A/N: This is long overdue and the shortest chapter yet and I really don't like it and just ahhhh I'm so sorry guys! Real life is really stressful and yeah. I have no idea when I'll update next, sorry! Anyawy. This chapter is the one where it gets gay! Not too gay, mind you, so don't get excited. Yet.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf, that motherfucker, had invaded Toki's thoughts and would not leave. When Toki awoke on Sunday, drooling with his face pressed into the carpet despite how he'd fallen asleep on his back, the first thing to enter his mind was a flash of fine hair, a quick riff. In his sleepy state he tried to track the illusive thoughts down but he failed as they fled his mind when he rose from the floor. He attempted to identify the location of the pain flaming up inside his body but could not, deciding that his whole being hurt. It was not so much that he had a hangover (for he did not) but that he had exerted his body beyond its standard level last night in the mosh pit and chased that down with sleeping on the floor, whose plush carpeting deceived: the boards beneath were rough. Toki was the first one awake, his friends scattered around in the relatively same positions he had seen them in before he fell asleep the night before. The room smelled a little bit, like bad breath and body odor, and Toki scrunched up his nose, realizing with shame that a lot of the smell fumed off his own skin—he had not showered since moshing, after all.
He took his time lifting his body from the ground. He felt sticky all over and he wanted to take a shower, but he didn't like doing so at other people's houses. He would have to wait until Nathan, a notoriously heavy and long sleeper, roused before being able to go home, too. He settled for dragging his feet all the way to the upstairs bathroom and rinsing his face in the sink. Raising his head, he stared at himself in the mirror: the water had made his face red and his hair was a mess, tousled and knotted in the back where he'd slept on it. With the knowledge that combing it would only make it worse at this point he exited the bathroom. His clothes from last night, the cargo shorts and t-shirt, felt gross against his skin. He was not a hygiene enthusiast by any means but he had moshed his ass off last night and the aftermath was not attractive in the least.
He went downstairs and was not surprised to see that Nathan's parents had not woken up yet, either; it was only seven thirty in the morning, according to the digital clock on the stove in the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and retrieved a jug of milk, poured himself a glass after sniffing for freshness, and took a banana from the produce basket on the counter. He sat down at the kitchen table and peeled the banana, eating it before he drank his milk. The light in the kitchen was off but morning rays poured through the windows, creating a bluish effect. Toki stared at the table while he had his breakfast, wishing vaguely that he wasn't alone while he did so but not minding as much as usual. It was there at the Explosions' kitchen table that Skwisgaar came to mind a second time. With his mouth pressed to the rim of the glass of milk the memory of Skwisgaar's sneering face jumped out at him—that curl of the lips, the one eyebrow raised—Toki sputtered on his milk and set the glass down on the table. "What de fucks," he muttered, too distracted by the face in his mind, hanging just behind his eyes, that would not get out to acknowledge what he had just said.
He finished his breakfast and rinsed his glass in the sink before realizing that he had nothing to do. He didn't want to wake anybody in the house up, so he settled on watching television in the basement with the volume down low. He didn't get to watch television often and possessed next to no knowledge about the shows currently airing, so he spent most of the time channel surfing for something he liked. He eventually found a Lifetime movie to watch and curled up on the couch, hugging a pillow with the lower half of his face pressed into it, his knees bent up. The movie was about a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties that worked at a bakery and fell in love with a stock broker of a similar age. The guy always ordered two cinnamon rolls at the woman's bakery; that's how they met. The movie made a big deal about the revelation that the man didn't even like cinnamon rolls, but went to his deceased wife's grave every morning before work and ate breakfast "with" her, since her favorite food had been cinnamon rolls, and that he always left one atop her grave. Toki thought it was sort of lame, but he had to admit that he cried, tears rolling down his cheek as he sniffed along with the heroine. He felt sort of empty when it was over.
He had heard movement upstairs halfway through the movie but had been too engrossed to see who it was but now minus the movie, curiosity sparked inside of him. He shut the television off after the credits began to roll and peeled his body apart, feeling a little drained from the emotional toll the movie had wrecked on him; he was light and his limbs didn't quite work right. The dizzying remainders of Skwisgaar, settled and sleeping in his brain, did not help him in the least. He pulled himself up the basement stairs and into the hallway, where he found Murderface leaning against a wall with his phone out, baring his teeth at the screen.
Murderface snapped his phone shut and threw it into his pocket when he saw Toki, his eyes going wide. Murderface shook his head, blinked a couple time, smiled, and rubbed the palm of his hands against his legs. Toki looked at Murderface with his head tilted, but didn't speak about his strange behavior. Instead he said, "Hello, Moidaface." He gripped the railing of the stairs to the basement, almost as if to ground himself, get himself into the conversation.
"What'd you call me?" Murderface said, sounding gruffer than usual. He had lost the leather jacket from the night before and his hair had twisted itself around his head, but something in the way he was looking at Toki was genuinely frightening.
"Murderface," Toki said. He flicked his head, partly to get a piece of hair out of his face and partly out of confusion with Murderface.
"Okay," Murderface said. "I'm schure that'sch what I heard. Anyway. Nathan and Picklesch are schtill schleeping, damn them. I was juscht about to come down to the baschement. What were you doing down there, jackin' off?"
"Watching television," Toki said. They were still standing in the hallway; Murderface had stepped away from the wall a little bit. The encounter had a surreal feeling to it, like Toki wasn't fully in the conversation but instead watching it from far away with minimal control over what he said and did. The whole day had that sort of feeling, actually, and Toki was beginning to feel off. The laughter of another boy hung behind his ears and a certain face behind his own, there but not quite, everything blurred and blurring even harder when he tried to get a grasp on it. The weight in his chest, the obstruction in his mind, the sensations spreading through his body with his bloodstream—yes, he chalked it up to Skwisgaar Skwigelf. He could not stop thinking about him and he did not know why and this had created a blockade in his brain. He couldn't focus on the current moment, but was stuck in the past, in the future. He squeezed the knob on top of the stair railing heard.
