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Here’s a joke: a man in a three-piece suit and some guy in a black tee walk into a nightclub at nine p.m. The man in the suit tells the guy in the black tee, “Hey, we should have a couple of drinks and talk to some girls so I can practice working with women at my host club.” And the guy in the black tee is pissed he’s being dragged out of bed after a twelve hour shift for this shit but it’s his best friend who’s asking him out on a Friday night so he says, “Okay. Sure. Why the hell not.”
Turns out, the punchline is that now they’re in this sleazy club bathroom that smells like absolute piss with used condoms and toilet paper shoved into the darkened corners by muddied footprints and has the mark of a fist through the cracked corner of the bathroom mirror. The door’s locked and it’s just them in this cramped space with the faint buzzing of the weak lightbulb above their head like a swarm of flies and they’re in this stupid place because Hifumi’s face bleached itself clean-cut white when a lady tried to hook her arm in the crook of his. And Doppo knows it’s not Hifumi’s fault for this, or for anything, really, but he’s ingested half a shot of vodka more than he can handle so he’s forced into silence because his tongue has the same body as the graffiti on the walls.
“Aha… sorries…” Hifumi mumbles with a hand clenched at his side like it’s too afraid to hold anything else but itself. He’s been doing this for the past hour—at the bar seat, when the woman sat next to him, when Doppo saw his suit wrinkle the same way Hifumi’s expression did the moment she touched him. It horrified him so much to be touched through another skin that he had to take it off. “I dragged you here just to hang out in the bathroom…”
“‘T’s not your fault,” Doppo grumbles back, more annoyed at the man pummeling his fist to the muffled thudding of club music outside the door than at Hifumi. “She caught you off guard.”
Above them, the light bulb flickers in a rapid fluttering of the eyes. The dim, mellow light slopes down Hifumi’s back like someone’s poured champagne down behind his neck and over the strands of hair there. It drips off him in a gold meant more to drown than to beautify him, pooling at Doppo’s feet in the way the first drop of blood beads out from underneath skin. He inches away from it until the small of his back hits the sink and his hands fumble to grasp at something, anything.
“Yeah,” Hifumi says, almost resigned. He’s had this sort of tone for the past couple days, one where his words have the color fit for a white-out, a surrender flag. Undulating in the suffocating air like it doesn’t have a name for this submission. “I guess… I guess it’s just ‘cuz I’m too weak. She didn’t really do anything and I just—I just thought I could. I just thought the suit would help me. Just a bit more, y’know?
“It…” Doppo starts, then trails off once he sees Hifumi’s fingers clutch at the suit lapels hanging off his arm as if embedding his nails in it is going to be the same as puncturing threaded needles into its material. It doesn’t look like it’s helping, is what he wants to say, but he doesn’t need to be more useless than he already is. “It’s going to take a while. You just got the jacket like, what, a month ago? It’s going to take time, Hifumi. It’ll happen eventually. But it’ll take time.”
Hifumi doesn’t look convinced; Doppo can tell. He’s got that nervous teeth-on-lip action, a thin layer of sweat glistening on his brow underneath his makeup, the deadlock in his knees. He’s easy to read when he’s anxious—everything pours out of him all at once, tumbling over each other down his skin, down the juts of his bones, down his calves, traced by the mellow light touching its edges warmly more so in a way to expose than hide, telling everyone: </i>look, look, look</i>. The last color on the verge of survival before it’s found and devastated.
Doppo has the urge to cover Hifumi with his hands. To keep all of these things inside of him so they can live, so the light finds itself fingerless. He has the urge, this primal thing provoked by alcohol, a battlefield beneath his jaw. He has the urge, and it’s unbearable, like shrapnel that’s found a home between his ribs, and it makes him talk.
“Practice on me.”
He doesn’t even know what he’s saying.
“Treat me like one of your girls,” Doppo offers, voice shaky like he’s unsure of whether or not he should be learning against the sink, whether or not it’s bright enough in here for him to see Hifumi’s entire expression. His fingers flex over the rim of the sink, clutching cold vitreous china. “Pretend—Pretend I’m one of them. Like one of the women you’ll talk to at your host club.”
“H-Huh?” Hifumi stutters. The light does so with him. A blink without eyelids closing. Doppo sucks in another breath, but his lungs constrict in the tight space.
“Talk to me in another way. Fuck—I know this sounds bad, but, um, try thinking about it in—in a different way.” Doppo doesn’t even know what he’s blabbing about. The light’s getting into his eyes. Something so warm gold it could taste the same as some fucked up mimosa. He flexes his fingers. The sink presses against him, cold through his shirt. Hifumi blinks slowly at him, and it might just as well be the same as the close-up shot in a movie where the camera catches the light on his lashes, slow and bright. “Gh. Like. Like you’re not you. Not—Not in that specific way though, uh, shit. Pretend I’m one of your girls, and pretend that you’re you, but not you. The other side of you. Pretend you’re the other side of you.”
