Work Text:
Skwisgaar was numb to “surreality.” He recalled experiencing it only a few times in his life: his first performance onstage... Well, that was the only time he could really remember clearly.
(No, that wasn’t right. There was another time.)
The first time he and Toki kissed. And perhaps what followed immediately afterward. That was a few months ago.
The third notable instance was just about to take place. Skwisgaar opened Toki’s door.
---
Toki sometimes talked about carnivals, but only to Skwisgaar. He was enamored by simple things, sweet things — fried dough, cotton candy, ice cream with caramel syrup. He likened the rush of a roller coaster to flying. At one time, long ago, Skwisgaar found this fascination to be unsettling, annoying. Now such talk made him smile — faintly, as was his way. During those times when Toki would open up — when Skwisgaar could tell that the younger man’s babble was coming from the strange, ineloquent swell of his heart — Skwisgaar would sit and listen and then pull him closer. And with his head resting on a bony shoulder, Toki would describe his dreams as though they were warm memories.
---
How many years had they known each other? Skwisgaar had never taken note of such details, but now Toki was starting to forget. Sometimes he would stop and count back, recalling certain events to chart a timeline. But over the years, even this proved unreliable. It wasn’t that the memories were fading; it was that he had begun to doubt if they were all indeed real. His dreams had somehow bled into the wrong areas — what went on in his mind was just as clear as what took place in the rest of the world, but he could no longer distinguish the difference in many cases.
He would say, “Remember when...?”
And Skwisgaar would respond, “That never happened.”
Then Toki would smile but his eyes would look scared for a brief moment. And then the moment would pass.
---
Skwisgaar didn’t generally note the passage of time. Birthdays came and went unrecognized. But there would be moments when he’d look at Toki, and he’d see a mark of age that would take him by surprise. A crease in his forehead, a sag under his eyes, the toughness of his skin — when had he stopped being a kid? He’d always been the baby — sometimes he still acted like it — but then Skwisgaar would hear the slight huskiness in Toki’s voice that came with growing older, and he’d wonder how much older he himself seemed in comparison.
He would then stop and try to think back to what things had been like a few years before. What Toki had looked like, how he’d acted and spoken. And he would have trouble remembering, because he’d never cared to preserve these details in his mind.
Once he went looking through old photos and video clips just to get an idea, but it disturbed him. Skwisgaar lived in the present. He didn’t like facing the past.
Toki, on the other hand, constantly allowed the past to shape him. He even kept photographs displayed on his wall as a daily reminder of his childhood nightmare.
---
Toki was dreaming. The world around him looked tall, as though he were a child once again. On the horizon, a striped circus tent glowed as the sun set behind it. He ran toward it excitedly.
“You want to ride on the rollercoaster? We’ll fly so high!” Toki nodded eagerly, although he could not find the source of the voice.
He walked through the park, and soon a clown approached him. The curly-haired man produced a plate. Leaning forward, Toki could see it held a funnel cake, and he looked up at the clown expectantly.
“Smell good? Look at all that sugar! Breathe in deep.”
Toki inhaled and then coughed. Confectioner’s sugar blew everywhere.
“That’s okay, there’s plenty more.”
Toki suddenly realized he’d been neglecting the cotton candy he was holding. It had begun to dissolve in his hands, so he dove into it quickly, leaving his face and fingers sticky and pink. The sugar made him thirsty. He looked toward a drink stand.
...And then found himself on a rollercoaster. Its whips and whirls caused him to lose all sense of balance and gravity. Vertigo. Blood was shooting to his head and draining away at the same time. He wanted to throw up, but his body told him, not yet.
A brief pause in the coaster’s tirade. Toki groped around outside of the car and retrieved a bottle of amber liquid.
“Syrup!” (But his voice didn’t sound like his own.) He opened his throat.
He drank.
And drank
Until the bottle was empty
And he tossed it aside
And then he felt like dying
Or at least what he thought dying should feel like.
(I wonder if this was how they felt)
He felt his body erupt like a supernova; he hoped he shone just as bright.
---
The others liked to tease Toki about his ability to “kill” the things he loved. At first, Toki brushed it off. And then it seemed to happen with more frequency. And then Skwisgaar came to be more than just his fellow guitarist. He’d hardly had time to be excited about it before he grew sickeningly paranoid.
He began to hate himself, and found relief from his own mind at the bottoms of bottles and baggies. But sometimes the desperation was so great that he didn’t know when to stop.
---
Skwisgaar approached slowly. His foot met with an empty whiskey bottle and sent the glass skidding along the floor.
It’s okay, he told himself. He’s still breathing. I can hear his heart beating.
(But that was the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.)
He rested a shaking hand on the work desk, littered with model airplane parts and tubes of paint and glue. His palm slipped on a sprinkling of white dust.
The room was very, very silent.