"Anything good on?" Murderface asked, attempting to arrange himself into a casual position and failing. He fidgeted, stuck his hands in his pockets and pulled them out, shifted his weight around, and tried leaning on the wall at one point. Toki noticed Murderface's peculiar behavior, if that was what Murderface was looking for, but Toki couldn't bring himself to care; he had issues of his own at the moment. Like the way he was about to break the railing.
"No, not really," Toki said, with apprehension. He had no idea what he was saying. He was looking down the hallway, half expecting the rest of his friends to show up and take him home where he could do his chores and hinder his thought process and not feel so strange. But they did not, and Toki was left to somehow carry on this conversation, and he was doing about as good of a job at it as Murderface was at appearing casual.
"Well," Murderface said, "guessch I gotta go find schomething, then." He pushed past Toki and started lumbering down the stairs, considerably more loudly than Toki had done previously. Toki thought that perhaps he should follow Murderface and that that was what the situation warranted, but he couldn't make his body do that. He felt sleepy again, unable to concentrate on life and slow, so he made his way to the family room in the back of the house. The family room had another television and another couch in it, but it was the only television without nine-hundred channels and a recording device, so nobody ever came back here. The room was secluded, hidden behind a set of offices and a bathroom, so Toki could sneak a few more hours of sleep without interruption. Ceiling-to-floor south-facing windows pushed light into the room, but Toki didn't mind. He settled on the couch with a scratchy blanket; this room was the coldest in the house, even with the windows. He wrapped his arm around a small pillow and fell asleep, the ghost of a man perched in the corner of his brain, a face and a voice and a laugh dulled behind his senses.
In comparison to earlier in the morning, Toki woke up for the second time not by himself, but by a hand shaking his shoulder. Toki opened his eyes and rolled over to reveal Pickles holding a tray with a plate of French toast and a steaming coffee mug, wearing a smile. He ruffled Toki's hair and placed the tray on Toki's chest before sitting down on the floor beside the couch, the top of his head near Toki's torso. Toki, too tired to process everything, struggled to keep his eyes open as Pickles began to speak.
"Rough night last night, huh?" Pickles said. "Hand me a piece of French toast."
"I guess," Toki said as he passed a piece of French toast to Pickles. He picked a piece up for himself and began to chew; it wasn't homemade, just microwaved, but he loved it all the same. "Hva er klokka—I mean, um, what time is it?"
"It's about half past one. Nathan's still asleep," Pickles said through a mouthful of French toast, "and Murderface fell asleep too downstairs, we were watchin' some wrestlin' thing and he just starts snoring." Pickles paused, like he was thinking about saying some else, but then shook his head and continued talking. "I got bored. I'm sorry if I woke you up too bad." He twisted around and grinned at Toki, his eyes crinkling, genuine.
"No, no it's not a problem," Toki said. He swallowed his French toast and pushed the tray down his body. He sat up and moved backwards to rest his back against the arm of the couch, scratchy blanket and French toast tray resting in his lap. He drank some coffee and asked, "Really, Pickle, what'd you think of Fuckface Academy?"
"I thought they sucked," Pickles said, nodding. "But the lead guitarist was fantastic. A douchebag, yeah, but fantastic." He turned his head back around and reached his hand back for more French toast.
Toki closed his eyes. He had sought Pickles's opinion of Skwisgaar and was not surprised by the result. He fought to stifle a sigh, in addition to the memory of Skwisgaar looking at him in that stupid goddamn dick way Skwisgaar looked at him. "'Kay," he said as he plopped another piece of breakfast in Pickles's palm. He no longer felt like discussing Fuckface Academy and replaced words from his mouth with French toast on his tongue; Pickles did the same. When the French toast was gone Toki set the tray on the floor and swung his legs over the side of the couch to make room for Pickles. They shared the scratchy blanket and watched terrible reality shows—Pickles had a thing for trashy whores duking it out, his favorite being any variation on the Bad Girls Club—until Nathan materialized in the doorway, wordlessly beckoning them with his car keys.
Nathan dropped Murderface off first at his house in the redneck part of town, barely above a trailer surrounded by similar structures and a weedy, unkempt yard. Toki's house was next on the route and he left the truck much like he left the truck every time he hung out with his friends: with a heavy sadness nestled in his chest, threatening to colonize his entire being. He had his Sunday chores to look forward to and the show at the festival in conjunction Halloween, both the next weekend, but not much in between. He didn't bother changing his clothes today, just pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the laundry, before beginning his chores.
His muscles ached by the time he sat down for dinner; lifting his fork to his mouth took a concentrated amount of effort. He had fended off thoughts of Skwisgaar and Fuckface Academy and fun and everything good in the world with the mind-numbing physicality of the work, but in the silence at dinner he began to stew. The inability to focus from the morning came back full force. He attempted to drink the salad dressing and garnered looks from his parents and this bought him back some, but not fully. He swirled lettuce on his plate and thought about the concert, about the band, about sitting in a circle with his friends and Skwisgaar afterwards, about the way Skwisgaar had invited him to the festival, only him. It was a thing to boast about, being personally invited out by the great up-and-coming guitarist of the twenty-first century. If Skwisgaar never improved past the way he had played last night than he'd be one of the best guitarists to ever walk the earth; if he managed to somehow exceed the skill he demonstrated, he could easily be the best, hands down. For some reason Toki felt proud of this; he wanted to show Skwisgaar off. He had no reason to feel this way, since he wasn't actually in possession (in any sense of the word) of Skwisgaar, but sometimes Toki felt strange things like that.
