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Sky began to learn guitar when he was in grade school.
It was at the insistence of his grandparents that Sky pick up an instrument. Despite his family’s connections, the language academies he attended each afternoon, and even his prestigious school uniforms, his grandparents still believed Sky must learn the taste of success at a young age. Guitar was not as cultured as the piano, as his grandmother suggested, or the violin, or even the flute; but as good as success tasted, defiance tasted even sweeter.
He hardly enjoyed it at first. As time went on, and Sky grew less callous and redefined his defiance into roguishness, he realized guitar – though perhaps more accurately, music – meant more to him than six, wire strings. Music led him to his friends. Music shined a spotlight on him and his band. Music opened doors of opportunity that were once locked to him.
He thinks music is what led him to Jao.
On perhaps the third or fourth day of the game, back in the early days of flirtation and fluster, Sky made Jao laugh -- and that was a revelation. He'd been ecstatic to this point by shy smiles and wide eyes, but laughter was another feeling altogether. He hoped to hear Jao’s melodic laugh once more and silenced the music as it played from the car’s stereo. Jao’s large, doe eyes rounded somehow even further, and a plea like stars twinkled in his direction. He looked to Sky with a desperation Sky had seen before only in dramas, and simpered, lower lip pouting, “p’Sky… that was my favorite song.”
Appropriately admonished, Sky hastened to turn up the volume once more, relieved to see Jao now relaxed in the seat next to him, his gaze soft and content.
He didn’t question why Jao’s favorite song was an old, Korean girl-group hit, nor did he question why the very threat of a softer sound upset Jao so. He merely smiled and took note to download more songs like it. He’d like to listen to them together sometime, as early as this afternoon, if Jao didn’t put up too much of a fight. And, just moments later, before Sky pulled his car into the Comm Arts faculty, Jao slumped in his seat, lulled to sleep by the rhythmic pounding of late aughts pop music.
Sky knew, then, that music lives in Jao’s heart, just as it did in his.
Nuea slaps his hand on the table in front of him, and shaken from his stupor, Sky looks up to shoot an aggravated glare at his best friend. Nuea looks at him knowingly but doesn’t press, instead moving the conversation toward the next basketball game. The rest of their friends, Tor and Fon and Kongkwan, chuckle and giggle at Sky, who now has his head resting upon his hand and eyes set firmly into the pink haze of his memories.
“Oi,” Kongkwan whispers to Fon, “he saw Jao just two hours ago.”
Fon shushes her girlfriend with a pat to her arm. “Leave him be. He’s still on his honeymoon, you know.”
Sky perks up almost immediately, glancing between the two girls. “Honeymoon? With Jao? Did he say something?”
The gang laughs as Sky looks hopefully at each of them. “No, no, ai’Sky,” Kongkwan says, swatting at the air in front of her. “Goodness, you’re almost as bad as Toh!”
“Actually,” Fon says, looking beyond Sky’s shoulder and pointing a sharp finger toward the bus stop just behind the Canteen. “Why don’t you go ask Jao yourself?” She joins Kongkwan in giggles.
Sky tilts his head, puzzled, but it’s Nuea who acts first, a great, wide grin pulling at his lips as he steps away from their lunch table to beckon someone forward. Sky turns around in his seat.
They seem to always enter in rhythm.
Toh, Daisy, and Som step off the bus one after the other. Daisy calls out a countdown from five, and the three break into their signature poses. Toh wipes his brow with a demure hand, Daisy’s hands perch on her hips, and Som bites her finger with a wink. Just behind them hides Jao, pink dusting the high rise of his cheeks as he looks between his friends apprehensively. Som tsks and gently nudges Jao with her shoulder, giving him a meaningful look. Jao, his adorable Jao, blinks once at her, eyebrows furrowed beneath his wavy hair, before jumping a bit in realization. He stumbles for a moment and raises his hands to form two peace signs in front of his eyes, a shy smile on his lips.
Sky can’t help himself; he never can around Jao. He jumps to his feet and calls out his boyfriend’s name with a wave, but instead of waiting with Nuea by the table, he jogs over to them.
“Students!” the bus driver yells. “I’m warning you!”
