.

Sticky summer heat, so humid it felt like you were swimming through the air, so humid that just pulling the air into your lungs seemed like too much effort. Like maybe you’d be cooler if you could just stop breathing, and in a way you would be cooler, only in a dead sort of way, not in the way you wanted.

“It’s Fall,” Hyde was saying. He had a drink with slivers of ice still in it that he wasn’t drinking. “Why can’t it be cooler?”

“It’s not Fall until the end of the month,” Gackt pointed out, reasonably. His glass was mostly empty; bits of ice were lumped together in the remaining yellowish liquid at the very bottom like little lost islands. “Even then, it probably won’t be very chilly until mid-October.”

Hyde made a discontent sound and shifted on the leather couch, which made sticky unpeeling noises as Hyde’s bare shoulders pulled away. Gackt imagined the impression of wings being left behind on the leather, as if it were Silly Putty.

“Do you want another drink?” Gackt asked, polite, even though Hyde hadn’t touched the first one. Hyde mumbled something negative and slid even further down the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted back. Strands of dark hair stuck to his forehead, the sides of his face. He looked sullen and exhausted and very beautiful.

“In October, you’ll be telling me it’s too cold,” Gackt said. Hyde lifted his head to blink at him in a sleepy, confused way.

After two beats too many, he leaned his head back and snorted. “At least when I’m cold, I can put more clothes on. In the heat you can only take so much off.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Hyde lifted his head, eyes expectant.

“What?” said Gackt, but his voice was amused.

“I left that one wide open,” said Hyde. “That was your chance to tell me to take it all off.”

Gackt smiled, too wide. “Do you want me to say that?”

“More like I expected it, by now.”

“You sound disappointed.”

Hyde laughed, and it sounded less uncomfortable than Gackt had thought it would. “Maybe I am. I’d gotten used to the routine.” He tilted his head back and stretched his arms toward the ceiling; Gackt admired the way it made his muscles move, the way it made the column of his throat look vulnerable, like an offering. Gackt’s mouth went suddenly dry.

“Take off your clothes,” Gackt said, quietly.

And Hyde did, standing slowly, letting Gackt watch as he peeled sweat-damp clothes away from his skin, dropping them carelessly in a puddle of cotton there on Gackt’s living room floor.

“Are you listening to me?” Hyde was saying. He hadn’t moved from the couch at all, was still slouched sticky and fully clothed right in the middle.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” In his mind’s eye, naked-Hyde was beckoning him with a half-smile and lowered eyes.

“I said, when are you going to get your damn air conditioning fixed?”

There was a slight pause, and then Gackt said, “soon”.

What he meant was “October”.

.

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