Throughout the remainder of the day all he could think of was Skwisgaar. In the shower he mulled over their conversation, narrowing in on specific things Skwisgaar had said. The condescending way he said "ja" and the way it stood in contrast with his utterly deplorable English made Toki smile. The fact that he'd done something as—well, as fucking cool as just buying plane tickets and ending up in a stupid town in Florida stunned Toki. Not to mention that he was another born-and-raised Scandinavian and not some guy who claimed to be an eighth Norwegian on his mother's side; he was an actual brother to Toki's mother tongue. Toki recalled in the shower, his fingers in his hair (where'd they been for five minutes as he lost himself in thought), the way Skwisgaar had leaned forward when he invited Toki to the show, or leaned into the conversation in general. Skwisgaar had a way of filling the air with his presence; like Toki would literally inhale him and Skwisgaar would enter his bloodstream, travelling through his body with every beat of Toki's heart. It was suffocating, but in the most pleasant of ways, being somewhere with Skwisgaar. Toki was sort of hard by the time he exited the shower but he chose to ignore that. He toweled off in the steam of the bathroom and walked back to his room naked, feeling a little daring, a little buzzed.
Time chugged on in a completely normal fashion, mind-blowingly enough. Monday was effortless and boring and Toki found himself becoming gradually aware that his friends kept making the same jokes, that he kept doing roughly the same work in his classes, that everything felt the same. He felt flighty and off, his brain in another physical location than his body, his vision tinged by memories. He took up the habit of staring without seeing, eyes unfocused, as he gave great thought to Saturday, Skwisgaar, and his situation.
He mulled his situation over in Chemistry, nearly blowing Rockzo and him up when he added the wrong chemical to a mixture they'd been working on. He mulled it over in English, responding half a minute later after Murderface would speak to him while simultaneously failing to take notes on the differences between allegories and allusions. He mulled it over in 3D Art, fucking up the new sculpture they were supposed to be starting on five times. He mulled it over in Algebra II, staring at the back of Pickles's head as formulas slid through his ears. He mulled it over at lunch, staring into the depths of the cafeteria and ignoring the conversation at the table. He mulled it over in German, failing a test when he slipped into Norwegian halfway through. He mulled it over in World History, though he snapped into attention when the teacher started talking about Scandinavia, just for his thoughts to return to the weekend. He mulled it over in Home Ec and burned the brownies he was supposed to be making. He nearly fell down the stairs walking out, and then tripped up into Nathan's truck, his face slamming into the seat. His friends laughed their asses off, and Toki chuckled but faltered fast.
He'd felt this way before, only once, as a young boy in Norway. There had been a girl who attended his father's church, older and taller but petite for her age, with the most perfect set of blonde ringlets. She'd had a pretty mouth, naturally red bow shaped lips, and Toki would stare at her while she sang. He'd been nine, she fourteen, and he had been in love, mesmerized, transfixed by her presence. They had never spoken and the feelings had never escaped the boyish childhood crush—but now they had returned, in the presence of Skwisgaar, another boy. He recognized the flutter in his innards just from thinking about something the person said or did. He remembered a similar overanalysis of everything single move (but the goddamn eyebrow had to mean something.) He recalled the devastating desire to even be near the person again, coupled with an inane fear of fucking up. And this, this was what he surmised from his mulling.
Toki, of course, knew about the concept of homosexuality. He knew the sinful side well—his father, a wholly religious man, actively advocated against it. His father had never lectured him against it personally, but his father never lectured him against anything, so Toki was left to make up his own opinions since he certainly didn't buy the church's Adam and Eve traditional marriage man shall not lay with other man bullshit. Toki considered himself a generally open-minded person and tried to accept everybody the way they were, but he hadn't known a gay person until—until, well, now, if he was about to count himself. Which he wasn't. He didn't know; it didn't matter, since Skwisgaar was unlikely to return these affections, but all Toki could think about throughout the day was perhaps that he was, indeed, forming some sort of romantic feelings for Skwisgaar Skwigelf, another male. The idea consumed him, started in his chest and blossomed outwards, wrapped around him and bogged him down. He was slow in his Monday chores, receiving a whip across the back for the first time in a long time.
That night Toki lay in bed at the crisp time of eight o'clock, on his stomach, his back stinging from the recent lashing. Eyes drooping and shifting in and out of consciousness only to be jerked back from a pain in his back, he thought more of his situation. He could not hide nor repress himself; that would be a terrible way to go about living. He simply had to tell another person of his predicament, receive advice. He was afraid of going to the festival on Saturday and making a fool of himself, and he would also like to stop feeling this way about Skwisgaar. He figured out that it was not about him being gay, or wanting dick, or anything stupid like that—it was that Skwisgaar was probably not gay and did not want dick. Or maybe he was. Maybe he was a fuck-anything-that-moves type of person, not just a lecherous straight guy—and these thoughts were precisely why Toki needed to talk to somebody else. He was going a little insane, leaping from hey, what a cool guy to if only Florida would legalize gay marriage and maybe also marijuana, and this was just from two days of being locked up with his own thoughts.
Thus on Tuesday morning he tapped Pickle on the shoulder in Chemistry. Pickles turned around, eyes fully open and lacking redness (indicating that he didn't wake and bake that morning, which Toki was glad for) and titled his head. "What?" He asked, the flat whine of his voice almost causing Toki to wince. It was too early in the morning for that whiny Wisconsin grate.
"I need to speak with you," Toki said. He looked to his side; Rockzo had not yet appeared that morning, the class was half-full and Nathan was sleeping on his arms. "Soon," he added, "but not here."
"Okay," Pickles said, screwing up his face at Toki and drawing out the word. He turned back around and dropped his head to his own arms, joining Nathan. Toki watched Pickles's foot slowly move closer to Nathan's under the table until Rockzo filled the seat next to Toki with his obscene existence and his Tuesday officially began.
