How do two best friends cement their brotherly bond when one is the kind of real-life movie star who once claimed Hunter S. Thompson as a mentor, and the other is a goth-rocker who furnishes his home with artwork by John Wayne Gacy? By getting elaborate matching tattoos needle-pounded into their skin, of course! Marilyn Manson confesses to Rolling Stone that this is what he and Johnny Depp have gone ahead and done on two separate occasions.

Manson tells the magazine that they both have the phrase “no reason” etched onto their wrists. And on their backs: “Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing.” The musician does not go into greater detail though, preferring to leave the story behind their dermis-binding graphics “kind of a secret. People say to us, ‘Why did you get that?’ And we say, ‘No reason.’ ”

Manson does offer a few more specifics about their friendship though that are unrelated to the tattoos. For example, Depp once let Manson live in his guest home. And per the profile:

They apparently understand each other as few others can. Most literally, they're both low-talking mumblers who have found that they don't need words to communicate with each other. "We mumble like we're a mumbling chorus, and we finish sentences with hand gestures," says Manson. On a deeper level, they share certain fascinations and predilections. At one point, they tried to buy the gun that Hitler killed himself with. And neither can go to sleep unless a TV is on, with Manson's preference being "really loud and violent things."

In addition to inkling, mumbling, and Nazi antique bartering, the two occasionally perform onstage together—the most recent time being this past Halloween at the Roxy in Los Angeles.

Related: The Crowded Mind of Johnny Depp