When they finish their first proper song as a band Nathan and Pickles decide to throw a party. Their apartment is too small and too specific, soundproof walls and expensive equipment everywhere that they can't risk getting puke or booze or any combination thereof on, so they decide to utilize Nathan's parents' house as they live but a town and an interstate away. They invite everybody they know, which amounts to an impressive amount of people between the five of them, and plaster advertisements on telephone phones and blank brick walls. They're going to perform, too, later on the night, spread their name around. Nathan, Pickles, Murderface and Skwisgaar are all amped about the party, about the opportunity to play to such a large group of people and just generally have a good time, celebrate. They've been talking about it for weeks, the topic dominating every discussion, ever since they put the finishing touches on that first song.
Toki is not excited.
Well, it's not that he's not excited. He's plenty excited. He's joined in on the discussion, he's offered his opinions even if they go unnoticed. He's gotten new clothes, shedding the fanny pack and ripped up pants for hand-me-down jeans from Pickles that fit surprisingly well and a collection of black or blue hoodies from a thrift store. Also from the thrift store he has his most prized possession next to his guitar: a pair of beat-up, low-top black Converse, on which he has applied hefty amounts of Sharpie to, writing Norwegian curses and drawing anarchy symbols up and down the soles and on the toe. Skwisgaar scoffs at him as Toki sits on the edge of their shared bed, not so much a bed as much as a lumpy mattress on the floor covered in gray sheets and two separate raggedy quilts, lacing his shoes up. Skwisgaar is in front of the mirror, primping as much as a girl would, but he gets riled up if Toki mentions that so Toki has learned not to mention that.
"Fucks you, Skwisgaar," he says, instead. He mouths the steps to tying shoes that Pickles has taught him, because if he said them out loud Skwisgaar's teasing would become unbearable, and knots the last one.
"You's wish," Skwisgaar says, his standard rebuttal to Toki's standard insult. "You's finallies ready?"
Toki nods. He takes the beanie he normally wears and puts it on his head, tucks his hair out of the way. He and Skwisgaar exit their room, meet the others in the living room. All the furniture except for the couch has been moved out to make room for their instruments, the couch remaining solely because it's where Murderface sleeps.
"You guys ready?" The voice comes from Nathan, who has thrown a studded leather jacket over his regular outfit, and looks immensely more terrifying. Toki hadn't thought that was possible. Toki's nerves only amplify, feeling like frayed wires flaying around with too much electrical charge for their puny bodies.
"Ja, finally." Skwisgaar's being more of a huge, fat dick than usual, which is only worsening Toki's anxiety. Nathan nods and the five of them, Pickles and Murderface flanking Nathan, walk out of their apartment and towards the van.
The drive isn't quick, Saturday night traffic slowing them down, and Nathan insists on playing their first recording over and over again in the car, commenting on it. He gives Toki ample compliments about his guitar skills and says that he's glad it took them so many tries because this take is seriously fuckin' perfect, but Toki feels like that's shallow praise, meant to avoid hurting his feelings. Toki's only seventeen, and the rest of the band are at least in their early twenties. Toki can't even legally drink, a fact they love to hold over his head as they unwind with beer after long recording sessions, going to hand Toki one and then snapping their hands back as if they've just remembered he's too young. Toki's gone to Pickles to beg some from him, but Pickles is strangely adamant against underage drinking. He has no problem in sharing a blunt with Toki, Toki laying on the floor of Pickles's room and counting the constellations he's drawn with surprising accuracy on the ceiling. Toki feels Pickles to be his true ally, even though he's been lumped with Skwisgaar on account of ethnicity, language and being the closest in age. Murderface and Nathan both keep to themselves, both intimidate Toki, and Skwisgaar is just, well, a dick.
Skwisgaar, sitting so close beside him their thighs are digging into each other, is agreeing with Nathan's commentary and expressing his glee at how great his guitar sounds. He avoids mentioning Toki's altogether, which says more than if he outright criticized it, and Toki's not feeling as excited as he is negative and withdrawn. They arrive at Nathan's parents' house an hour before everybody else is supposed to show up to set up, but there's nothing for Toki to do, and instead he lounges on their nice couch and watches television. It helps him with his English, and he likes the animated shows, the ones with bright colors and simple plot lines that don't require a deep understanding of culture or grammar to enjoy. Skwisgaar manages sly commentary on that as he walks through the living room with a keg in his arms, and Toki throws a throw pillow at his head, sick of him.
