One More Time (With Feeling)

1

tw: hiv/aids, mentions of past drug use, major character death

Your name is March Liu, and your life is a bigger mess than the sheet you put down underneath your easel when you paint.

March. Great name, right? It could be worse. Your little brother's name is Matcha. Yeah, like the tea. Your mom wasn't even Japanese, she was Korean. But then, she'd always been a little weird. Maybe that's where you got it. You can't bring yourself to change it now, though, even though you could. Mom said she'd have given you that name regardless of your gender, so you feel kind of obligated to keep it. You know. In honor of her memory.

You're back at the old art house again, after getting kicked out by yet another partner because you're not into sex, and no matter how much people insist it's okay, you'll work it out, they never end up actually wanting to work it out. Last you were here about a week ago, five people were living here and it was starting to get crowded, but things change so frequently it could be completely different now.

You unlock the door and let yourself in, wiping the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand. You would get yourself kicked out without a bus pass in the middle of summer.

"Hello?" you call.

"'Ey, Rabbit! How are you?" A bright, smiling face with a messy mop of shaggy black hair pops out from behind the kitchen doorframe. Kyle. "I was just taking a break from my writing and making some lunch. Come on in!"

You drop your bags beside the door, all your belongings in the world shoved into two backpacks and a duffel. You wipe at your face after he disappears back into the kitchen and sigh before slogging over the slick hardwood floors and through the doorframe. All the doors have been removed except bedrooms and bathrooms and repurposed into coffee tables. There's one in the living room painted with unicorns in astronaut helmets playing laser tag. The other ones sold for, like, at least $3,000 a piece. For a door with drawings on it and two bricks on either end. Hipsters will pay out the nose for anything as long as you call it art.

"What are you making?"

"I'm not sure yet." Kyle's brown eyes sparkle bright from his olive skin, like someone spilled glitter on his face. "I'm just putting things together until it tastes good."

"Does it?" you ask. It has some kind of tomato sauce base and something that looks like lentils floating around. You stick your pinky finger in and put it in your mouth.

"Pinch of allspice and half a teaspoon of sugar and you'll be good to go," you say. Kyle laughs and ruffles your hair. You bat his hand away, but you're laughing, too. He grins at you. His eyes shine.

He has beautiful eyes. Yours are nearly the same shade of brown but there's something different about his, something that screams, "Paint me!" and "Focal point!"

"Brilliant," Kyle says, and as he turns around and reaches into the cabinet, Cricket walks in, trailing zir hand over Kyle's back as zie passes him on zir way to the sink. Kyle isn't tall enough to reach whatever he's trying to get, but you're both shorter than he is, so offering to help would be useless.

"Hey, Cricket," you offer.

Cricket mumbles something you don't catch. Zie yawns and ruffles zir hands through zir hair, then scratches at the back of zir neck. "Coffee first."

Cricket looks like zie could be a character on Rainbow Brite, all the way from zir thin, 5'2" frame down to the tiny pink star tattooed on zir cheek. Zir hair is always some different shade of the rainbow and zir clothes always match it. Even though you've known zir for years, zie's been dyeing zir hair longer, so you've never seen it its natural color. You're not sure you even know what that is. It's currently a pretty seafoam green. Last week it was bubblegum pink. Who knows what it will be next week, or even tomorrow.