Jao glances back nervously. But it was too late. The bus driver rolls his eyes and in the next moment, the bus lurches forward with a groan. The tires kick up dust from the road, and like rain, the dust falls on Daisy, Som, Toh, and poor Jao. Som and Daisy scream in annoyance, patting at their own and each other’s uniforms. “Is no one patient anymore? Can no one respect the time it takes to rehearse a routine?” Daisy says, grabbing Som’s arm and helping her to the curb.
“Oh, Jao!” Sky calls again. Jao is suppressing small, aborted coughs into his closed fist and he doesn’t seem to hear Sky until Sky has his hands underneath his armpits and is hoisting him from the road to safety. Jao lets out a squeak of surprise, blinking owlishly at Sky through dusty eyes. When Sky feels assured that Jao is far from the dirty road and safe with him, he lets his hands fall from Jao’s arms. He lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. Jao sniffs and looks away. “The trouble you and your friends get yourselves into…”
Sky cups Jao’s rosy face and sweeps a smattering of dust from Jao’s cheek with his thumb. Jao meets his eyes with ill-conceived wonder and Sky is reminded that just as Jao is his first, true love, he is Jao’s first everything. Warmth blooms in his chest.
“Wanted to surprise you,” Jao mumbles. “Then Toh wanted to see p'Nuea, and Daisy and Som wanted to come with…”
Sky smirks, his thumb still tracing a soft path on Jao’s cheek. It’s clearly distracting him but Sky is quite fond of seeing his Jao so flustered. “Consider me surprised,” Sky says. He lets his hand fall from Jao’s face to rest at the back of his neck and he pulls Jao gently in, so his mouth is level with Jao’s burning ears. “My Kaojao.”
Jao sucks in a shocked breath and rears back to stare at Sky, his lips mouthing unheard words at a rapid pace. Sky winks at him, the side of his lips curling into a devious smile.
Jao squeaks once more and moves to push past Sky, but Sky is too quick and catches him by the dangling strap of his backpack, halting Jao in his tracks. Jao struggles to move ahead, like an excited puppy on a leash, mumbling pleas of his name. “Jao, Jao!” Sky chuckles, shushing him. “Let me carry your bag for you!”
Jao stops and looks over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. He lets his bag fall from his shoulders and Sky slings it across his own back with a pleased, little grin. Jao is still eying him and his lips are still moving unintelligibly (though Sky is sure he can make out the shapes of “nosey” and “crazy”), so Sky nods his head toward Som and Daisy, now waiting at the lunch table. “Ready, set…”
Jao races off before he finishes but Sky doesn’t miss Jao’s amused smile and wrinkled nose before he’s gone. Sky isn’t far behind him.
When Sky returns to his table, only questioning for a moment how Toh had managed to skirt his way to Nuea’s lap without his notice, Jao is hidden from view, again, as Daisy and Som circle around him like penguins in a storm. Sky can only just see the top of Jao’s head, a single curl like a seedling waving in the wind of Som’s hushed squeals. He smiles to himself and sets Jao’s bag on the seat next to his own, content to watch the antics before him.
“Jao,” he hears Som whisper, “did you give p’Sky your present yet?”
Daisy’s lips curl over a wide, teasing smile, and she leans in, conspiratorially close. “Or did you give it to him last night?”
Som and Daisy break into a new round of giggles as Jao looks between them helplessly, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He pulls back and tilts his head to the side. “Som, Daisy, I was with you guys last night,” he trails off, looking to the side as if attempting to recall something he had missed.
Daisy pats Jao’s head, nodding slowly. “Sweet, little Jao,” she says, cooing. “Just take a moment to think about what I mean, hmm?”
If Jao tilts his head any further, he might teeter off the edge of a cliff, so Sky takes pity on him and raises a hand to beckon him over. “Jao, come here,” he calls, patting the seat next to him.
Jao spares one last perplexed look to Som and Daisy before settling down next to Sky, albeit rather cautiously and with little eye contact. It’s in moments like these that Sky must confront a very difficult decision: should he wrap his arm around Jao’s warm middle or should he rest his hand on the back of Jao’s neck?
In the end, because Jao is still squirming nervously beside him, he decides to compromise with himself and instead rub a placating hand on the tender of Jao’s back, a gentle massage. Jao softens almost immediately, though the tips of his ears are still aglow.
