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Yoshiki strummed absentmindedly on his guitar. Today was the last day before Thanksgiving break, when no teaching actually happened even though it was counted for the government-mandated 180 instructional days. He'd dragged his feet through his four classes (not counting homeroom, in which he didn't drag his feet, he just slept) before this. and now their playing had skidded to a halt before he could really get into it. He and the rest of the band had crammed themselves into the school music room, as none of them had the space for any of them to practice. The music teacher wasn't paid enough to care much regardless.
A drum stick smacked him in the back of his head. "Hey, what the-"
He turned to see Hikaru giving him a shit-eating grin. "Ya aren't focused on Yuuki's notes on our shitty playin'." He flicked his gaze up a bit, and he caught Yuuki's glare from behind her keyboard.
"'m serious, once we git back from Thankgivin' Break, we got a week to sort ourselves out fer the school talent show." She spat, slamming her hands down on her keyboard. It exclaimed a discordant sound in protest. "Hikaru, quit uppin' the tempo and addin' extra stuff when we barely can play what we got. Yoshiki, quit spacin' out, this ain't English class. Asako… no notes." A duet of whines, groans, and protests erupted from Maki and Hikaru, but Yuuki quickly shushed the two of them before continuing. "Maki, are ya sure that bass is tuned?"
Maki muttered something under his breath and began playing, "Play me an F chord." The note rang out in the room.
Hikaru made a face between a sneer and a frown. "Maki, you absolutely are not playin' an F chord."
"What'd you know 'bout chords, Indou, seriously?" He grumbled.
"Yuuki, can ya play me that again?" As Maki attempted to tune his instrument, Yoshiki got down and laid on the cool tile floor. He stared up at the ceiling for a bit, then closed his eyes.
"Get up from there, Yoshiki, floor's nasty." A gratingly bubbly voice said from above him. The second he thought it, he felt bad. Asako didn't mean to be so… bubbly, it was just how she was, and it was his fault for being so moody and getting so irritated by it.
"Yoshiki," Hikaru called. He said it fast, smashing the word together so it sounded like "Yushki", "What're we doin' for Thanksgivin'?"
"Ain't I comin' over to yer house like I have been for 16 years? Don't piss me off, Indou." He snapped, eyes still shut.
HIkaru just laughed, "Figured, I just thought I'd ask. In case you decided you'd rather spend time with that chick in English class."
Maki groaned, having abandoned the pursuit of tuning his instrument. "You can come out and say yer jealous, y'know. Yer mad Yoshiki's gettin' girls fer once and yer not." Yoshiki knew it wasn't true, but he still tilted his head back a little to try and see the look on Hikaru's face when he heard it.
"I ain't jealous! I'm happy for 'im!" He said too loudly, then quickly pivoted to Asako. "I keep sayin' you can come over for Thanksgivin', y'know."
"I know…" She responded, twirling a pink and black streaked clip-on extension around her finger. Administration probably figured it'd be too much fuss to get her to take them out on the basis of "disrupting learning", seeing as though no learning was happening today. "But me and my grandma have our own thing we like to do. And after next year, we might not never do it again-"
"'Cause yer goin' to NYU for performing arts, and if ya don't get in, yer goin' to New York City anyways." Everyone chorused together. It'd only been her dream since middle school (which was about when she learned about the existence of New York City at all).
"Ehhhh-xactly!" She crowed, nodding so hard you'd think her head was about to fall off. "I'm savorin' this time wit' my family."
"Fair 'nough." Hikaru replied, shrugging. He didn't bother asking the rest of the group, an oversight which Maki jumped in to remedy.
"Me and my folks headin' into Nashville to see some folks."
"You said Memphis last time." Yuuki said.
"Look, I just know we're goin' to Tennessee. Ten-neh-see." He said the word like each syllable was glass. "To see my brother."
“Where’re y’all plannin’ on eatin’?” Asako asked.
“KFC or sumthin’, maybe. Some of these places gotta have decent Thanksgiving meals.”
“If I wanted a nice meal for Thanksgivin’, I wouldn’t go to KFC.” Yuuki said out the corner of her mouth. She’d given up on practice of any kind and had propped up a trig packet on her music stand.
“Where the hell wouldja go then?” He snapped back, beginning a back-and-forth over what restaurant made the best Thanksgiving dinner spot. Whether their de-facto leader said it or not, practice was over. Yoshiki packed up his guitar with care, care he barely treated himself with. By the time he was done, Hikaru was bounding behind him out of the music room. So they walked out of the room down their school’s halls.
“I bought some music.” Yoshiki said after a while, holding up his IPod. He’d gotten it for his birthday, and it’d made him the subject of envy and ire alike in a town where about half the residents could afford a home computer. “‘Enema of the State’. It’s legendary.” Yoshiki assured, though he wasn’t entirely sure which one of them he was assuring. In all honesty, he nothing of the album asides from a couple message board geeks had laughed him off of the site for having not heard it.
