Days were long. The time had just changed and Toki would watch dark bleed into light, light fade into dark, every day, whether it be from his desk by the window or sitting on the curb outside the corner store while Skwisgaar went inside to buy condoms and cigarettes. The corner store had dusty floors and smelled weird; Toki liked to sit with his feet in the road and dare cars to hit him. When Skwisgaar would emerge, his hair tied up off his neck and a fresh cigarette shoved between his fat lips, the muted glow of the sunset allowed Toki to almost forget how skinny he'd become. Skwisgaar would light the cigarette on the way over to Toki, take a drag, and then pull Toki towards him and kiss him, smoke trapped between their faces. Toki would bite. Then they would climb into Skwisgaar's shitty car and head to Skwisgaar's apartment, twenty miles over the speed limit, the car belching and lurching itself along the road. Once there, Skwisgaar would shove a needle in his arms and let his eyes roll back into his head. Toki would sit on the couch and watch cartoons.
This just kept happening. A cycle—corner store, cigarettes, car, comatose.
It was on a day like any other, the last of the light clinging to the sky in a pathetic strip, Toki watching ponies scamper across the television screen, Skwisgaar laying on his bed with his jaw slack and the door shut, that Pickles sat next to him and changed his life.
"Dude," Pickles said, eyes red and heavy as his dreads, "I think I'd fuck the orange horse."
Toki peered at the screen, tilted his head. "I likes her brother. De big red one."
Pickles snorted and handed Toki the blunt he'd been smoking. Toki took it, took a drag, and held it between his fingers. He felt sick to his stomach, weirdly, but weed helped nausea, so whatever.
"I have an idea." That was Pickles; Toki'd forgotten about him, engrossed in learning about the magic of friendship. "You should learn to play guitar. You like music, and you got the hands for it, and I just bought a new electric guitar and I got no use for my old acoustic, so."
"Uh." Toki considered it. "Okays."
"Alright, come on, let's go to my room." Without turning the television up they rose from the couch and snaked around the apartment, through the kitchen, and to Nathan and Pickles's room. Their room was larger than Skwisgaar's, hidden away, and Toki didn't spend nearly as much time in it as he did in Skwisgaar's. Their room was both more formal and more extravagant—a bureau against a wall with littered makeup on it from when Pickles would do himself up, drawers open and spilling a mix of flamboyant and dark clothes. Their bed, complete with a headboard, had deep red satin sheets. Above it hung a framed and signed vinyl. Nathan himself was out at lunch with his parents, but Toki imagined him sprawled across the bed all bulging muscles and long hair, waiting for Pickles to wing his eyeliner just right, come over and straddle him. Toki's coming of age was so entangled in Nathan, Pickles, Skwisgaar and Murderface that this fantasy did not feel wrong to him, but gave him a weird sort of comfort, like what one would experience watching their parents hug.
Pickles turned on the light and Toki sat on the bed—it was less comfortable than Skwisgaar's, his body less attuned. Pickles picked up the two guitars, standing proud against the wall adjacent to the door, by their necks and carried them to Toki. Pickles sat down closer to the headboard and handed Toki the acoustic guitar, battered and slathered with stickers, showed him how to position it on his lap.
"You wanna pick with your fingers or use a pick? I recommend a pick." Pickles dug in the front pocket of his skinny jeans and produced two guitar picks, black and scratched, gleaming like Jack's magic beans in his hand. Toki took one. Pickles demonstrated how to position it between his fingers. "You're doing good, kid." Toki had not struck a single note and first instinct was to deny the praise, but something about it appealed to him He sat up a little straighter, dragging the guitar back up his thighs from where it had fallen while he slouched.
Time drizzled on by like rain—because they were inside, it could not affect them. Toki learned notes. Toki learned chords. Toki learned where to put his hands, how to strum, how to hum and feel the vibrations in his throat. He mirrored Pickles's movements the best he could, keeping an attentive eye to his fingers, Toki felt something in his chest that he hadn't felt in ages, light in both the figurative and literal, beating its wings about, happiness.
The door opened. Toki struck a sour note and felt something in his chest snap—he imagined it a guitar string, curling up and hitting his esophagus, his throat constricting and eyes watering with the pain. Skwisgaar in the doorway, eyes unfocused. Shirtless—Toki could count his bones, but he'd done that so many times already, that instead he focused on the anemic strip of hair leading to Skwisgaar's cock. It was new. In the early days, Skwisgaar had shaved; Toki had been measuring the growth of the hair with the pads of his fingers and tip of his tongue.
