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When Wave walks into the Gifted classroom one afternoon, Pang’s seat is empty.
This is not anything out of the ordinary.
For a while, it had been ordinary; Pang having had no recollection of the way Wave’s heartbeat thundered under his thumbs that time he had grabbed his arm and ordered him to shut down the code meant to expose the Gifted Program to the world.
Likewise, the rest of the class had had to pretend that the seat beside Ohm’s had always been empty, and not occupied by the biggest, most magnanimous presence Wave has ever known.
There is no need for all that pretending anymore.
Pang returns to their ranks one afternoon, all part of a carefully crafted plan, and all is right again. Then there was Time, and his plan to bring back the Gifted Program, and then Director Supot and the media conference, and Pang as a fugitive, and then there is now.
Pang and Wave, Wave and Pang.
Two idiots infected with NYX-88 for each other, applying for university, finishing homework, and going to class together. Their new ordinary.
But for all his proclivity for lectures and knowing everything there is to know about anything, Pang has never been good at this whole “school” thing. More often than not, especially considering that Wave is usually the first person in the classroom everyday, Pang’s seat is left empty until about 5 minutes before the bell goes and lessons start.
So Wave doesn’t worry too much when he doesn’t see his overexcitable best friend in his usual seat.
But when class has gone on for 20 minutes and Khru Pom is looking at the desk where Pang is supposed to be and simply isn’t, Wave begins to worry.
That is out of the ordinary.
What’s even more out of the ordinary, is that when Wave lets himself into their room during lunch, he is just lying there on the floor, unmoving.
The first thing that comes to Wave is pure, unbridled panic.
He drops everything he’s holding, and for the first time ever, doesn’t care about the fact that Pang’s socks are lying haphazardly on the arm of his chair, doesn’t care that the rice he’d bought for Pang is spilling out the side of its box and onto the floor, doesn’t pay attention to the way his heart threatens to beat right out of his chest, and instead falls to his knees beside Pang’s prone form, and begins shaking him back to life.
“Fuck– Pang– Are you dead? Did you fucking forget to take your meds? Do I need to call Director Supot?” He shouts. “PANG.”
Pang twitches.
He sits up with a groan, then grabs Wave’s hands. He looks miserable, but more in the “kicked puppy” sort of way and less in the “brains got scrambled because of a brain-eating virus” sort of way.
“Do you ever wonder,” he says in lieu of an explanation, “if you’re homophobic?” Pang squints at something beyond Wave’s shoulder. “Did you spill fried rice on the floor?”
And that.
That is Wave’s last straw.
Fuck this new ordinary.
After Wave has sufficiently shouted the anger out of his system, and after Pang has returned from the cafeteria with two new bags of takeout swinging from his hands, they sit cross-legged on the roof together and talk about Pang lying on the floor like a corpse.
“It’s just,” Pang says flippantly, as if it is an everyday thing to be scaring the shit out of your best friend by pretending to be dead on the floor when you both are infected by an incredibly dangerous, fatal, brain-eating virus, “Do you ever look at two people who you’re certain that they’re gay and just, you know, get mad that they are the way they are?”
Wave, who is pretty sure that he has feelings for Pang, crosses his fingers and prays that he’s heard him wrong. He thinks of all the things he could say, like Pang, are you homophobic? to Pang, I like you so much it’s hard to breathe and even Pang, shut up, I’m 50% sure you’re gay.
“Pang, what the fuck?” is what comes out instead.
To his credit, Pang doesn’t look like he was expecting any other response. He shrugs. “I was watching a show last night,” he says and raises his eyebrows at Wave. “You know, the show.”
Wave raises an eyebrow in response. “What?”
“The show.”
“What show.”
“The one I’ve been watching!” Pang protests, pointing his spoon at Wave. Wave bats it aside with an unimpressed frown. “I know you know what show I’m talking about because you were watching it over my shoulder yesterday!”
“Did you skip class for that?” Wave asks incredulously. “To watch some American show about disasters and firefighters and police?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Pang acquiesces, and the ridiculity of the situation hits them then like a sack of bricks, and they turn away from each other to laugh into their food.
It does feel a little useless, in the grand scheme of things, to be worrying about turning up to class on time with the looming shadow of NYX-88 existing like a ticking timebomb in their brains. But it’s good in a way, Wave surmises, to be able to be alive in the first place to fuss about little things like this.
Pang’s just begun to dig into his food again when Wave nudges him in the shoulder. “So? The show?”
“The show!” Pang says around a mouthful of food, like the absolute heathen he is. “The show, Wave! It’s infuriating!”
Wave regards him bemusedly. “Why, because the main characters are gay?”