They were doing yet another lab today, Mr. Marshall being a fan of anything that got him out of teaching, one that required clean-up at the sinks. Rockzo was extremely messy and careless in his labs, leaving Toki to fix everything and clean up while Rockzo flitted away to talk to the girl with the periwinkle puffballs and her gaggle of similarly clownish friends. Nathan didn't do shit when they were in a lab either, just informed Pickles to "keep the crap away" from him and dropped his head back down to his arms. On any other day Toki would've been annoyed; today, he was thanking the gods. Toki and Pickles finished their data collection at roughly the same time and met up at the sinks, Pickles scrubbing the tray with a dreadlock in his face and eyebrows furrowed, Toki waiting behind him. Toki looked over Pickles's shoulder at the task he was doing to occupy his eyes, though his mind was elsewhere, as was the trend in the week.
"What was it that you needed to talk to me about?" Pickles asked. The materials they had been working with today were gooey and sticky and Pickles was really putting all of his weight into the scrubbing effort, his body heaving. He let out small grunts at particularly tough patches. Toki normally would've been shaking with laughter, but it wasn't a normal week.
"What's it called when you have more-than-friends feelings for other people?" Toki asked. His voice raised a few octaves in pitch and he looked away from Pickles, heart stammering, face growing hot. "Liking?" He hadn't actually forgotten the terminology, but he liked it when he could use his being foreign excuse to get out of or ease into difficult situations. He was considering playing that particular card to his German teacher and retaking the test he'd failed, since it really bogged his grade down.
"I 'spose so," Pickles said, grunting again. He jumped a bit, force actually lifting his feet from the ground. Toki couldn't help but smirk. "Goddamn, what is this stuff made of?"
"That's what we're supposed to be finding out, I think. Um, anyway, Pickle, I think I—like somebody." Toki immediately rammed his chin into his chest and shut his eyes, fists curling. Something in his body lunged forward, kind of like he was about to throw up but without the actual throwing up part.
Pickles stopped trying to scrub the mystery substance from the tray, dropping it into the sink with a loud, tinny ringing noise. He sent a sheepish smile off in the direction of the teacher and then turned to Toki, who had now cracked his eyes open and was looking in Pickles's direction. Pickles eyes were wide, a grin growing on his lips. "What's that I heard? You actually like somebody? Who is she?" Pickles clapped a hand on Toki's back and jumped, this time on his accord.
"Um—" Toki began, but it appeared that Pickles was not yet finished talking. Toki looked down at the floor, wincing with pain as Pickles twisted his hand on Toki's back. Pickles's palm and Toki's wound from his most recent lashing met up at the same place near his shoulder blade, and every time Pickles caused more friction, Toki would try not to cry. He'd almost forgotten the severity of a lashing gash.
"Is it Emmy?" Pickles asked, rubbing his hand against Toki's back once more. Toki fought every urge of crying and crying out he had, keeping his body still. "It's Emmy, isn't it?" Pickles jumped again and looked off in the direction of Emmy. Toki did as well, as he'd actually forgotten who Emmy was.
Emmy was the girl with the periwinkle puffballs, though today she was wearing her hair down and straightened. She was talking to Rockzo, leaning on her lab table while her lab partner actually did what they were supposed to. Emmy too was decked in clown clothes, platform boots and some sort of rainbow lolita skirt monstrosity that must've cost forty dollars at the local Hot Topic with a shirt that exposed her naval in her relaxed position, and Toki twitched. He could not figure out why Pickles would think he liked Emmy. He'd maybe spoken to her once, asking for his pencil back when it had managed to catapult near her desk in one of his classes during ninth grade. It had been an awkward and embarrassing experience for both parties involved, he felt. Even with his limited knowledge of anything romantic, Toki could see that they would clearly not make a good couple. Emmy sort of frightened him.
"Ah, man." Pickles still hadn't shut up. "This is great." His smile split in his face evenly in two, his eyebrows manically curved, piercings catching the fluorescent lights. In that moment, Pickles sort of frightened him too.
Toki swallowed the lump in his throat and started to form a plan for directing Pickles away from the ridiculous Emmy thing, and more towards the correct, albeit still slightly ridiculous, Skwisgaar thing. "Why would you think I like her?" Toki asked, tilting his head.
He meant it incredulously and innocently, the wording designed to tell Pickles that he was wrong without actually telling Pickles that he was wrong, but Pickles didn't interpret it like that. "You're always staring at her," he said, nodding his head furiously. "I was just talkin' to Nathan about this, too," he continued, flicking a dread over his shoulder and crossing his arms. He bobbed his head once more, fierce and swift, his final judgment made.
"Well—" Toki began to speak with the intention of correcting Pickles, but once more it seemed that Pickles himself was not done speaking. Toki sighed deep as Pickles's voice crashed into his eardrums.
"Now I just gotta hook you two lovebirds up," Pickles said, grinning in a way that exposed his canines and made him much more threatening. "She's totally gonna fuck you, dood."
Pickles's lechery was actually starting to make Toki feel a little sick to his stomach. He sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. Pickles seriously wasn't getting this. "You're really not getting it," Toki said,
"Do you not wanna fuck her?" Pickles asked, tilting his head and making a face at Toki like Toki had denied the sky was blue. "That's a little gay, dood." He took his hand from Toki's back, trying to be casual about it.
Toki sighed for the third time, unable to think of something to say next. He had lost all motivation to confess about his sexuality crisis re: Skwisgaar Skwigelf somewhere after Pickles suggested that Toki liked Emmy, and felt exhausted from the train wreck of a conversation. He prickled with stress and discomfiture. Thus, he said "Pickle, I need to clean up my lab," gesturing to the equipment that he had placed on the counter adjacent to the sink before beginning his conversation.
Pickles nodded. "We'll talk more later," he said, and then he was off, walking with a spring in his step while he carried his lab equipment to its proper place in the classroom. Toki couldn't tell if Pickles was happy because of Toki, or if he was just being whimsical in general, but he enjoyed watching his friend behave vaguely like a leprechaun.