“Of course it is. Anything from Blink-182 is legendary.”
“I didn’t know you liked them.”
“You don’t know a lot of things.” That shut him up. They walked in silence for a while, before Yoshiki brought out his fancy-shmancy, earwax-coated Apple EarPods (not sponsored), offering one to Hikaru so they could share in the experience that was Blink-182. Hikaru took it and they shuffled down asphalt, shoulders just barely brushing against each other. Every so often, Hikaru would bob his head awkwardly. “What if someone sees us and doesn’t know we’re listening to music?” He said after being pressed about it. “Then we look gay.” Yoshiki just looked at him.
“Yer so strange, man.” Yoshiki finally said. They kept walking like that, pretending like they weren’t enjoying the warmth of the other boy next to them. They reached Yoshiki’s house first, and Hikaru was shuffling his way down the driveway, his shoes scraping against the gravel.
“Man, I’ll miss ya over break. I wish I could stay at yer place forever.” And then he tossed a look over his shoulder that resembled the inbred cousin of “fuck-me eyes”. Something like... “embrace-me gaze”. Like a pornstar who’d gotten too much Botox. The point is, he was trying to beg through his eyes like a dog, and he was doing it poorly.
“Look, I’ll buy a CD of the album for ya. Jesus, didn’t know ya liked it that much.” Yoshiki said after trying to puzzle out what the hell Hikaru was trying to say with his eyes and concluding he wanted Yoshiki to lend him the IPod for the walk home.
Hikaru’s face fell, and he just muttered something under his breath, kicking a particularly big piece of gravel as he walked. Yoshiki didn’t realize how much he liked Blink-182. Something to remember.
And then it was Thanksgiving. The walk was no more than 5 minutes to Hikaru’s house(neighbors in the countryside tend to be much farther apart than neighbors in the suburbs), but it felt much longer. An oppressive silence fell over the whole family, the only sound being distant birds crowing from the trees and the crunch of dried grass and leaves beneath their feet as they trudged along in the cold. Yoshiki practically ran ahead of the rest of his family, hands shoved in his jean pockets.
The door to the Indou residence swung open to show Hikaru's mother grinning at them. The Tsujinaka family gave her strained smiles in response.
"Satou! It has been too long! Get in 'ere before ya freeze!" She crowed, snatching the foil-wrapped dish from Yoshiki's mother before ushering the whole family in. As Yoshiki stepped through the doorway, she ruffled his hair with her free hand. "How ya doin', hun? Hikaru is jus' in his room." He took it as approval to run away from the weird atmosphere being created by his parents' silence, letting his feet lead him down the worn path to his friend's room. As he did, he couldn't help but take in all the people that filled the house. There was his grandpa on a leather couch in the living room, sandwiched by a middle aged man on either side. Unfamiliar faces dotted the surrounding area, which was an uncommon occurrence in a town like theirs.
Yoshiki didn't bother knocking before he stepped through the door. Hikaru sat cross-legged on his bed, laser focused on a packet of sheet music. A practice pad sat in front of him, and a juice box straw dangled from between his lips. At the sound of the door being open, he jumped, gathered everything he'd just been looking at into his arms, and shoved it under his pillow.
"Fuck—I mean, fuck—shit—I mean—" He sputtered before finally seeing Yoshiki. He let out a sigh before lifting his pillow and setting everything back the way it was. "Sweet Jesus, I din't know it was you. ya scared me."
Yoshiki quirked his brow before sitting on his bed with him. "What’s all that about?"
Hikaru sighed again, running his fingers over the pages that got rumpled in his hurry. "Ol' man thinks drummin' is sissy shit. If he sees me doin' this, he'll make me go out an' watch football wit' him 'n his friends."
Yoshiki leaned forward a bit, trying to peer over the booklet. "He thinks a lotta things are sissy shit."
"Yeah, like you." Hikaru then barked out a laugh, and Yoshiki couldn't help but snicker at it, even if it did feel like Hikaru found it a little too funny. Like they weren't laughing at the same part of the joke.
"And you don't wanna watch football?"
"Hell nah." Hikaru leaned back against his headboard, eyes narrowed, but in an almost ethereal way. His gaze held the sternness of an angel. Yoshiki had always thought that the angel Gabriel probably looked like Hikaru. If that was the face telling him that he'd give birth to the son of God, hell, he would't even say somethin' like "I'm not married," or "how's a guy s'posed to have a baby?" Hikaru was just real trustworthy like that.
"I tolerate hunting and fishing and all that. I let him sucker me into playin' baseball for half my life. But I hate sports. I really do. Hate watchin' 'em, hate playin' 'em. But he says it prepares me for the real world, or.. sumthin'." His face fell, and he seemed to shrink on himself. "Gramps… means well, I think…"
"Well, if he meant well," Yoshiki said just as softly. Without thinking, his hand began to stretch towards Hikaru's, "he'd let you do what you love… or at the very least, compromise. I mean, my parents let me play in the band as long as my grades are okay."
