, beneath it all, the echo persisted.
The echo of a love that never demanded to be returned, it only endured.
By the fifth night in a row, Linde stopped sleeping.
It wasn’t unusual at first, tour insomnia was an old companion, something he knew how to manage with routines and discipline and the quiet endurance he had built his entire adult life around. But this was different. This was not restlessness. This was vigilance.
Every time he closed his eyes, Ville was there.
Not as fantasy. That would have been easier to condemn, easier to shove away with shame and cold showers and prayerless promises. Ville appeared as memory. As presence. As the unbearable weight of proximity.
The sound of his voice, stripped of amplification.
The way his shoulder brushed Linde’s in narrow hallways.
The heat of him onstage, close enough to feel, never close enough to touch.
Linde laid awake in unfamiliar hotel rooms, staring at ceilings that all looked the same, listening to the distant hum of traffic and the even breathing of the city outside. His phone remained face-down on the nightstand. He answered his wife’s messages dutifully, lovingly, with words that were true but incomplete.
I love you.
I miss you too.
The show went well.
He never told her how much it cost him to say those things.
By the time they reached the next city, the exhaustion had settled into his bones like something parasitic. He moved through soundcheck on muscle memory alone, fingers stiff, jaw permanently tight. Ville noticed immediately.
Ville always noticed.
“You look like shit.” Ville said mildly, leaning against an amp, cigarette unlit between his fingers.
Linde snorted without humor, “Always the poet.”
Ville smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You sleeping at all?”
The question struck too close. Linde felt it land in his chest, sharp and invasive.
“i sleep enough.” he lied.
Ville studied him for a moment longer than necessary. There was something dangerous in Ville’s attention when he let it linger, something intimate and unguarded that Linde had spent years training himself to deflect.
“Don’t burn yourself out.” Ville said eventually.
As if that hadn’t already happened.
The show that night was smaller, darker. The kind of venue where the stage lights felt closer, hotter, where the crowd pressed in like a living wall. Sweat pooled early, soaked through Linde’s shirt before the first three songs were done.
Ville was incandescent.
There were nights when Ville performed like a possessed man, and this was one of them. His voice tore through the room raw and unfiltered, eyes bright, movements sharper than usual. He prowled the stage, fed off the crowd’s attention, and bled himself open willingly.
Linde felt every second of it like a personal assault.
He tried not to look. Failed. Tried again. Failed harder.
During one song, slow, aching, and too familiar, Ville turned toward him fully. Not by accident. Not by chance. His eyes locked onto Linde’s and stayed there.
Too long.
The crowd screamed, mistaking the moment for performance chemistry, for showmanship, for the easy intimacy of a band that had played together for decades. They didn’t hear the way Linde’s heartbeat stuttered. They didn’t see the way his fingers faltered on the strings for half a breath before discipline slammed back into place.
Ville sang directly to him.
Not the crowd.
Not the room.
Him.
The lyrics twisted themselves into something unrecognizable, something too precise, too sharp. Linde felt exposed, flayed open beneath the lights. His chest constricted, breath going shallow.
Look away.
Don’t let this happen.
He broke eye contact abruptly, staring down at his guitar like it was a lifeline. Shame surged hot and violent. He imagined Manna’s face, her trust, the quiet certainty she had in him.
The guilt nearly made him sick.
By the end of the song, his hands were trembling.
No one noticed.
They never did.
Backstage, the adrenaline dropped too fast. Linde leaned heavily against a wall, sweat cooling uncomfortably against his skin. His head throbbed dully, pressure building behind his eyes.
Ville approached, concern etched openly across his face now.
“Hey” he said quietly, “You alright?”
Linde laughed, too sharp, too brittle. “You keep asking me that.”
“Because you keep not answering,” Ville replied.
The words hit harder than they should have.
Linde straightened, forced himself upright. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
Ville’s jaw tightened. “You’re lying.”
The accusation was soft. It was worse that way.
Linde felt something inside him strain, like a thread pulled too tight for too long. He had built his life on restraint, on silence, on knowing exactly when to stop himself. But exhaustion eroded those boundaries. Hunger made confession tempting.
“I can’t do this right now.” Linde said, voice low.
Ville stepped closer. Too close.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Ville said. “Just talk to me.”
That was the problem.
Linde looked at him, really looked. At the familiar lines of his face, the eyes that knew him too well, the mouth that had shaped his name a thousand times without ever crossing the line that mattered.
Something inside him cracked.