Toki had a far easier time scrubbing the tray clean of the sticky residue than Pickles, though whether that was due to his superior strength or domestic prowess he couldn't tell. He dawdled at the sink, relishing the three minutes of being alone and reluctant to thrust himself back into the world of overcomplicated social interactions. He had flipped the tray over three times, water gliding down the metal and bouncing colorful little specks of light off in the most delightful of fashion, and scrubbed the inside of the test tubes two times before a girl tapped him on the shoulder and informed him of her need to use the sink. Toki blustered and moved out of the way, face heating up with embarrassment, and hurried to deposit his immaculate lab equipment. He returned to his desk in welcome solitude—Pickles and Nathan were discussing something with their heads huddled together and turned away from Toki and Rockzo was still chatting Emmy up—and stared at the data he was supposed to be processing, weighing the pros and cons of actually processing it. For lack of anything better to do, he started to construct a clean and neat data table, plugging numbers into columns before plugging numbers into equations.
Pickles rotated his chair around to face Toki at an angle, arms folded on top of the back and head resting on top of them, face maniacal. "So Nathan and me were talkin'," he began, curling his lip, "and we thought we could probably get you a date with Emmy this weekend." Nathan grunted in agreement from the pile he had made himself into, head down on the desk.
Toki put aside his calculator and the paper he'd been doing his calculations on and looked at Pickles, fighting the urge to sigh yet again. This whole thing was exhausting. "Pickle, I—" He struggled for a few seconds to think of a way to end that sentence. Pickle, I…don't want to date Emmy? Pickle, I…really wish you would stop trying to hook me up with a girl I don't want? Pickle, I…don't even want a girl? Pickle, I…want to discuss something very different with you… Pickle, I…think I'm in love with the lead guitarist of Attending Fuckface Academy. Pickle, I…promised Skwisgaar I'd go to his show on Saturday. "Pickle, I promised Skwisgaar I'd go to his show on Saturday?"
"Skwisgaar? So we're on a first name basis now, eh? Okay, but that's Saturday night, what 'bout Friday evening?" Pickles looked towards Nathan as if for validation, but Nathan couldn't be less interested in the conversation. Pickles looked back at Toki, expecting a response.
"My parents wouldn't let me do that," Toki said, and for the first time in his life, he was grateful for his parents' ridiculous rules. He gave a pathetic little shrug of the shoulders and a wiggle of the eyebrows to indicate that he was just so saddened by this.
Pickles slapped his own arm. "Damn, forgot about 'em douchebags," Pickles said. "This is gonna be harder than I thought." He swiveled back around and pulled out his phone to text somebody; Toki felt relieved. He wondered if he was good at lying and if Pickles was good enough at reading people to pick up on Toki's blatantly obvious fabrications. He came to an uneasy decision that while he was shit at lying, Pickles wasn't that astute at social cues, and maybe—just maybe—he could scrape by until Saturday without having to interact with Emmy. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully.
Pickles continued to hound Toki for the next two days about dating Emmy. He collected a variety of information about her for Toki: she had a cup size of 32D, wore a size 4 in jeans, lost her virginity at the age of fourteen, and had a really good drug dealer. She loved guitarists, men with long hair and glam metal. Her favorite color was neon. Her ideal date had to involve ice-skating, a five-star restaurant and shooting heroin or dropping acid in a back alley somewhere, though she didn't care about the order. Toki figured Pickles must have connections in Rockzo's weirdo group of friends to be learning all of this, despite his proclaimed hatred for the clique. Clownish children began to stare at Toki in the hall and whisper among themselves as he passed, and he knew they were talking about his apparently colossal crush on Emmy, and there was nothing he could do to counteract the rumor. His face heated every time he heard his name mashed with Emmy's, a mantra of Toki and Emmy Toki and Emmy Toki and Emmy following him everywhere he went. It surprised him that Emmy had not yet approached him, and though he was glad of that fact, he lived his life in fear of the moment when she would.
The Emmy predicament had one upside, and one upside only—it made him appreciate Skwisgaar and his newfound sexuality much, much more. The idea of being in a relationship with that girl—and that was a guarantee, as Pickles had assured him again and again that Emmy was a slut and Toki was good-looking enough to make it work—scared him, even grossed him out on some levels. Toki didn't know much about females, the only ones he came into contact with on a regular basis being his mother, the women of his church, and Abigail. He didn't care to associate with them, though it was no fault of their own. Toki clicked better with guys. How he hadn't figured out that he would click better with another boy on a romantic level earlier befuddled him, because once that slid into place in his mind it just made so much sense. And the boy he wanted to click with shredded guitar, hailed from Sweden, and had taken an interest in him. If he removed Emmy from his life at the moment, his life at the moment was not all that bad. Every time Pickles confronted him with a new Emmy factoid—she smells like strawberries, she could fit her fist in her mouth—Toki would comfort himself with the fact that Fuckface Academy's second show was just days away, his chance to see Skwisgaar for the second time lurking at the end of the week.
He could not live in this blissful limbo for long, and thus his dilemma came to a head at lunch on Thursday. He sat with his assembled group at the table, Pickles eating a churro he'd bought from Taco Bell before school, Nathan on his second slice of leftover Papa John's he'd brought to school, and Murderface slurping back school spinach. Toki pecked at a granola bar—raisin again, what the fuck—and looked off in the distance, his mind occupied with forming a fantasy about the way Saturday would go down. He'd become accustomed to lunch periods fashioned similar to this, fantasizing about Skwisgaar intercut with Pickles's insinuations about Emmy.
"Hey, Toki," Murderface said, leaning over and prodding Toki in the shoulder with the end of his plastic spoon to get his attention. He interrupted Toki's version of Toki and Skwisgaar just as they were about to embark on one of those horse-drawn carriage rides they offered downtown. "Let'sch go to the schkate park after schscool today."
Pickles practically leaped out of his seat, his churro falling from his hands to the table. Toki grew annoyed; horse-drawn carriages were expensive. "I gahtta idea!" Pickles screeched, slamming his hands on the table. "Don't go to skate park."
"But I like the skate park," Toki said, setting his granola bar down on the table. He figured he was about to face a barrage of Emmy-related pestering from Pickles. "Why wouldn't I go with Murderface?"