And Doppo thinks he’s said something wrong, that he’s fucked up somehow, because in the next three seconds he stops talking, Hifumi also falls silent. Hifumi’s never silent. Not even when he’s thinking—actually thinking—and definitely not when he’s with Doppo. Doppo gnaws at the inner part of his cheek and forces words from the cage of his teeth before his mind reaches for his tongue.
“Come on, Hifumi. I know you can do it. I know the other you in there can do it. He just needs a bit of practice.” And then after a second, he tacks on, “I think.”
The bathroom light fizzes. The sink creaks under Doppo’s grip. Music outside the door pounds against the wood, but Doppo can no longer tell the difference between its rhythm and that of his heart. They could be the same for all that matters.
“Okay,” Hifumi finally pushes out of his system, like it’s getting harder to breathe in the enclosure with just him and Doppo. It’s only after he lets out a loud exhale that he pulls on his jacket liquid silver over his shoulders, and opens his eyes in the same way that he does when waking up.
“Doppo-kun,” Hifumi—well, not entirely Hifumi but something else that’s been sleeping inside him for so long now roused awake—says in a deeper, bolder register. It’s a voice that can kill the destruction in these bathroom lights, bend them to his will so they curve down his shoulders in smooth arcs fit to be half-halos Doppo sees the sun emit in his eyes. All of this happens so fast Doppo nearly recoils back against the sink from surprise. “It’s an honor to serve you tonight.”
“An honor…” Doppo mumbles back, at a lack of words. He didn’t know Hifumi even had it in him to talk this way. Whatever this way was.
“No need to be so nervous, Doppo-kun,” Hifumi murmurs next to his ear, impossibly close to taste the leftover vodka in his mouth. “What’s got you so jittery? Is it the alcohol? I didn’t know you can’t handle alcohol well. How cute.” He lets out a little laugh that tickles the shell of Doppo’s ear and makes his knees feel like they’ve been dislocated. They might just as well be when Hifumi places his hand against the small of his back like it’s meant to slot itself and fit there to begin with. God, Doppo thinks vaguely as Hifumi presses closer. Please let Hifumi be unable to feel the weakening of Doppo’s body. “Or is it something else? Hm? What do you say? Is it… me?”
“N-No.” Doppo’s throat goes dry. He thinks the bathroom lights must have gotten brighter, because it’s gradually getting warmer and warmer in this cramped space. Hifumi lets out a breathy laugh, and Doppo hears that over the rumbling outside the door.
“Allow me to take care of you tonight, then. Relax, darling,” Hifumi’s hands drag themselves agonizingly slowly onto Doppo’s back and over his shoulders. Warm. Heated even. Doppo’s breath shudders; his chest touches Hifumi’s quietly as they press flush against each other against the sink. Hifumi’s fingers press into the tense muscle along Dopo’s neck and shoulder in an attempt to massage the stress out, but Doppo can’t help but think it’s giving him even more stress. Because Hifumi’s way too close, the warmth is unbearable, the light above trembles in the same way Doppo does underneath Hifumi’s hands, and his heart lodges itself in his throat in a beating wreckage. “Let yourself be undone. It’s just you and me here.”
“I—” Doppo sputters, not sure what to say. He doesn’t think he can say anything. This Hifumi’s gaze flits over Doppo’s: fluttering eyelids, long eyelashes tickling his cheek, the ghost of his breath on Doppo’s nosebridge. A weird, strangled sort of sound comes out the back of Doppo’s throat as he presses his spine against the hard marble sink. Holy shit, Doppo thinks. Holy. Shit.
And just as fast as Hifumi got into character, he takes his coat off with a flourish, the beginnings of apprehension slathered on his face as he looks at Doppo with a crooked smile.
“Did I do good?” Hifumi breathes out. He’s still nervous again, like he’s seeking approval from Doppo. As if he ever needed to seek approval. But Doppo can’t quite respond to him yet, because his hands are slippery on the marble and his mouth is dry and how did that just happen.
“Uh,” Doppo starts. He flicks the tip of his tongue over the corner of his mouth, almost tasting the blunt sweetness of Hifumi’s lipstick with the lingering touch of hard liquor. Some sort of intimate cocktail. “Yea—Yeah. Um. You did. You—You did great.”
“For reals, Doppo-chin? Like super great?” Hifumi grins, so unlike the persona he just wore, and Doppo feels his heart lodge itself in his throat like it’s there to strangle him awake more than anything else.
“Su-Super great,” Doppo breathes out, letting out a yelp when Hifumi swings an arm around his shoulders, the bathroom’s mellow light filtering over them both in a veil. Even with the heaviness on his back, a light-heartedness that Doppo hasn’t felt in a long, long time ebbs over his limbs. Something like reassurance, something in knowing that Hifumi will be alright, that they’ll both be alright. “Hey—Hifumi!”
“Thanksies! Next drink’s on me!” Hifumi giggles, and this time, Doppo can’t help but think that maybe it wasn’t such a bad choice to get dragged out of bed after a twelve hour shift for this.