The Seconds Before Dawn

The wine rack was nearly empty. There was just one bottle left, a big husky red sitting at the bottom that had probably cost three bucks and tasted like grape-sweetened gasoline. That was another hint that things were sour - Yoshiki always kept at least two bottles on hand in case of company.

Well, the company was here.

hide reached down and yanked the loner off the shelf. Crap tasting or no, they would both be needing it tonight.

He strolled through doorways as if the house were his own, even though he’d only visited Yoshiki here a couple of times. His friend was nowhere in sight. But the door had been unlocked, and hide knew he was expected. It might just take a minute to find Yoshiki in this honker of a house.

The first time he’d seen it, hide had a hard time believing that Yoshiki would want to live in such a huge place - by himself, no less, unless there had been further developments of which hide was unaware. It was doubtful. Yoshiki sucked at hiding things from him.

Well, that is, usually. hide peeked around a corner and scanned the immense kitchen, yelled down the hallway towards the bedrooms; he even wandered into the little private weight room, but no Yoshiki. Worrying was not hide’s style, but any more of this and he might not have much of a choice. Enourmous as the mansion was, it only had so many rooms.

He discovered Yoshiki in the very last one. It was a small carpeted office at the back end of the sitting room, no more substantial than one of the bathrooms, really. hide had never actually been in the room, but even if he had, he wasn’t sure if he would have recognised it.

The room itself contained nothing but a mica desk, a folding chair, an antique, vomit-coloured couch that seemed egregiously out of place, and a small screen television sitting upon an upended trunk. The furniture, however, was barely visible beneath the army of glasses, cups, bottles, and cans marching patriotically across every flat surface. Stacks of unused paper covered the rug, and some bald guy with an earring was broadcasting the usefulness of his product across the room to Yoshiki, who would have looked asleep if not for the regulated movement of his finger against the remote.

“Osu,” hide tried. “Hey, Yoshiki-kun.”

Yoshiki’s eyes must have been open behind the pair of sunglasses, because he didn’t even turn his head before speaking. “Hey, hide,” he said. “Thanks for coming over.” The lightest form of a smile brushed his lips.

hide moved further into the small room, halfheartedly swinging the wine bottle from the rack back and forth in his left hand. He said, “Hey, there are only so many times a year I come to this city.” He held up the wine. “You missed one.”

“Did I?” Yoshiki shifted on the old couch. “Beautiful, thought I was out.”

hide moved across the carpet to the couch and handed him the bottle. “Oh, it’s this shit,” Yoshiki commented after glancing at the label. “Three bucks at the Walmart. Ano... it’ll get us drunker, at least.” He set the bottle on the floor next to his feet.

“Do you always wear sunglasses in the house?” hide asked. “Or is it just when I come over?”

Yoshiki reached up and pushed the pair back on his nose. “I guess I didn’t even realise I had them on. It’s always kind of dark in here, and I never...”

hide could finish that sentence for him in so many ways. I never really cared much... I never notice anything anymore... I never take them off. He didn’t voice any of these; he just fell back onto the vomitous couch and sank into it, sighing heavily.

Yoshiki moved his upper body for the first time since hide had entered the room, leaning forward to pour some white wine from an open bottle into a Dixie cup. He handed it to hide, who rotated it gently in his hands.

“You’re already wasted, aren’t you?” hide said.

Yoshiki hiccuped. “Not quite. Getting there though.”

“Weren’t we going to, I don’t know... talk about stuff?” hide took a small sip of the wine. Cheap. “I thought that’s why I came over.” He didn’t bother to mention that if he weren’t here with Yoshiki, he’d be moping and drinking alone in some bar somewhere, talking to himself instead of to his closest friend.

Yoshiki turned to him. “I asked you to come over because I wanted to spend time with you... I don’t want you to think I use you, as my fucking therapist or something, or...” He took another swig of the beer in his hand. “I know this isn’t the greatest atmosphere in the world...” An old black and white sitcom was attempting to broadcast its cheerful plasticity into the room. “I guess I didn’t feel like moving. Sorry.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t think...” hide began, but the words sounded formal and empty. There was a moment of slurping alcohol in silence.