Sky memorized Jao’s schedule early on in their relationship, so he is well aware that he and Jao have just under an hour together before Jao must return to Comm Arts, and he to his Engineering lecture. Jao has since pulled out his science notes, a general elective required by his faculty, and as everyone chats animatedly around him, Jao sets to work deciphering what he had once complained to Sky as the cause of the “hurt in his head.”
Sky rests his chin on Jao’s shoulder, his right arm coming to wrap lazily on the opposite crook of Jao’s neck. He points to a set of problems scribbled in the margins of Jao’s messy notes. “Force is equal to…?”
Jao breathes out, once. “Mass by acceleration?”
Sky pinches Jao’s cheek with a proud grin. “Good, Jao!”
Jao suppresses a pleased smile and begins solving the problems on his own; Sky mingles idly with his friends and intervenes in Jao’s studies only when he hears a telltale, frustrated hum. Sky leads him gently through the difficult questions, knowing that only a few weeks ago, Jao likely wouldn’t have even allowed this. It is one of the proudest achievements of Sky’s life, that he was able to win over Jao’s heart, and it isn’t an achievement he takes lightly.
On cloudy days, he can still see a speck of apprehension in Jao’s puppy eyes, a feeling that Jao will perhaps never shake. He sees the doubt in clenched fists, in a twice-bitten lip, in shaking, hunched shoulders. Sky hopes to spend every day relaxing tense fingers, easing lips into smiles, and realigning confidence.
For as long as Sky has known Jao, he’s known Jao both inside and out. No matter how hard he tries to hide himself in his clothes and behind his friends, Jao is as readable as Sky’s favorite novels, and always has been, since the day they met so many weeks ago. Of course, Sky would never admit this to his boyfriend (though he’s sure Jao is aware), but more often than not, he enjoys plucking the strings of Jao’s sensibilities to see how he would react. It had quickly become one of Sky’s favorite pastimes, made even lovelier to simply be in the company of his once-boyfriend-to-be, now-love, and future.
And no, Sky is not being tongue-in-cheek. How could he be, when a significant portion of his favorite pastimes includes sticking his tongue out at Jao? Sky may be an excellent multitasker, but when it comes to Jao, his focus is finite.
Jao is a song and Sky hopes to spend the rest of his life strumming Jao’s melody on his guitar, from the idyllic C major of Jao’s bashful smile to the slow minor chords of Jao’s unease. No note or chord is misplaced or off-key; all are perfectly Jao.
Sky may write a book with his knowledge of everything Jao. He’d publish just one copy and keep it to himself.
At his side, Jao jolts in his seat and startles Sky away from his wayward thoughts. Jao’s cute, pouty lips are agape in disbelief, and as he drops his pencil to the table, he sends a shocked glare across the table to Daisy and Som. Som nudges Daisy with her elbow. “Lightbulb moment,” she says.
Sky snickers but silences himself immediately when Jao turns quickly to redirect his glare toward him instead. He holds his hands up in surrender and tamps down the urge to nip at Jao’s furiously red ears. Around them, their friends are suppressing giggles of their own, though Toh is attempting to silence them with indignant stomps of his feet.
Sky brings Jao’s focus back to his homework with a tap of his finger, just as Som scoffs, “Oi, Toh! Jao isn’t so pure anymore! He has a husband now!”
“You’ve been studying a lot, haven’t you?” Sky mutters, just to Jao. Jao nods, a shy smile on his lips. “Yeah? It shows. You’re improving a lot.”
Jao turns his eyes down to his homework, now nearly complete. He shrugs, noncommittal, but Sky can see the high rise of a grateful blush on the apples of his cheeks. He decides to press his luck, to see how far the blush can spread before it disappears behind strict uniform lines. “Did Daisy say you have something to give me?” he whispers, and tugs on the lapel of Jao’s jacket.
Now, these are the moments Sky revels in the most – the same moments, however, that may put off the publication of his Jao novel for quite some time.
Instead of squeaking out a scandalized, but secretly pleased, “ p’Sky!” like Sky expects him to, or even just staring at him in shock like he’s done in the past, Jao sits up a bit straighter and leans in close to Sky’s side. The tips of his red ears skim the collar of Sky’s crisp button-down. He looks up to Sky beneath long, fluttering lashes.
