Work Text:
The reason was, in simplest answer, gravity.
It caused waves, the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon on the oceans as Newton explained.
The reason, adding science, seemed comprehensible. But the metaphor of gravity and its pull became Tongrak’s dilemma as a person enslaved by the words he himself wrote about.
As he witnessed the sunrises and sunsets on this island, the ocean rendering peace for moments he wanted to recreate in his romance novels, Tongrak didn’t imagine spending them with a person whose gravity he couldn’t get out of.
Mahasamut, the sea, the ocean. A name where the sun and moon set to divide days and nights, where gravity resided to create waves and splashes Tongrak tried to ignore but couldn’t.
The first time he saw him, a true island boy—no, a man, despite the years between them—with skin kissed by the sun a hundred times, and with a deep set pair of eyes holding his own past and secrets, Tongrak thought of him as another passing fancy. A pretty face and toned body, exactly how he liked his bed partners to have— Tongrak fell into his attraction as expected. But he kept on falling; the gravity lulled him into a place he found comfort to heal his scars, into the arms of a person who kept on pulling and pulling his heartstrings.
(He thought his heart was steeled by the times he built the walls of the fortress it sat in. But these goddamn strings…they were helpless from Mut’s nagging.)
It was infuriating. Mut was infuriating. And so Tongrak told himself he wouldn’t choose him (again), wouldn’t choose this gravity where the end seemed nowhere, just an infinite path like the ocean’s endless series of waves.
But.
Today wasn’t the day to decide. The sun was setting, the moon was helpless to meet its star-crossed lover, and Tongrak let himself be pulled by Masahamut whose hand was warm against his palm.
(His dysfunctional heartstrings began to create chaos inside his chest.)
“Isn’t it beautiful, Khun?” Mut asked, the sea breeze carried the sound of his voice.
Tongrak wanted to say that all sunsets were beautiful. And even if some weren’t, he could romanticize them with his words. He was a writer, it shouldn’t be hard.
When Mut looked back at him, he continued.
“I love how the sunsets make your eyes more beautiful.”
Tongrak swallowed his answer and wished he was a different person—without complexities and with a heart unbroken for him to smile without hesitation.
He wished, despite science and the art of words, that he could let this hand hold his heart and keep it safe. He wanted to love, like his name, as free as the ocean.
For now, Tongrak settled on the silence that followed, his fingers curling with Mut’s a little bit tighter. And as darkness cloaked the sky, covering the ocean and hiding his beating heart, Tongrak yearned.