“How’s the recording?” Yoshiki said finally. It was a forced inquiry, born of mingling at cocktail parties - a kind that hide could not tolerate.

“Oh honestly,” he snapped. “We ought to cut the bullshit. I told you already that the recording’s fine; I said so over the phone. What is it you’re expecting me to say? Do you want to hear that it’ll never be anything compared to X? If that’s what you want, I’ll say it - but only because it’s true.”

Yoshiki raised the remote and tapped the power button. The sitcom family resolved that their battle was useless and faded away. “I don’t want you to say that,” Yoshiki said quietly. “In fact I wish you hadn’t... I wish you felt that everything is going to continue for you, that it’s not the end of the world, that you’re just as happy as you always were.” He paused and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t want to think that anything stopped.”

hide regretted his harsh words. “Well, Christ, I mean it’s been what, a month? It may just take me some time to pick up the pieces again, that’s all.” He crushed the empty paper cup in his hand. “What about you, though? Are you... you didn’t sound so good on the phone.”

“I just don’t understand it. Why it had to happen the way it did.” Yoshiki picked up the cheap red. “Time to break into Walmart’s finest...”

hide grunted. “Count me out; I’ll have one of these beers.”

“Suit yourself.” The cork popped and gave way to more pouring, guzzling, slurping: the meaningless drunken motions of a sad man. “It’s all so - broken, now...”

“You been talking to Toshi?” hide asked.

Yoshiki visibly winced. “Yes.”

There was a pause. Then, “Still fighting?”

“He refused to even talk to me last time.” Yoshiki’s voice shivered in agony. “Why is he acting this way, hide? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I wish I could say.” hide took a long sip of beer and felt the alcohol buzz his head distantly. “You always knew him better than I did...”

“Well, now I don’t feel that I know him at all. I mean, shit, after all that we...” Wine dribbled lazily out the corner of Yoshiki’s mouth and he wiped it away with the back of his sleeve. He was well on his way to being severely trashed. hide barely felt anything, but he feigned clumsiness and slurring - it would make Yoshiki more comfortable. “After all that.”

hide wasn’t sure what Yoshiki meant specifically, but the general idea was more than clear. Yoshiki made more sense in an alcoholic stupor than anyone else hide had ever made acquaintance with, including himself.

“Yeah...” hide was becoming depressed, a state he still wasn’t used to. He tried to change the subject. “Hey,” he grinned, “you’re too hung up... you just need a good romp, that’s all.”

Yoshiki finished off the blood red in the glass he held. “I actually haven’t been laid in ages.” He offered a half-smile, as if amused by his own pathetic state. “I sound like such a fuck.”

“No, you don’t,” hide said. He meant it. “Happens sometimes. There are dark times for us all...”

Yoshiki snickered, and then hide himself did. The humour of the comment gained strength until both of them finally burst out laughing. They continued to giggle like children for a few minutes.

“You,” Yoshiki gasped, “are evil... you almost made me spew my wine all over the couch!”

hide wheezed. “In that case, I’ll have to do it again... this really is a piece of crap, Yo-chan.” He grinned. “I think we both needed that...”

Yoshiki smiled fully. It was always refreshing to hide when he did so. He hadn’t been smiling like that lately. You need to smile more often, hide almost said, but instead he muttered, “Well, I mean, you know what they say...”

“I forget. What does who say?” Definitely drunk now.

“That it’s always darkest before dawn.” It sounded much more useless and trite coming out of his mouth than it had in his head.

“Does that mean things are going to get profoundly wonderful soon?” The wave of humour had passed. “Because I really don’t see how that’s supposed to happen.” Yoshiki had stopped drinking. His sunglassed eyes stared straight ahead at hide.

hide thought for a minute, searching for reassurance. He needed some himself. “It just takes time, I guess. Sometimes a lot of it... too goddamn much even.” He shook his head. “I’m trying to move on, but sometimes it feels like I’m wandering aimlessly, day after day, waiting for something to happen...”

Yoshiki drunkenly titled his head. “I didn’t know you were that dissatisfied with the new project, hide-chan.”