"It didn't occur to me that he could go out with Emmy after school," Pickles said as he settled back into his seat, addressing Nathan, palms flat on the table with his elbows at an odd angle. Nathan did his best to look interested, but he seemed more preoccupied with making love to the third piece of pizza with his mouth. "I mean, yeah, it's kinda lame, but that's our Toki." Pickles grinned at Toki like he meant it affectionately. Toki did not find it affectionate.
"No way," Murderface said, and Toki found himself thankful of Murderface like he'd been thankful of most of his life's non-Emmy annoyances lately. "I'm meeting up with Dick today at the schkate park. If the copsch buscht usch, I need schomebody to take the blame."
Toki beamed with gratitude, hoping the drug deal proposal would placate Pickles. It did not; Pickles continued to talk and Toki's beaming lessened with every syllable. Nervousness began to creep into him—Pickles was serious. "Why the fuck do you have to meet up with Dick at the skate park? Don't you see the douchebag, like, every day?"
"Not every day," Murderface mumbled. He took a bite of his sandwich and turned away from Pickles and the rest of the table, crossing his arms over his chest and exhaling severely. "Never mind, then."
Pickles ignored Murderface and sent more enthusiasm Toki's way. "C'mon, dude! You could probably fit in ice-skating or some alley action, make her happy, she fucks you, or at least blows you, all is good. I could arrange it for today! Isn't this great, Nathan?" He nudged Nathan in the side. Nathan grunted, still more interested in the pizza.
"Pickle, can you come to the bathroom with me please?" Toki said, his beam completely dissipated and replaced by a horrid sense of nerves. He spoke with a grave expression, even pitch and tone and eyes locked onto Pickles's. He felt marginally proud of himself for being able to stifle the rising hysteria he'd been feeling all week and the nerves threatening to collapse in upon themselves long enough to ask the question.
"Uh, what? You need help pissin'?" Pickles asked, raising his eyebrows. Nathan chuckled, and Murderface let a hissy sliver of laughter through tightly closed lips, but Toki remained emotionless and expressionless. Inwardly he felt like the inside of a rainmaker as somebody rotated it up and down. Pickles's face fell, and then rearranged itself into a signpost of understanding. "Oh, okay," he said, getting up from the table. Toki did so also, leaning back and stretching. His back didn't hurt form the lashing anymore, the gash scabbed over and definitely going to scar.
They did not go to the bathroom, but just outside the cafeteria, where Toki could isolate Pickles and explain the situation to him. Toki was nervous, but he swallowed down a bundle of bile and jittery worries, looking around to ensure the hallway was clear. It was; Toki placed his hands on Pickles's shoulders. This was important, necessary, his life was hinging on it, and he earnestly believed this. He curled his fingers deep into Pickles's shoulders, and Pickles opened his mouth to say something, clearly befuddled.
"I don't like Emmy," Toki said, before Pickles could start talking and not leave room for Toki to voice his own opinion, which had been happening a lot recently. Toki's fingers twitched but he kept them on Pickles's shoulders, staring deep into his eyes, feeling like the fate of the world was resting on him making this conversation go flawlessly.
"What?" Pickles said, eyes widening, jaw dropping open. "You don't?"
"No," Toki said. He removed his hands from Pickles's shoulders slowly, resting his arms straight by his sides. He did not break eye contact with Pickles and retained the same serious expression. Pickles seemed to grow increasingly confused, opening and closing his mouth before deciding on what to say, and reaching into his front pocket like he wanted to get his cigarettes out. Instead he pulled his phone out and lit the screen up without looking at it before sliding it back into the depths of his jeans.
"But you told me you liked somebody," Pickles said. He did not seem hurt, merely baffled, and Toki did not feel bad. No, the sense of urgency gripped him as tightly as he had gripped Pickles, somebody else's hands coiling around his shoulders.
"Yes," Toki said, crossing his arms and nodding and his head. "I does—do. I do." He flushed at the grammar mistake, losing his composure for the first time and knowing that a dam had been broken. He knew Pickles didn't give a fuck about that, but Toki had been finding himself slipping into Norwegian or butchering English with more frequency lately. He hoped the others didn't notice it, though he figured they didn't give a fuck, either. Still, he remained rather self-conscious about his speech, and it triggered emotions to come crashing back down into his body. He was weak, incapable of defending them apart from the stony masquerade he'd constructed, and now without that, he felt at danger to melt and slip away before finishing this goddamn confession.
"Then who is it?" Pickles tilted his head and scrunched his face up at Toki. "If it's Abigail—"
"It's not Abigail." Toki shifted weight from one foot to another, crossed his arms and sighed—he'd been doing a lot of sighing recently, as well. Urgency and nerves and everything he'd been feeling over the weak was swelling inside of him, reaching a peak, and it was frightening and dangerous and if Toki was a nuclear power plant there was about to be a meltdown.
"Stop bullshitting me," Pickles said. "You've got me all curious, 'n' if it's not Emmy, and if it's not Abigail, then I really can't think of anybody else."
"It's Skwisgaar," Toki blurted out. Then he died, or at least he felt like he died, as his heart crawled out of his mouth and his stomach dropped to his feet. He inhaled sharply and bought his hand to cover his mouth, trying to force the words to go back inside and failing, as he reddened and began to regret his decision to tell Pickles immediately. He cast his head down in shame and squeezed his eyes shut. He saw fireworks on his eyelids, orange and yellow and blue and green explosions against the black backdrop, and kept squeezing his eyes shut harder to coax more into appearing. They calmed him, distracted him, and he was able to slip into a sort of enlightenment where he wasn't freaking out about what he had just done.
There was silence for a little while, but no sound of footsteps. Toki kept his eye shut and listened to Pickles's breathing. Pickles breathed normally, no signs of upset there. Toki dared to crack his eyes open after some awkward seconds that felt like decades and stared down at Pickles's feet, at his blue and black old school Adidas, treasured and worn, his pants rolling down onto the dirtied laces, basically an extension of Pickles's personality. Toki noticed, desperate to think about anything else, that Pickles had unusually small feet for a guy.