“It’s a secret for now, p’,” he says, eyes shining in the mid-morning sun. Sky is utterly ensnared. “I’ll show you later.”
Jao regards Sky for a moment longer, likely taking in his stunned expression, before ducking down and turning back to his homework. Not a minute has passed but Sky is completely tipped on his axis.
Sky realizes, just then.
Just as Sky knows Jao –
his moods in the morning and his moods at night, how to construct the perfect string of suggestive and honest words to make Jao blush, how to steal the words from his chest, where he hid his plushies before he trusted Sky enough to reveal them, his relationship to his younger brother and his single mother, down to his favorite song –
too, Jao knows Sky.
He can play Sky as well as Sky plays his guitar.
Sky is reduced to just one word. “Jao.”
Jao closes his notebook and slides it slowly, carefully, into his little backpack. Sky takes the pause to finally look back to his friends, but they are all previously occupied; Fon and Kongkwan are drawing lazy circles on each other’s extended hands, Nuea and Toh are completely stuck in their own world, Tor has advanced upon Som’s flirty eyes, and even Touch has since wandered over at Daisy’s siren songs.
Jao grazes gentle fingertips across Sky’s blazer. He smiles so sweetly his eyes disappear, the same smile Jao saves only for Sky. “p’Sky,” he says. “Can you drive me to my class?”
Sky jumps up, pulling Jao to his feet as well. He grabs both of their bags and slings them across his shoulders, and if his chest puffs just a bit, no one needs to know. “Can’t we skip?” he asks, leading them away from the table and away from the questioning murmurs from their friends.
Jao turns his nose up at the idea. “No way, p’Sky,” he says, and walks quickly to stride ahead of Sky. “You may be graduating this year, but I’m not. I can’t miss classes!”
Sky’s long legs catch up to Jao easily and he slings a possessive arm over Jao’s shoulders, pulling him in tight. “Mmm, exactly,” he teases, gritting his teeth against Jao’s strong resistance. “I’m graduating so there’s no need to study anymore. I’ll provide for you, my angel.”
“Crazy,” Jao mutters, but it’s half-hearted and faint, in such contrast to the soft uptick of his lips. Sky snickers and leads them to his car parked just around the corner, and although it was Jao’s suggestion, he still stiffens at the insistence tug at his shoulders. Sky knows he can’t help it; there is a piece of Jao that must challenge Sky whenever the window of opportunity blows open. And he’ll admit it: Sky enjoys the cut and thrust of their game, and he’d be remiss to forfeit when they are two very willing participants.
The wind tousles Jao’s light hair and it tickles Sky’s neck. When he tears his eyes from Jao’s sweet, pouting face, and looks up and beyond their bubble, he feels, more than he sees, the mid-morning sun peek through the canopy of trees to kiss their skin. The heat hasn’t yet set in, so the warmth weighting into his back is welcome, like a blanket atop him and Jao, and for a moment, Sky pictures waking up on lazy weekends in bed with his Jao; the sun would always be the same and would be with them for every autumn, summer, spring, even winter, as would Jao, as would Sky. A family of birds chirps above them and Sky pulls Jao to a stop to listen. Jao understands – of course he does, his dear Jao – and matches Sky’s wayward gaze. His eyes shine and his little facade drops. He relaxes in Sky’s hold and after a beat, a chitter of birdsong, he sighs and nestles further into Sky’s arms.
“I like you a lot, p’Sky,” Jao murmurs. His eyes slip closed and, as he stands beneath Sky’s protective arm, beneath and all around him, bathed in the light of the day, Sky swears he has never heard or seen anything more beautiful.
“Music to my ears,” Sky says, soft for fear of disrupting the song around them. “I love you, too, Kaojao.”
He looks back down at Jao and is surprised to see Jao already gazing up at him. He offers Jao a little smirk – how could he not? – and in the next moment, Jao is on his toes, and his eyes are slipping shut, and his pink lips are pressing into his.
It’s soft and shy and perfect, perhaps too short. When Jao pulls away and sways on his feet, Sky wraps his arm around Jao’s middle, hopelessly endeared.
“That’s what I wanted to give you,” Jao says, his voice pitched as his eyes refocus on his boyfriend. “I couldn’t wait.”
“I’m so damn glad you didn’t,” Sky says and he leans down, as the birds sing around them, to kiss Jao once more.
