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When Yoshiki was a child going through constant growth spurts, his mother used to sew him new clothes with careful, measured hands. He’d watched her do it more than once, her silver needle darting in and out of the fabric like a dolphin flitting through the ocean. Even Kaoru, who is too young to do any chores other than scrubbing the occasional dish, knows how to mend her own clothes. She does a slapdash job of it compared to their mother, but she’s better than Yoshiki at handling delicate needlework.
Like most of the women in his life, Kaoru and his mother know how to handle delicate things.
Yoshiki can’t stitch up even the tiniest of tears. His hands are too clumsy; his patience is too thin. He can barely hold a needle without pricking himself.
There’s a heavy-handed lesson somewhere here on patience and fortitude, on healing and emotional competence. The women in Yoshiki’s life are patient healers—they are emotionally competent and strong, capable of suturing back together even the most ripped-up wounds.
Conversely, Yoshiki can barely hold himself together. No amount of metaphorical stitching will keep his grief from pouring out like so much blood.
Hikaru is dead. A monster wears his skin now.
There’s no room for grief—not at this juncture, and maybe not ever—so Yoshiki stuffs the raw despair back inside himself and carries on.
One day, when Hikaru falls off his bike on the dirt path en route to their respective homes, Yoshiki rushes to check on him. Hikaru has torn a magnificent hole through his uniform pants. He’s bleeding and laughing, amused by the horrified look on Yoshiki’s face.
“Stop laughing,” says Yoshiki, clasping him by the hand and grunting as he pulls Hikaru to his feet.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” says Hikaru.
Yoshiki leans closer to inspect the gash on Hikaru’s knee. He half expects it to knit itself together magically and seamlessly, but it doesn’t. No tendrils of colorful magic appear.
“Come on,” says Yoshiki. He nudges Hikaru forward with one firm hand under his bicep. Hikaru wobbles, but stays upright.
They wheel their bikes to Yoshiki’s house in silence, the sun hot on their backs.
“You gonna nurse me back to health?” asks Hikaru.
Yoshiki wordlessly helps Hikaru to the bathroom, careful not to bump into any hard surfaces.
“Take off your pants,” he says.
Hikaru giggles. “Oh, already?” he asks. “You’re so shameless, Yoshiki-kun.”
He shimmies out of his pants regardless, shucking them off with a graceless flourish. Once he’s standing in his boxers, Yoshiki looks away.
“Yoshiki,” says Hikaru.
Yoshiki grunts.
“You gotta look at me, y’know,” prods Hikaru.
Yoshiki does, and Hikaru beams at him and throws up a peace sign. Sighing, Yoshiki glances down at Hikaru’s leg and inspects the little trails of dark blood stemming from his knee, now crusted and flaking a bit.
Together they wrangle Hikaru’s leg into the sink. Yoshiki turns on the faucet and Hikaru almost howls, either out of shock or pain—Yoshiki isn’t sure which. The blood runs into the sink, diluted by the water, a rusty red against the porcelain.
After Yoshiki dries the cleaned gash with a towel, he roots through the medicine cabinet for the biggest bandaid he can find. His hands shake a bit when he applies the bandaid to Hikaru’s knee. Mercifully, Hikaru says nothing. He does not joke about it or say something lewd. His palm anchors against Yoshiki’s lower back to hold himself steady.
The boys head upstairs after all the bathroom fanfare, eager to find respite. Hikaru plops down on Yoshiki’s bed with a gusty sigh. He sprawls out, still in his navy boxers, untucked shirt riding up a bit and exposing his stomach.
Yoshiki crosses the room to his dresser and tugs out some cotton shorts.
“Here,” he says, tossing the shorts at Hikaru’s head.
Hikaru squawks. He claws the garment off his face and stares at it, brow furrowing.
“Put it on,” says Yoshiki, turning to face the door.
There’s silence for a bit, but then the telltale sound of shuffling and shifting comes from Yoshiki’s bed.
“Better?” says Hikaru, finally.
Yoshiki turns around.
Hikaru is shirtless, and his pale skin shines in the soft sunlight.
Yoshiki stares, eyes wide, before he comes to his senses and jerks back, spinning to face the door again.
“You moron,” he snaps, furious.
Hikaru barks a laugh.
“Reactin’ like that when you’ve been inside me,” he says, and the gleeful lilt of his voice makes Yoshiki’s cheeks burn.
“Don’t say it like that,” says Yoshiki.
“Like what?”
Yoshiki squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not going to answer that—he’s not even sure what he’d meant. Hikaru doesn’t need any more ammunition right now, anyway.
A hand drops down onto Yoshiki’s shoulder.
Yoshiki swallows the yelp that nearly bursts out of him. His jaw tightens, and he fights to keep his eyes closed.