When people start to trickle in Toki hurries and turns the television off. He figures he can drink here, out from the watchful eye of the band, and waits until there's so many people packed in the house that the air is humid and heavy like a cloud at eyelevel before sneaking off into the kitchen. He gets himself a red plastic cup full of something he can't identify, and is just about to bring it to his lips when Skwisgaar materializes in the kitchen as if summoned by Toki's debauchery, his eyes going wide.
"Tokis!" he says, pushing through people and taking the cup away. There's scorn, surprise, sarcasm, all in his voice, and Toki narrows his eyes. Fuck. "What has we tolds you abouts drinking? Ams not allowed, shames on you, you babies."
Toki can't take it, his nerves are so fried he feels them crawling up his throat and he can't shake off this negativity buzzing inside of his head, so he reaches up and slaps Skwisgaar across the face. "Fucks you!" he says, and he sounds sloppy, emotional, slapping him like a girl. The people in the kitchen are looking at them. "Fucks you for always callin's me a babies and bein's mean to me for no good reasons! I wants to admires you and you's guitar skill and you's coolness, but you's just a dick." Somewhere off to the side, a female voice shouts agreement, adding something in about how he thinks he's so great at sex but really isn't.
"Tokis," Skwisgaar says, and it's softer this time, almost hurt. He goes to rub at the spot on his cheek where a red handprint is starting to form, dropping the cup in the process. Clear liquid spills across the tiled floor, getting to Toki's Converse, and that's the last fucking straw, he's running out of the room and up the stairs to find solace.
He doesn't find solace. The first door he opens houses a couple in the process of having sex in a position that Toki didn't know was humanly possible. The second one is the door to the bathroom, and Toki can't hide out there. The third contains another group of people that Toki thinks he recognizes as Pickles's friends, and they're doing drugs, lines of powder and syringes and half-empty pill bottles scattered about. A seedy kid with cornrows lifts a hand, some sort of pill in his palm, and Toki accepts, because there's tears stinging in his eyes and he just really doesn't want to be sober.
One pill, then two pills, then three pills, then Toki has swallowed a colorful cocktail of things that make him feel really, really good. The humid, hot cloud of air has gravitated downwards, turned cool, and exists just underneath the soles of his feet, carrying him. He's shed his hoodie, somewhere, he's not quite sure, and can't stop touching the fabric of his undershirt. He's on the stairs, but he doesn't remember how he got there, also he's pretty sure he tongue kissed somebody in the room because there's the taste of bubblegum in his mouth but he can't remember who that was, either. The music is very, very loud downstairs, and there's a lot of people dancing in close contact with each other, strobe lights flashing, black and white and red and a color Toki is pretty sure doesn't actually exist. He slots himself between them, gyrates his hips and arms experimentally, finds that he likes it. Finds that he feels really fucking good.
Somehow he ends up in the spotlight, possessed by an otherworldly force, and everything feels so, so good, so good, amazing. He's swallowed the snakelike nerves in his throat, and they're coiled in his stomach, sleeping peacefully. The negative noise in his head has been placed by soft, cloudlike cotton, candy cotton in pastel colors that he's seen on television and has been bugging everybody to buy for him.. He's closed his eyes, but he can still see, and the music has dripped into his veins as if somebody had put an IV in his arm. He's disrupted by hands on his shoulder, a shouting voice he can't recognize, and at first he thinks he's gone blind until he remembers to open his eyes.
Skwisgaar.
That fucker.
Toki cries, then. "Lets me go! Lets me has fun!" He's sobbing, he's pathetic, he's a little kid hovering under his father's whip, fuck, fuck, fuck—
"We has to fuckingks play, Tokis, what ams you even on?" Skwisgaar slaps his face in an attempt to wake him up but Toki just flows with his hand, lolling. "Tokis? Seriouslies, Tokis, what de fucks."
"Fucks you," Toki says, and he's still sobbing, his face red and blotchy and salt and bubblegum in his mouth. Something else, too, something putrid. The snakes have woken up, slithering up his esophagus, poking into the roof of his mouth. He wants to throw them up, if that'd get rid of them. "Just lets Tokis party and has fun for once."