“Yes!” Pang pauses to consider for a moment. “Well, not really,” he explains a beat later, “I have nothing against gay people. I’m gay.” He spreads his arms wide and thumps himself on the chest with a closed fist not unlike a gorilla. “Grawr,” he says, just to emphasise his point.
Wave holds back a snort, and tries not to focus too hard on the 50% of him that had been right.
“Okay, so what about these gay main characters make you mad?”
“It’s that they’re gay,” Pang says, entirely not helping his case, “but that they’re not.”
That literally makes no fucking sense, but it’s Pang, who never makes sense until he’s making way too much sense. Wave has learnt to just roll with it until he reaches the point of coherence.
“Uh-huh,” is what Wave settles on in the end. This seems to satisfy Pang, who soldiers on with his rant.
“It’s like they’re gay, but they’re not supposed to be, and it’s so frustrating,” he groans. “They’re partners in the field, and they spend all their time with each other off work. They’re best friends, and they’re in love with each other, I swear.”
“Just because they’re close friends doesn’t mean they have to be gay,” Wave says, “Look at us. We’re best friends, but it doesn’t mean we’re in love.”
Pang’s mouth does something funny, and Wave thinks he’s just about to agree, but he shakes his head and the expression is wiped from his face so quickly he starts to wonder if he’s imagined it.
“You don’t get it,” Pang tells him impatiently, “They’re in love. They tell each other they’re in love every day. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Wave asks disbelievingly. “What do you mean, sort of?”
“They say it, but they don’t really say it,” Pang says, his mouth set in a serious little line.
His eyebrows are drawn so tight that anyone walking in on their conversation would be wont to assume they were plotting something against Ritdha again, but alas, their hands are tied.
Debating this American show and their gay-not-gay couple will have to do.
“He’s not a guest at his house, Wave. He tried to claw him out of the ground with his bare hands when he was buried alive. He dragged him out of harm's way with an active sniper. They coparent his child together. He’s in his will as the kid’s legal guardian.” Pang’s eyes have gone a little crazy. “Is that not love, declared in a million different ways?”
“I mean, I guess,” Wave says lamely, and tries not to think too hard about the love he’s declared in a million different ways. “But have either of them just said ‘I love you’ to the other? So there’s no confusion about the fact that, y’know, they’re the one for each other?”
Pang squints. “I mean, probably? I didn’t keep track.”
“If they don’t declare it then you won’t ever know for sure. They could be gay, they could not be gay.” Wave shrugs. “That’s Hollywood for you.”
“How would you do it?”
Pang tilts his head back at Wave, and blinks his doe-eyes guilelessly at him.
His fringe is getting long now, and with his neck bent at this angle, there are strands falling into his eyes that Wave’s fingers itch with the urge to sweep away and let his touch linger there, for a heartbeat into forever. But this has never been about what Wave wants, so his fingers stay put.
“Do what?”
There is something tense in the air between them now.
Sometimes it happens, when Pang and Wave are alone, and Pang looks at him like– like that, and Wave just wants, desperately. It doesn’t happen often enough to be a part of their new ordinary, so Wave is never prepared when the tension between them stretches tight enough to snap like a rubber band; something tender, tremulous. And he is always swept off his feet by it like driftwood in the ocean, untethered and surrendering to the whims of the waves.
“Tell someone you love them.”
Wave swallows around the lump in his throat. “What?”
“You said that we wouldn’t ever know if they loved each other unless either of them declared their love outright,” Pang says slowly, “So how would you do it? Tell someone you love them, that is.”
“I’d just say it, I guess,” Wave pushes at his glasses, his sweat already beginning to cause them to slide down his nose. “This isn’t exactly Hollywood."
Pang hums.
His eyes are bright, and he seems to look right through Wave instead of at him. His food lies forgotten on the table. He blinks at Wave, slow and languid, and waits for him to finish.
“I’ve said it,” Wave continues quietly, “Before, that is. I’ve said it before.”
“I know,” Pang says.
Wave looks at him and knows that he’s thinking of that day.
The day where they’d looked at each other with their souls bared, where Pang had glared fiercely at him, anger covering up for the fear brewing beneath the surface and asked Did you inject yourself with the virus? and he’d looked Pang in the eye, with desperation and frustration and love, of all things, bubbling to the surface and declared maybe I am stupid, for never giving up on you.
Could you tell? Wave thinks of asking, Could you tell that I love you?
“Yeah?” He asks, in the end.
“Yeah,” Pang echoes, smiling, and the tension dissipates.
He flicks a grain of rice from the edge of his styrofoam takeout box onto Wave’s dark green jacket, Wave spits curses as he tries to sweep it off his sleeve, and their new ordinary comes rushing back in, all at once.
Later, when Wave offers to follow Pang to any university of his choosing, they both pretend they don’t know what his words mean beneath the teasing push-and-pull of their banter.
After all, love is declared in a million different ways.