"Toki," Skwisgaar croaked. His eyes dragged up and down Toki's body in a way that made him feel like he'd been licked by some sort of wild animal whose breath smelled foul. "My bedrooms, now."
Toki rose, his knees shaky. He placed the guitar on the bed. "Is this why you brought me here?" Toki asked, his voice dripping with so much acid he was afraid he would injure Pickles. "To fucks you?"
"I want no part of this," Pickles said. He picked both guitars up and deposited them in their stands, then exited the room, slithering past Skwisgaar. The two skinniest in the house, they could fit in a doorway.
Skwisgaar didn't seem to notice Pickles and continued to stare at Toki. Standing, Skwisgaar had the grace of a ragdoll, looking like his limbs had been sewn together with scraps of plastic and eyes glued on haphazardly. He didn't look real. He didn't look like he was breathing. He only looked at Toki, and he said: "Comes with me."
"Noes," Toki whispered. The word fell to the ground, a leaf falling from a tree, just as inconsequential.
But Toki went. With Pickles gone, there was nothing to steady himself against, and if Toki didn't pin his body down, he'd float away forever. Defeated, Toki slunk off to Skwisgaar's room. He stepped out of his shorts while Skwisgaar let his jeans drip down his legs. He jacked himself to an erection and tugged on a condom while Skwisgaar laid out on the bed. He hovered over Skwisgaar and slid into him, rough, no prep and with minimal lube, praying that Skwisgaar would at least yelp in pain. But he didn't—his jaw slacked just a bit, a putrid wisp of breath escaping his lips, and his bruised eyelids fluttered a few times.
Toki was only able to reach orgasm by imagining their sex from before. When they would fold themselves into beautiful origami, taking advantage of their nubile young bodies, their stamina and their strength. When he could bite down on Skwisgaar's collarbone and feel some meat between his teeth. Where Skwisgaar would fuck him, too, his hands all knotted in Toki's hair and pulling him towards him, nibbling at the tendons in his neck, a hand cupping his hip. Toki saw stars, then—now, all he saw was the lonely light of lighthouses from the vantage of a sinking ship.
Afterwards, Skwisgaar rolled over, either dead or asleep, Toki didn't know. He pressed two fingers the inside of Skwisgaar's wrist—asleep. In his pulse Toki found comfort, his heartbeat the same as before. He held his fingers there for a while, recalling the way guitar strings vibrated.
But soon, Toki left. Went home. Took a bus. Stood, stared at the window, watched the city roll past him. On his back was Pickles's hand-me-down guitar, sheathed in a shoddy chase, bouncing against him with every rough patch of street the bus encountered. He clenched and unclenched his jaw and hands. He could feel himself starting to float away. Drift away. Whatever. The only thing he had to nail himself to was the slab of wood he carried on his back.
And so he played his guitar until his fingers bled, wiped the blood on his jeans, and played some more. He played for hours, a single note over and over again, until it was installed in his brain, until it was perfect. He rearranged his free time, allotting every second to the instrument. It became even more scuffed and he cleaned it; the tune screwed up and he fixed it; the strings became loose and he replaced them.
And he began to write songs.
They weren't perfect. They were simple. Three chords. Lyrics half in Norwegian, half in English, sometimes Swedish, whatever fit. A basic rhythm that he'd sing under his breath while performing whatever ridiculous tasks his father would assign him. He'd hum it in the shower and tap it against the desk at school. When he shoved his fingers inside of Skwisgaar, he'd move them like he was playing the song, willing Skwisgaar to make music. But Skwisgaar was broken and out of tune, the only sounds he made simple croaks, and no amount of strumming could elicit what Toki desired.
He became used to spending his afternoons in Pickles and Nathan's bedroom. Pickles would sometimes have to shake a dozing Nathan awake and kick him out so Pickles and Toki could play in peace, but Nathan never seemed to mind—"It's good the kid's learning some music," he'd say, ruffling Toki's hair and lumbering out of the room. Pickles taught Toki some fineries, the more complicated things, and helped him with his speed. Sometimes they played songs together, Pickles singing, and Toki was amazed by the quality of Pickles's voice. Toki was shaping up. They sounded great together. It felt like fucking flowers blooming in fields that'd been dead for years.