"Dere amns't times for party and fun, Tokis, we has to work our asses off and gets a label and shit and—fucks, Toki, fucks." Toki has fallen into Skwisgaar's arms. He's also blacked out.
When he comes to he's in a hospital, which might be the biggest overreaction Toki has ever seen. He didn't take that many pills, and there was nothing else in his system, except apparently he'd drank something at some point and his definition of "a small amount of pills" is seriously off. It must've happened while he was dancing, thinking he was in space or something, when in reality he was grounded, popping pills and slamming drinks and all those things he's been itching to do. He has no memories of this, but a doctor is rattling off the facts to him. The man looks at Toki, and there's something like pity in his face, before he flips the paper on his clipboard and walks out of the room. Toki rubs at his temples,
"What the fuck, Toki." Pickles, hovering by his bedside.
"We can't take you anywhere," Nathan says, a feeble attempt at a joke. Pickles glares at him.
"You're only seventeen, this is your first time, and you decide to overdose? Come on, kid, you're ninety pounds sopping wet."
Toki doesn't want to respond. He wants to die. "I wants to die."
"No, you doesn't. You's de best rhythm guitarist we's got." Skwisgaar steps out from the doorway, which the doctor had left opened,, his arms crossed, and Toki gets a groggy flashback of him doing something similar when he auditioned, coming off that makeshift throne. That asshole. He's happy to see that none of the animosity has faded, at least. "Cans you leaves us alone for a seconds, Nathan, Pickle?"
"Yeah, we should go check on Murderface," Nathan grumbles, and they march out.
"What happened to Murderface?" Toki asks, popping an eyebrow. The action alone leaves him exhausted.
"Somethingks about an electricals socks and a knife, I doesn't know, I was too busy with yous. Toki—dere's a reason we doesn't let you de de drinks and de drugs." Skwisgaar is at his bedside, now, and he takes one of Toki's hand in both of his like it's something they've done thousands of times. Toki doesn't have the energy to fight back, and finds he kind of likes it, so what the absolute fuck ever. "We has to be focuseds, okays? Pickle, he ams been in dis industry a long times, he gets de free pass. Murderface and Nathan ams both more matures and dey ams much biggers dan you. Doesn't worries about me. But you's—you's small, and you's young, and you needs to focus on de music, not de parties."
Toki turns his head to the side.
"Why'ds you does it, Toki? Why'ds you takes de pills?"
"You's a dick," is his immediate answer.
"Comes on."
Toki turns his head back, and Skwisgaar's face is earnest, soft, relaxed. Toki can see, now, the difference between them, the experience and years Skwisgaar has on Toki. This is the man he shares his bed with every night in a wholly platonic manner, who he sleeps with his back pressed up against under both quilts when it's cold because their heating doesn't work. He spends most of his time with Skwisgaar, which can breed a certain amount of bickering, but there's some level of fondness, of understanding. Toki made quick friends with Pickles, but Toki made an ever quicker connection to Skwisgaar. It's more than a similar ethnicity, language, age. It's something deep, something in their souls. Something he doesn't quite understand yet.
He feels so fucking young.
"I's just…I was nervous," Toki admits. "I gets really nervous, you knows, a lots, actuallies, and I was sick of feelin's like de babies."
"You ams de babies," Skwisgaar says. It's an endearment. He brushes a piece of hair from Toki's face. Toki pretends it doesn't affect him. "It ams okay, doe. All in goods time, Toki. All in goods time." Then he bends down, kisses Toki on the cheek.
It feels more ethereal than anything Toki had experienced last night, and when Skwisgaar comes back up he looks scared as hell, and he flees.
Because not every romance starts like a fairy tale. Some start weird, in the wake of an overdose and cruel words, in harsh hospital lighting, one of them too tired for their age, both of them scared as fuck and uncertain. Some will take years upon years to culminate. Some have been going on since the dawn of time, slowly rolling to the inevitable, stitching the bond between two men that are meant to be gods from the biggest ball of red string in the galaxy. It's not a climax, it's a first word on the page, it's a beginning. A start, in this twilight zone between nothing and fame. On the precipice of something great.