“Don’t,” he says.
For a moment, the hand doesn’t budge. Then, slowly, it slides up the side of his neck to cup the gooseflesh there. Yoshiki shivers, all too aware that it’s still scorching outside.
“You’re shaking,” says Hikaru. Something about his voice sounds dazed and distant. Something about this situation seems dreamlike and disastrous. Yoshiki’s shoulders inch up to his ears, his skin sensitive to Hikaru’s touch.
Hikaru’s fingers graze against his earlobe, and Yoshiki gasps as if stung.
The hand flickers away. Yoshiki tenses, his entire body strung tighter than a violin, but elects to say nothing. Maybe if he refrains from speaking, the moment will end, and the spell will be broken. Maybe Hikaru will lose interest and go put his shirt on. Maybe Yoshiki’s heart will calm in his chest and his eyes won’t prickle with a strange, unwelcome heat.
The warm press of a body against Yoshiki’s back makes him freeze. The hand returns, this time with another one. They link together across Yoshiki’s stomach.
“Don’t be scared,” says Hikaru.
Yoshiki can’t even think. His thoughts scatter like sparks.
Hikaru’s cheek rests against one of Yoshiki’s shoulder blades. He sighs deeply, hands tightening around Yoshiki’s midsection.
“Yoshiki,” says Hikaru. “I like you.”
It’s one thing to say as much on a casual, daily basis in passing; it’s another to say it with his hands wrapped around Yoshiki.
“Let me go,” says Yoshiki.
Hikaru huffs a quiet laugh.
“Is that a rejection?” he asks.
Yoshiki feels lightheaded, but his arms stay anchored at his sides, and his legs won’t move an inch.
Hikaru turns his head so his lips graze against the spot in between Yoshiki’s shoulder blades. It tickles, but Yoshiki remains rooted to the spot, unable to react.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” says Hikaru, and Yoshiki can feel the movement of his lips as he speaks. “I want to feel you again.”
“Why?”
The question slips out of him before he can stop it.
Hikaru’s lips curve into an unmistakable smile.
“D’you really need to ask?” he says.
Yoshiki should have anticipated the question being turned around on him, but he still wants to press the point, even if it seems foolish.
“I need to ask,” says Yoshiki. “I need to know why you want this.”
He very deliberately does not say me. It’s too much to name it directly.
Hikaru hums.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he says, cutting right to the heart of things. “I want to be close to you. As close as possible.”
Hikaru’s “always” hangs in the air. Yoshiki tries and mostly fails at not fixating on its latent meaning. Does this mean Hikaru—the original Hikaru, his best friend—had wanted this, too? Or is Hikaru, the monster, just speaking of his short-lived existence as a human?
“I can’t,” says Yoshiki.
Even as he says it, his hand comes to rest on top of Hikaru’s linked ones. Hikaru promptly unlinks his hands and takes Yoshiki’s hand into his. He laces their fingers together, and Yoshiki lets him.
“That’s okay,” says Hikaru. “Here. Come sit with me.”
He tugs Yoshiki over to the bed. Yoshiki falters, but ultimately decides to follow. They sit down on his bed together and Hikaru reaches up to brush the bangs out of Yoshiki’s eyes.
“Pretty,” he says.
Yoshiki tries to fashion his face into a dark, insulted scowl, but all he musters is a deep flush and an open mouth.
“Thanks for takin’ care of me,” says Hikaru. “You didn’t have to.”
Frowning, Yoshiki shakes his head.
“I did,” he says.
Hikaru smiles at him. “Nah. Look,” he says, ripping off the bandaid with one ruthless motion.
Yoshiki gawks. The gash is gone; in its place is smooth, unbroken skin. There’s not even a scar.
“How?” he asks.
Hikaru laughs and slaps his knee. “Magic,” he says.
Yoshiki would be horrified, but instead he just feels a quiet sense of relief. He lets out a shaky breath.
“So you didn’t need my help,” he mutters.
“Nope,” says Hikaru. “I just like it when you touch me.”
Yoshiki bites the inside of his cheek and brings a hand down on Hikaru’s head to muss his unruly hair. Hikaru yelps and screws his eyes shut, but laughs through it all, his grin nothing short of infectious.
At seventeen, coming apart at the seams looks like this:
Rotting in bed, clenching sheets littered with empty pill packets as his parents shriek at each other downstairs. They’re loud enough to wake the dead, if not the whole neighborhood. Yoshiki no longer tries to shut them out with music or earplugs; it’s just par for the course that his parents’ marriage would fall apart while everything else does. It’s the cherry on top of a terrible sundae. It’s Yoshiki’s miserable lot in life, and there’s no changing it.
Hikaru is dead. A monster wears his body now, but said monster is Yoshiki’s only saving grace.