“I’m not, honestly, not with the project itself. Everyone for Spread Beaver has been great. It’s more...” hide paused. “It’s more having to get up every day and go do something that isn’t X, or me, really, that just feels empty. I mean, you’re miffed about not getting laid, but as someone who hasn’t exactly been lacking in that department, it’s all gotten stale. I wake up in the morning and I’ll hate the person next to me. I’ll hate myself too. Sometimes I hate everything, Yoshiki, I hate it so fucking much...”

Yoshiki reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t mean that.”

He really thinks I’m far gone at this point, hide realised, just a rambling drunk. “I wish I didn’t,” he said sadly. Yoshiki only looked at him behind those plastic-walled eyes. “Take your sunglasses off,” hide said.

“No.”

“Dammit, don’t you think I know you’ve been crying? Do it.”

They came off slowly and collapsed in his friend’s hands, lifeless. Yoshiki set them on the arm of the couch and dragged a hand across his eyes, which were red and a little puffy.

“Hey, it’s not as bad as all that. You could probably still do a cover for SHOXX,” hide joked. “The bloodshot look.”

Yoshiki looked away, obviously not amused.

“Oh, gomen, Yoshiki-kun,” hide said, scooting closer. “Really, thanks for taking them off. I like to see your eyes when you talk.”

The said eyes turned back around and gazed at hide thoughtfully. “I feel almost naked without them,” said Yoshiki, glancing downwards. His eyes were cast in shadow. hide saw rings of despair encircling them, keeping them covered like the sunglasses had. hide wished he could take a broom and sweep the cobwebs away, just blow the sadness off of Yoshiki’s face with a puff of breath.

hide reached up and held the sad eyes in front of his face and tried to push breath onto them. Now that the sunglasses were gone, the sadness should be too. He imagined Yoshiki’s despair melting away... but his breath went farther somehow and ended up as a sloppy kiss on the mouth.

hide pulled back. Oh great, he thought to himself. NOW you’ve done it. You’ve always been an impulsive little bastard; you should have known that it’d come back to kick you in the ass one of these days--

But Yoshiki’s despairing eyes were right in front of his face again, closing, leaving him looking at the eyelids, until he felt Yoshiki’s mouth again and hide’s eyes closed of their own volition. Their contacted lips moved, tongues searching, heat rising. Then hide broke away, panting, and caught Yoshiki’s eyes. He felt strangely frightened.

Yoshiki leaned against him, breathing on hide’s neck. “Please,” Yoshiki said, his voice shaking. “I need this.”

They both did, hide realised. Drunk or not... they needed. His need was almost comforting.

The need took Yoshiki’s face in his hands and kissed the eyelids, it stroked the smooth hair, it made hide’s lips look for Yoshiki’s again, who made a small moan of gratitude as they met.

Open mouths. Tongues. Heat and understanding. Tastes of cigarettes and sadness. Cigarettes and sadness... I need you.

The need was overwhelming; it pushed back, and back, and nearer, until Yoshiki’s left hand was gripping the back of the couch and their hips were pressed together. hide needed this form beneath him, needed its heavy breathing, its sweat, which he licked at, its smooth chest, which he unbuttoned his way to and kissed. And Yoshiki needed him, too, needed hide to trace this wet path down to his waist, and lower, still, urgently pulling at layers to get at the core of his need.

Then they blended together completely, the need, Yoshiki, and himself, and explored every part of each other, feeling, kissing, making complete. hide wasn’t quite sure when the need exploded out of him in a flash of light, when they had stopped hungrily searching and simply lay entangled on the old couch, belts unbuckled and wetness mingling, breathing heavily.

hide’s hand brushed at Yoshiki’s face, removed the hair from his eyes. he didn’t dare speak.

The window was still dark, but the sun would inevitably stretch its lighted fingers into the room very soon. Yoshiki would no doubt awaken tomorrow and say something like, “What the hell happened last night? We were so fucking drunk.”

hide would know. But he would say he didn’t remember, and apologise. Just like always.

hide felt Yoshiki’s fingers brush his lips, and he pulled closer, knowing, feeling everything, trying to stretch the seconds before dawn.

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