“I’m married.” Linde said suddenly. The words hung between them, heavy and misplaced.
“I know.” Ville said slowly.
“I mean-” Linde dragged a hand through his hair, breathing unsteady. “I mean, I chose this. I chose a life. I chose stability. I chose someone who loves me and trusts me and-” His voice broke, barely. “And I don’t get to feel like this.”
Ville didn’t interrupt. That hurt too.
“I don’t get to stand on stage and feel like I’m...” Linde stopped himself, jaw clenching hard enough to ache. “It’s wrong.”
Ville’s expression shifted, something dark passing through it.
“Is it?” he asked quietly.
Linde flinched like he’d been struck.
“Yes.” he said immediately. Too immediately. “It has to be.”
Ville looked away, exhaling slowly. “You think I don’t feel it too?”
The words were soft. Devastating.
Linde’s heart slammed violently against his ribs. “Don’t.” he whispered. “Please.”
Ville turned back to him, eyes sharp and wounded and far too honest. “I’ve been doing this with you my entire life. I don’t know how to turn it off either.”
Silence fell between them, thick and suffocating.
Linde felt dizzy. The room seemed too small, the walls pressing in. This was it, he moment he had spent years avoiding, the edge he had danced along so carefully.
If he said one wrong thing now, everything would collapse.
“I can’t.” Linde said, backing away a step, “I can’t hurt her.”
Ville’s face closed off, shutters slamming down. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“Of course not.” Linde said hoarsely. “i just can’t even-” He gestured helplessly between them. “I can’t let myself think about what this is.”
“Then don’t.”
The dismissal cut deeper than any argument would have.
Linde left the room before he could say something unforgivable.
That night, alone again, the breakdown came quietly.
It wasn’t dramatic. There were no sobs, no shattered furniture. Just Linde sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, shoulders shaking with silent breaths he couldn’t quite catch.
He loved his wife.
He loved Ville.
The two truths existed simultaneously, incompatible and unyielding.
He had built a life on choosing duty over desire, and now the weight of that choice threatened to crush him.
He pressed his fist to his mouth to keep himself quiet. Tomorrow, he would wake up and put himself back together. He always did. He would apologize to Ville without naming what they were both pretending not to know. He would text his wife something affectionate and honest and incomplete.
He would endure.
But something had shifted.
The echo inside him was no longer just an ache, it was a fracture, spreading slowly and inevitably.
And Linde knew, with a clarity that terrified him, that he could not keep living like this forever.
Unfortunately, tragedy didn’t arrive all at once.
It crept in quietly, the way exhaustion does, the way rot spreads through wood long before anything collapses.
After that night, something fundamental shifted between them. Ville stopped lingering near Linde during soundcheck. He stopped seeking eye contact mid-song. Onstage, he angled himself toward the crowd and gave them everything he used to give without thinking.
The distance was subtle.
It was devastating.
Linde told himself it was for the best. This was what he had chosen. What he had insisted on. Boundaries. Control. Safety. The quiet, disciplined life of a man who kept his promises.
But discipline didn’t soften the loss.
Onstage, the absence screamed.
Where Ville’s presence had once felt like gravity, now there was a void. An empty space Linde couldn’t stop orienting himself around. His body still expected Ville to be there, close, responsive, familiar. When that expectation went unanswered, it left him unbalanced, half a step behind the music.
He started making mistakes.
Small ones at first, barely perceptible, easy to excuse. A missed cue. A fraction of a second, too slow on a transition. No one else seemed to notice, but Linde did. Every error felt like proof of something slipping out of his control.
Ville never looked at him when it happened.
That was worse.
The shows blurred together. Cities lost their names. Hotel rooms became interchangeable boxes where Linde lay awake listening to his own thoughts circle like vultures. Mannas messages grew more frequent, more concerned.
You sound tired.
Are you okay?
We should talk when you get home.
Each message tightened the knot in his chest.
When he finally did call her, his voice was steady. It always was. He told her he missed her. He told her he was fine. He told her he loved her.
All of it was true.
None of it was enough.
The breaking point came during a show he would later struggle to remember clearly. The venue was packed, the air thick with heat and anticipation. Ville’s voice cut through the darkness sharp and unforgiving, stripped of the warmth it once carried for Linde.
Midway through the set, during a song that used to feel like a shared secret, Linde felt his focus slip completely. His fingers hesitated. The sound fractured. Just for a moment, but enough.
The wrong note rang out, ugly and unmistakable.