"You're gay," Pickles said, absent of any particular infliction. Toki looked up to establish eye contact with Pickles, though not in the strong, determined way of earlier but in a meek, concerned manner. Pickles's face was also void of expression, which worried Toki, until Pickles followed up his previous statement with "Why didn't you just tell me?"
"You're not mad?" Toki asked, squeaking the words out. He was utterly and thoroughly mortified, as the implications of what had just happened came raining down on him. He'd just come out for the first time, he'd confessed to actually having feelings for somebody, he'd dug himself a hole and kept going deeper and deeper into the pit of the earth. He wished he could just fall through the concrete and down into the pits of hell and escape this life already.
"Why would I be mad? I just wish you'd told me earlier, would've saved me a fuckload of work this week," Pickles said. He was relaxed, like he was having a conversation about the weather, and this relaxation rubbed off on Toki and eased him once more into a state of enlightenment, where he didn't have to worry. He was embarrassed, but the uncomfortable flood of emotions he'd felt was receding. He felt sort of peaceful, actually.
"Well, um, yeah," Toki said, and he laughed a little, nervous and jittery.
"I mean, it really just explains why you've been so obsessed with Fuckface Academy," Pickles mused, scratching at his chin. He'd been trying to grow in a goatee lately; it looked like shit, but nobody wanted to tell him. His face split into another one of those scary smiles. "It's 'cause you're obsessed with Skwisgaar."
Toki ignored those particular comments and instead said, "So, um, nothing's weird between us?" He rubbed and patted his thighs, void of things to with his hands, and felt weak with relief as opposed to nerves and negativity for once.
"Nah," Pickles said, waving his hand. "I don't really care 'bout what you wanna fuck, tell you the truth."
Toki exhaled in relief and enveloped Pickles in a hug. "Thanks, Pickle," he said, and he meant it, oh how he meant it. Pickles might have Nathan, and Toki was expected to have Murderface in a similar manner, but Murderface had Dick. Regardless, Toki loved his friends deeply, even if they didn't love him quite that deeply back, and on a normal day he was so incredibly thankful of them. Today, Toki was prepared to construct a temple for Pickles and immortalize him as the god of friendship and advice. He felt Pickles may object to that though, and settled for crushing Pickles inside his arms. Pickles was short but not completely skinny, just the slightest bit of chub to him that you couldn't even tell until you hugged him.
Pickles actually hugged back, patting Toki on the back, but he broke the embrace quickly. "No problem, dood. Don't know what you're thanking me for, but, uh, no problem." He pulled out his phone and checked the time. "We should probably be headin' back in now." he said.
"Just—don't tell the other guys. Not yet." Toki looked around to make sure the conversation wasn't overheard, but the hall outside the cafeteria was empty, the nearest person buying something at a vending machine out of earshot.
"'Kay," Pickles said, and they walked back to the cafeteria. The conversation made Toki nervous, and when Toki felt nervous he got very hot and uncomfortable, but he was no longer sweating or on the verge of collapsing. He was cleansed, his problems evaporating like the sweat on his back, and he began to grow optimistic about the future. He took his seat opposite Nathan, Pickles and Murderface, picked up his granola bar and resumed eating it, though he didn't taste it, not really. Euphoria festered inside the pit of his stomach, started to bubble up, and warmed his insides in a pleasant way. He let himself believe that everything was going to be okay, that Skwisgaar was going to love him back, that the other guys would accept that, and that he was going to reach a nirvana of teenage hood that he had previously thought impossible. He let himself believe, if only for this lunch period, that his life was beginning to look up.
"What took you guysch scho long in the bathroom?" Murderface asked, having spun his body back around into the conversation, mood swing over.
"Long line," Pickles said, waving his hand like he'd done to Toki earlier. Pickles turned towards Nathan. "Did y'hear the new Cymoid Sample song? So, so brutal." They began their own conversation, independent of all else, and Toki didn't even feel envious.
Instead, Toki looked at Murderface and said, "Sure, I'll go to the skate park with you."
"Good, 'causche Dick schaid he hasch schome fantaschtic jolly green." Murderface ate the last of his food and pushed the tray away, reclining as far back as the backless chair would allow. He started playing with his unused plastic knife until it bended into an unusable form and snapped.
"Jolly green?" Toki asked. He thought it might be weed, but he'd never heard the term before.
"Kusch. Atschitschi. Dagga. Mary Jew Anna." Murderface continued to shell out obscure names for marijuana, and Toki let him, not really caring and chewing his granola bar as he watched Murderface count off the slang on his fingers. He got to thirty-two before Pickles barked at him to shut the fuck up, mother douchebag and Murderface sneered back, but quieted.
Pickles went home with Nathan after school while Toki and Murderface did their usual skatepark routine. Toki met Murderface at his locker, accepted the cheap piece of shit board, and skated just a step ahead of Murderface. Murderface's select topic to tirade against today was, of all things, the girls that sat in front of them in English. "You think I'm a nische, don't ya, Toki?" He asked, running a hand over his hair. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders like he couldn't imagine anybody disagreeing with him.
Toki didn't respond, just glided on the sidewalk, shirt and hair billowing behind him. He loved this. He loved the world. He couldn't be bothered with Murderface's shit; he was too happy. He'd also manage to scrape up enough money for the horse-drawn carriage again, a month later, and he and Skwisgaar were laughing at some old lady who fell down on the street and spilled her groceries across the cobblestone.
"Well, I think I am, and that'sch all that mattersch," Murderface said, stepping up his pace to match Toki's and visibly straining from the effort. "All I aschked wasch to schee her titsch, sche didn't have to schlap me. And her friend didn't have to beat me up. What bitchesch."
"Girls suck," Toki said, smirking a bit to himself. "Even the nice ones are bitches."