Still, there was Skwisgaar. Still, there was the convenient store. Still, there was the condoms. Still, there was the car. Still, there were the kisses that stuck to Toki's teeth and caked there, rotten foodstuffs, gagging him. He tried to write the feeling into a song but found himself unable to—Skwisgaar was rotting from the inside out; his veins were all different colors and made Toki sick to look at; if Toki circled a finger around his collarbone it would squeak. Skwisgaar needed polish, tuning, repair, and Toki had no idea how to do these things.
Months. It went on for months. A finger down a string; a finger shoved inside. Toki mouthing the lyrics to a song; Toki's mouth moving against Skwisgaar's. Toki laughing with delight with Pickles over a note well-played; Toki stony-faced with Skwisgaar, nothing well-played, nothing played. Toki would shuffle between Skwisgaar's bedroom and Pickles's, alternating between fucking and plucking, blowing and strumming, kissing and shredding. And if he didn't have a guitar or a dick in his hand he felt like he was flapping in the wind, ready to take flight to a place far, far away.
Toki thought he saw hope when Skwisgaar ran a finger through the crevice of one of Toki's scars while Toki was gathering the strength to pick himself up and return to Pickles for more guitar lessons. This was something Skwisgaar used to do—touch his scars and whisper to him about how he wouldn't have to live through it forever. How he was still beautiful. Toki didn't expect the whispers, but he thought that just the remembrance of an old habit would help, until Skwisgaar withdrew his hand and rolled over, groping around on the floor for a syringe. Toki was propelled by his repulsion, left off the bed, tugged some boxers on and returned to Pickles's room.
When he spent the night, it wasn't with Skwisgaar anymore. It was with Pickles. Sitting on the couch and watching that stupid pony show, eating out of cartons of ice cream using whatever utensils they could find. He knew that Skwisgaar was laying on his mattress not twenty feet away from him, but he tried hard to forget that fact. He laughed too loud, partied too hard, played the guitar too fast. And if Pickles noticed, he never said anything, just went along with Toki. Took him to music stores. Taught him the good brands for the shit. Went downtown and looked for novelty picks. The only thing Pickles failed at was something that fate insured he would failed at—he would stand by, silent, every time Skwisgaar came to Toki, beckoning him to his bedroom with a single crooked finger like Death himself, every time Toki would follow.
Days were long and time drizzled by like rain. Toki recalled standing with his feet in the tide: you felt like you were moving, back and forth, but in reality you were standing still, or maybe it was the opposite. Whatever it was, it made his head hurt, made him want to float off. There were two things that grounded him, one glowing with growth and the other dying with decay, and it reached a climax one particular day, one when Toki'd received the most brutal beating from his father in a while and though everything hurt he was playing his guitar with ferocious speed on Pickle's bed, and Skwisgaar entered the room and raised that bone of a finger—
Toki threw the guitar at Skwisgaar. Old and worn, the wood splintered and shattered when it hit him, a wave breaking over a slimy rock.
Pickles sat beside Toki, all frozen and wide-eyed and slack-jawed, suddenly sober.
Toki seethed, everything in his body on fire in so many different ways.
Skwisgaar stood there, dumbstruck, his finger still crooked, splinters sticking a crown to his hair.
Nothing changed. Toki's anger flared and faded. Pickles, sobered, picked up the pieces of the guitar. Skwisgaar returned to his room and locked his door, not that Toki would try to enter anyway. When Nathan and Murderface asked, Pickles lied for Toki. The routine Toki had come to expect and come to loathe, the corner store and the cigarettes and the condoms and the car, ceased.
"It's okay, Toki," Pickles was saying while Toki was still white-hot and blind on that bed, "we'll buy you a new one, you know. An electric one. It was getting to be about that time, wasn't it?"
The next time Toki saw Skwisgaar was a few weeks later, and he was surprised Skwisgaar was even alive. Toki was sitting at the table in the kitchen, polishing his new guitar; Skwisgaar was getting a spoon. Toki saw a scar on Skwisgaar's shoulder, something new, and he knew it was from that day, and Toki cried, Lord did he cry, long and hard over this beautiful guitar. Skwisgaar, either too high to notice or not caring, retreated back to his room.