Hikaru laughed again and yanked his hand away. "I don't think yer folks care either way. Too busy tryna keep their marriage from falling apart." He kept laughing, and Yoshiki just cocked his head to the side with a confused look crossing his features. Still, he laughed softly, biting back his own retort (something along the lines of "at least I still have my own folks"). Hikaru's features softened after a while, like he'd realized what he'd said. But he didn't say anything. He just flipped through his music again for a while before abruptly standing up from the bed and walking out the door. After an awkward pause, Yoshiki followed behind him.
They seemingly crawled out of the room just in time. Hikaru's mother was sending the little children around to tell people it was time for dinner. When the all crowded into a circle to pray, Hikaru stood at one far end opposite Yoshiki, and before he could follow, Grandpa Indou's cold, clammy hands, moistened by the condensation off his beer bottle, wrapped around his. And in her bright voice, Mrs. Indou said,
"Our Heavenly Father,
Lord God Almighty
He who is only worthy of our praise
Thank you for providing us with this meal
Thank you for allowing us to come together after another year
We ask that for another year
You keep the Devil out of our homes
You bless this food
And you allow us to prosper for another year
and come together for another meeting such as this
In Jesus' name,"
Once she was done everyone said, "Ay-men," though a couple rebellious voices rang out in the crowd, crying, "Ah-men." Their intertwined hands had just begun to pull apart when Grandpa Indou chimed in with his own prayer, which, after 5 minutes, sounded more like a sermon.
"And I pray that you repel the spirit of Sodom from this house, Lord. Any spirit of improper behavior between men, I rebuke it! I rebuke it in the name of Jesus, because it was in Leviticus that you said-" Yoshiki opened his eyes, glancing around to see who the hell this could've possibly been about, but everyone (except for a couple of the men that had been sitting with Grandpa Indou earlier) looked equally uncomfortable with where the prayer was going. He managed to catch Hikaru's, who'd seemingly decided to stop avoiding his friend, eye from across the room. The bleach-blond boy wiggled his eyebrows at his friend, who in turned simply rolled his eyes. It was another 5 minutes before he finished and they were released.
Yoshiki, minutes later, sat on the floor of Hikaru's room, legs propped on the bed. He had piled his plate high to avoid any comments on his lack of an appetite, despite knowing he wouldn't touch any of it. The sliver of fabric-textured turkey on his plate lay neglected, mud-colored gravy soaking into its off-white meat. The corner was tinged red with cranberry sauce.
Hikaru, in contrast, laid on his bed, eating like a man starved. Between bites, he said, "The old man must really be getting up there in years. Ain't never done that before."
Yoshiki got up from the floor and sat next to his friend, abandoning his plate on the floor. "Yeah, what was that about?"
"He's been slippin' a lil' as of late. My ma says it's cause the stress of raisin' two boys is gettin' to 'im." He joked. "He's been real irritable. Sometimes he thinks I'm my dad, who he doesn't really like, I guess, 'cause he's always shoutin' on me. He don't like my friends neither."
"Including me?"
"'specially you. Always talkin' bout that black-haired fag down the street. Says yer the devil and you'll pull me down to hell wit' ya." As he said this, Yoshiki reached up and brushed a stray mashed potato from Hikaru's lips. "But, I mean, yer the best person I know, so if yer in hell, then maybe hell ain't that bad." He said, then hurriedly added, “Can’t be much worse than this place.”
"Aw." Yoshiki said, fighting to keep down a smile.
"I'm serious. Without ya, I'd prolly be dead. Yer always there keepin' me from making stupid decisions, or listenin' to me complain 'bout my folks, and I wouldn't be playin' wit' y'all if it wasn't fer yer ass."
"That'd be a shame," He mumbled softly. "Yer good at the drums."
"Yuuki doesn't think so," He retorted, his eyes boring into Yoshiki. His eyes narrowed in that way again, that way that made you think, “Oh, he has nice eyelashes.”
"She does, she just doesn't say it as much. But she does." Neither of them say anything about Yoshiki's fingers still being on Hikaru's face, or the fact that they've somehow moved close enough that Yoshiki's overgrown bangs were falling in Hikaru's face, brushing against his nose. Yoshiki doesn't think about that; he's still stuck on the eyelashes. And then his eyes. Then his nose, then his lips. The curve of his neck, his collarbone.
"…are ya a demon?"
"No."
"…ya sure?" Before he could answer, a sharp knocking on the door startled the two of them apart.
"Yoshiki, Hikaru, Grandpa says he wants y'all to watch the game wit' 'im!" Hikaru's mother said, her cheerful mood leaking through the wooden door and soiling whatever they'd been creating.
"…'aight, ma." Hikaru called back, pressing Yoshiki away from him. "C'mon.” He beckoned for Yoshiki to follow with his hand. And follow he did, trailing him out the room into the living room where they could stay under the watchful eye of Grandpa Indou.