"I know!" Murderface thrust his arms towards the sky, falling behind Toki, and Toki laughed. Murderface laughed also.
Toki didn't quite believe that all women were bitches, partly because he didn't know enough women to make a judgment, and even then the women he knew weren't truly bitches. His mother was barely a person, the ladies at his church were fake and obnoxious but not bitches, and Abigail may be strict and professional but she wasn't unjust or ridiculous. But it was fun to be facetious and feed into Murderface's ranting, and Toki was in the mood for fun. He did not feel this way often, but when he did, he relished in it, exaggerated in it. The sun beat down on him, the unusual heat for October bathing him in comfortable warmth, and the lazy breeze accelerated by his own acceleration pushed his hair out of his face. He felt loved and cherished and good and young and fun, so much fun, the smirk did not leave his face the whole way to the skatepark as it slipped into an actual smile.
Murderface met up with Dick, exchanged money for a bag of suspicious green curdles, then hung out with him, smoking some jolly green and pushing each other back and forth. Toki took to the actual skatepark part, doing the pipes and the handrails like always. The park was congested today and he collided with a young kid, no older than nine, who fell to the concrete, skidded, and scraped his knee up badly. Toki wish he cared but he didn't, just rolled onwards, picking his momentum back up and turning to go into a bowl. He did the only trick he knew how at the opposite side, lifting his board above and grabbing the back with his hand before letting it slam down again, then crisscrossed across for the remainder of his time at the skatepark, which was a short-lived visit. Murderface called Toki's name and Toki skated out of the park to the fence, picked up the board and tucked it under his arm. He followed Murderface and Dick down the street to a nearby parking lot for a Finntroll.
Toki and Murderface did not take the bus home today, but rode with Dick. Dick drove a modest car, jet black with ridiculously nice speakers and broken heating. The uncommon hotness made the broken heating irrelevant and Dick blasted some weird Scandinavian techno music on the way home that Murderface bitched about endlessly, with Dick reassuring him that these guys were totally genius and revolutionary and other flattering, overused musical jargon, that Toki actually found sort of genius and maybe a little revolutionary. Murderface rode passenger, Toki in the back behind him, looking out the window. Toki actually liked the boring landscape of suburban Florida, found it a comfort, and he'd been feeling pretty comfortable that day. He bid goodbye to Dick and Murderface when Dick screeched to a halt in front of Toki's house, though neither of them said goodbye back, and walked up the pathway to his front door. He laughed to himself imagining Dick and Murderface squabbling about the Scandinavian techno music, and it wasn't even that funny.
He cleaned the bathrooms and the kitchen, cut the branches of the tree in the backyard and tended to his garden all without any major failure, ensuring that he would have a pleasant, gentle evening as well. The garden yielded heavy, robust vegetables with smooth skins that felt pleasant in his hands, and though he usually enjoyed the garden, today he felt ecstatic to crouch amongst the earth and look for bad bugs among the good. He realized that he had neglected to inform his parents of his desire to be out again this weekend, and decided on doing so at dinner, hoping his perfect performance in his chores this day (and since the lashing) would earn him some leverage. He took a shower before dinner, his mother cooking in the kitchen and his father still not home, and even thought about touching himself. He didn't do that often, having little to no privacy at home or anywhere else and eventually decided against it when he realized he'd been in the shower for a while already. Suspicion would not play into his plans of leaving the house this Friday. He exited the shower and toweled off, somewhat pleased with the way he'd been bulking up lately. Hard labor made a hard body, even if it was a scarred mess of a body, it was still his own.
He dressed nicely for dinner, knowing his parents preferred it that way and even tied his hair back at the nape of his neck. He sat up straight at the table, a model son with proper manners, and didn't put his elbows on the table once. He didn't think his parents noticed.
"Far, Mar," he began when they neared the end of their meal, "I would like permission to go out again this weekend." He spoke the last part in Norwegian as well; he'd never spoken English in the presence of his father, he didn't think. He swallowed back a ball of nerves and continued on. "I'll ask Nathan to ask his mother to call you," he said to his mother. He did not address his father directly.
His mother nodded and his father said nothing, which could be a good or a bad sign; Toki really didn't know. As a bonus he cleared the table himself, rolled his sleeves up and washed the dishes, elbow-deep in bubbles and hope. He even did his homework at the kitchen table in full view of his parents when they passed through. His parents didn't care about school, more about chores and tasks and church and piles of firewood, but he personally saw no reason to not do his homework. The night was young, the sun having just recently dipped below the horizon, and he did not feel too tired. He felt good. Invigorated. His math homework looked like a foreign language and the book he was supposed to be reading for English bored him out of his mind, but he translated the passage for German pretty well, and felt fulfilled from the experience overall.
At some point, while he was trying to figure out what schmetterling meant without looking in his book, his mother walked by and touched him on the shoulder. She looked at him and nodded, and Toki understood this to mean that, yes, he could go out with his friends again. He stopped himself from leaping up and hugging his mother, honestly shocked that he possessed such an urge. It clicked in his brain that schmetterling was the wood for butterfly and he scribbled out the rest of the passage, a quaint story about spring in Germany, then rushed into his room and smiled into his pillow.
He arranged the finer details of their weekend plans with Murderface, Nathan and Pickles at lunch the next day, including for Halloween, which they had collectively forgotten was that Sunday in the hysteria of the Emmy fiasco. Nathan would pick Toki up in time for the show; they would head to the festival; Toki would spend the night yet again at Nathan's; they would trick-or-treat ("because candy, that's why, fucker" as Nathan so eloquently put it) and Toki would be returned to his parents that night. To Toki, this meant that he would not be attending church for the second week in a row, and that there were actually things in his life to look forward to, and that he would be seeing Skwisgaar Skwigelf in a little over twenty-four hours, and he had a weekend of enjoyable activities to look forward to. Pickles winked at Toki while the group touched upon the show, and Toki just stuck his tongue out back, feeling young and feeling right.