Chapter Text
Hashim doesn't sleep well. He's an insomniac—he accepted that as fact. It's been so since he was a tiny kid, always only catching three or four hours of shut-eye after tiring himself out from tossing around in bed.
Everyone who knows him knows he can't get enough sleep. His whole friend group. His classmates, teachers at school. His parents.
Sukri. Sukri, too.
Sukri, especially; who's as much of a night owl as he is, who sneaks out and comes to get him at two in the morning if Hashim so much as shoots him a text. Sukri, who he bums cigarettes from and watches the smoke whirl up into the night sky with.
Right now he is itching for a cigarette. His hand twitches for the ghost of a smoke. A girl. A drink. He stares up at the ceiling, thinks about wheels, races, sonic explosions. Blood and skin. Mosquitoes flying in from the open window in his room.
He itches for addiction. For life.
He itches for Sukri.
Then so be it.
//
"Where do you wanna go this time, Shim? Just you and me."
Sukri speaks, leaning back against a lamppost on the street outside Hashim's apartment. Both his arms and legs are crossed. His tone is light and open, and his eyes are trained expectantly on Hashim.
They're out together again. Normal affairs, as far as it goes. Funny how it's always Hashim who asks Sukri to sneak out with him, and never the inverse.
"Well, I don't want that mamak we always go to. The boss doesn't like us. It's weird being the only customers there too, now that it's this late." Hashim replies, walking over to stand nearer to Sukri.
"I know that's right. I've gotten tired of that place as well." Sukri thinks about it. "How about clubbing? Haven't done that in a while. Let's loosen you up a little." He grins, roguish.
Hashim likens Sukri's voice to an ocean tide, washing over him. Keeping him anchored. For such an explosive person, it's ironic how Sukri's the one who keeps Hashim grounded. He's not sure if Sukri knows that.
It's 4 a.m., and he has a strange feeling something's going to happen before the sun rises. Hashim's brimming with something tonight, and he's chasing. For what exactly, he doesn't know. But he wants Sukri there beside him, together with him, through everything.
"Alright." Hashim grins back, teeth and all.
//
Hashim takes his helmet but leaves his own motorcycle at home, in the parking lot. He tells Sukri he doesn't want to wake his family. Matter of fact, he's been giving Sukri this excuse ever since they started sneaking around in the first place. Just so he could ride with Sukri, on Sukri's bike. Cheap thrill.
Sukri nods, acknowledges it, doesn't talk much beyond that. Neither of them need to say anything for it to happen; it's become a rite of passage by now. Sukri climbs on first and revs his bike a few times, with the loud growling modified exhaust. Hashim wolf-whistles at the sound, climbs on behind him, lays his palms on Sukri's sides. Pretends he's just grabbing on Sukri so he doesn't fall off the motorcycle. Feels the thermal heat of Sukri's skin seeping through the shirt fabric.
The boy ran hot. It was in his nature: his head, his soul, his blood. One thing he liked about Sukri: his impulse.
"You'd better hang on tight."
They take off. Sukri instantly starts breaking the speed limit. The stray cars on the near-empty roads move like slow, clumsy bulls, and the wind hits Hashim like a familiar friend.
He never asked Sukri which club they were going to. He never asked Sukri when they were going home. He never wanted to. Words were just platitudes—all he wanted was Sukri. Nights like these, Hashim leeched off of Sukri's own brand of careless freedom; the same way Sukri himself got off on adrenaline rushes and disposable girls.
Sukri didn't have a problem with him. If anything, Sukri had made it pretty clear that he thought Hashim was a real one to him, at the least. It showed in the races they had, too; Hashim was always second to Sukri, always coming close, 5 or 10 meters behind him.
Hashim kept competing anyway, putting up a front. Like he cared much about winning, or anything other than Sukri.
Fuck, he really was in deep.
Hashim almost unconsciously leans into Sukri just as they run a red light. He's looking at the crook of Sukri's neck. The hard, muffled thunk of their helmets against each other feels like a wake up call. He turns his head to the side, knowing exactly why he feels weird. Guilty. Shameful.
Sukri takes note, knocks his head back and bumps Hashim's helmet in retaliation. Hashim doesn't see Sukri's face. But he does see Sukri's shoulders shaking, does feel the chuckles vibrating throughout Sukri's body from where his hands are.
"Petty bitch." He twists to the side, leaning into Sukri's ear from the back. Making sure Sukri hears what he's saying through the helmet.
"You only like me that way." Sukri responds, and there's a smile to his voice. Hashim imagines the dimples that must be on Sukri's cheeks right now.
Yeah. He was right. Sukri wasn't lying—not even a single bit.
//
He doesn't know what the club's name is. Doesn't know if Sukri showed the guy at the front fake photocopy IDs, or if they looked old enough to pass muster this time—he was too busy paying attention to Sukri's arm, casually hanging over his shoulder then—but it didn't matter either way, because they were in. It was somewhere new.
They split into two. Hashim, straight to the bar. Sukri, somewhere else. The music was trashy. Jedug DJ remixes weren't Hashim's thing. But it was Sukri's thing, apparently; Hashim catches him in the periphery of his eye, fucking around on the dance floor with some curvy girl in a skimpy dress, grabbing at her ass and somehow not looking desperate despite that.
He lets Sukri do what he does best, focusing his attention on the bottle of crystal Tiger in hand. The bartender didn't even blink handing the very explicitly haram alcohol to Hashim, which clued Hashim in to the fact that this place was really fucking lax. Sukri knew his clubs. Hashim thanked the bartender profusely internally. He was plenty agnostic on the inside anyway.
To be honest, he wasn't feeling much like a tiger right now. He feels the condensation wet his fingers, the faux elegant blue-white label coming off already, flimsy and plasticky. Tiger suited Sukri better. But Sukri didn't like Tiger. He was a Carlsberg guy.
The girl Sukri's dancing with has a Carlsberg green dress in the club lighting. She looks like a brand ambassador. From where Hashim is, if he squints, Sukri's getting it on with a beer bottle. He snickers to himself, but it dies down when Sukri finally clicks—leads her out of the club from a back door he didn't even notice, out of Hashim's line of sight.
He downs a few days worth of hard labour in the garage in approximately 20 seconds.