Work Text:
Turns out Phuwin knows him.
So maybe he had visited the diner one too many times to confirm his suspicions, but that had mostly been a trick of the rushed city life—always telling you what to think, how to think, and how much. When, where, how, and then also assuring you that you know best, of course, you do. So maybe Phuwin had thought he knew best, and then he’d pretended to hang around the diner more often to catch another glimpse of that ghostly familiar face that had managed to slip into the cracks of his city-life rush so thoroughly, so easily—it was nearly offending how easily.
He looks familiar, and Phuwin knows that is not a great excuse to give to anyone since the people’s republic of the world stopped selling them dreams, like cartoons to children, but Phuwin cannot offer any more than this meagre grown-up fantasy. He looked familiar that one time Phuwin saw him: drinking by the bar of the diner, almost criminally underappreciated in a black shirt and washed-out jeans.
A face that makes you ache: alternative reality in the lines of its familiarity.
He had made Phuwin curious, turned him cautious, too calculating, too inconclusive, but he’d wanted to look at him one more time—just one more time, he’d told himself, because Phuwin knows where the line is, knows when to stop.
Pond is a friend of a friend, popping up here and there on somebody’s feed, somebody’s story, somebody’s free-floating video clip lost in the connections of the world wide web, getting tangled up with Phuwin’s. Now, as Phuwin watches him stumble through the road crossing, likely drunk, the line of his shoulders a telling marker as well the unsteady sway of his feet occasionally too obvious, he wants nothing more than to retrace this familiar stranger’s steps back to the diner and pay his bills. That’s a strange thought: Phuwin tries to not be extravagant in his spending, but that’s what he’d like to do, and then maybe call a cab for this man—make sure he gets home safe.
As soon as it’s clear that Pond is going to cross the road without breaking any bones, Phuwin turns to leave. He waves at the bus approaching from the opposite direction, but not with his hands, his eyes are enough to do the gesture and to make a point. The bus slows down just enough to let him run and climb up, and then he’s off. He doesn’t look back.
On his way home, he thinks of nothing. His work is done and his curiosity should be sated, and he wonders how much of his own actions count against the tally of lucky mistakes and coincidences of the universe. He doesn’t have a good answer. He knows that he doesn’t need one.