A ripple went through the band. Ville faltered, just barely, turning his head in reflex before catching himself and pressing on. The crowd didn’t notice. They never did.
Linde did.
Something in him gave way.
His hands went numb. The stage lights blurred. Sound dulled, as if he were underwater. He finished the song on instinct alone, heart pounding violently, breath coming too fast.
By the time they left the stage, his vision had narrowed to a tunnel.
In his dressing room, he barely made it to a chair before sitting heavily, head dropping into his hands. Sweat dripped from his hair, down his neck, onto the floor. He felt sick. Physically, viscerally unwell.
Ville stopped in front of him.
Not close. Not touching.
Ville said, voice guarded. “You need a medic?”
Linde shook his head. The movement made the room spin.
“I’m sorry ” he said suddenly.
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Ville stiffened. “For what?”
“For everything,” Linde said. His voice was quiet, scraped raw. “For making you-” He swallowed hard. “For pretending this was something we could just turn off.”
Ville’s expression shuttered completely.
“You don’t get to do this now.” he said.
“I know.” Linde whispered. “I just needed you to know that it wasn’t nothing. It was never nothing.”
Ville looked at him for a long moment. There was something old and tired in his eyes, something that hurt to see.
“I know.” Ville said softly. “That’s why I had to stop.”
Linde sighed, "We're such a mess."
Ville chuckled, "You are married, so there isn't anything we can do about, is there?"
Linde laughed once, a broken sound that didn’t reach his eyes. Then, before he could think better of it, before the weight of vows and years and damage could clamp down on his spine, he was on his feet.
The chair screeched back, loud and ugly in the small room.
Ville’s head snapped up. “Linde?”
Too late.
Linde crossed the distance in two unsteady steps, hands fisting in the front of Ville’s jacket like it was the only solid thing left in the world. He could feel Ville’s sharp intake of breath, feel the tension coil through him, feel the moment where Ville should have pulled away.
He didn’t.
Linde kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was desperate and clumsy and full of everything he’d spent years swallowing down, every stolen glance across a stage, every harmony sung too close, every night lying awake next to someone else and thinking of Ville’s hands on a microphone stand.
Ville froze for half a second, shock stiffening his body.
Then he kissed him back.
Just once. Just long enough to ruin everything.
Ville’s mouth was warm, familiar in a way that made Linde’s chest ache. His hand came up instinctively, fingers curling into Linde’s shirt like muscle memory had been waiting all this time for permission. The kiss tasted like adrenaline and old cigarettes.
Something unbearably them.
And then Ville broke it.
He shoved Linde back, not hard, but enough to put space between them. Enough to remind them both where they were.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ville snapped, voice cracking right down the middle.
Linde stood there breathing hard, forehead nearly touching Ville’s, eyes bright and wrecked. “I needed you to know,” he said hoarsely. “I needed you to feel it. That I didn’t imagine this. That I didn’t lie to myself for years for nothing.”
Ville turned away, dragging a hand down his face like he was trying to physically wipe the moment off his skin. “Jesus Christ, Linde.” He laughed bitterly. “You think I needed proof?”
Silence crashed back into the room, thick and suffocating.
“I stop myself everyday.” Ville said quietly, not looking at him. “Everyday, I don’t touch you. Everyday, I don’t say what I want to say because you made a choice.”
The words hit Linde harder than any shove. His voice shook now. “And I hate myself for it.”
Ville finally looked back at him. His eyes were shining, furious and wounded and unbearably soft all at once. “Then don’t do that again,” he said. “Don’t make me the thing you reach for when you can’t stand your own life.”
Linde’s chest felt like it was collapsing inward. “You’re not a thing.” he whispered. “You’re the only thing that ever felt real.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The air between them felt charged, dangerous; like one more second and they’d either tear each other apart or fall back together in a way neither could survive.
Finally, Ville stepped back, putting real distance between them this time.
“Get some water.” he said, voice flat, professional, armour sliding back into place. “Sit down before you fall over.”
Linde nodded numbly, retreating to the chair like a man walking away from a cliff he’d already jumped off in his head.
As Ville reached for the door, his hand hesitated on the handle.
“Linde?” he said without turning around.
“Yeah?”
“That kiss?” Ville swallowed. “That’s why I can’t be near you like this.”
The door closed softly behind him.
Linde sat there shaking, lips still burning, knowing with absolute certainty that he’d just crossed a line he’d been standing on his entire life, and that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to uncross it.
