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I am not him, Phuwin thinks to himself.
From the corner of his eyes, he can see the floating cameras, the crowd, the flash of spotlight steady and hard over them—him and Pond. In his periphery, he knows every inch of this stage, every step he needs to make after they say their goodbyes, the steps they already walked while singing. Songs. Music. Phuwin’s brain empty of everything.
And Pond says I love you.
His eyes are familiar, like Phuwin’s home, and there are traces of tears still brimming in them. He’s the same man and a stranger; a friend and an acquaintance; a partner and a face; he’s everything Phuwin wanted once, so desperately, and everything Phuwin still does. But Phuwin is not nineteen anymore—years passed him through, ran him over like a blade, put gapes and holes in him that’ve drained the flesh from his bones. Phuwin doesn’t want Pond anymore, not like that, not like fingers curled in bedsheets at night, locked up in his room, heart beating nervously, scared out of his mind but braving through it. Always braving through it.
He used to want to hear it all the time: I love you. From Pond’s mouth, and eyes. He wanted to see it, wanted to claw it off and wear it like a mask, wanted to hold it at freezing temperatures. He used to drive himself insane playing with the fantasies in his head, a younger time, a more carefree time, a time when Pond seemed distant in the way kindness does. The universal, the good, the coveted name on every pair of lips. Not personalized to Phuwin’s tastes until he suddenly was—Phuwin saw him more and more, and the films started separating from the bedrock, and the mist lifted from the lake. The vague attractive idea of Pond in Phuwin’s head became real.
And what is reality?—Phuwin envelops Pond in a hug, drowning in his long white overcoat and his three-piece and his finery—Something you can touch? Something you can see? Here, this, Phuwin holding Pond, everyone witnessing it, everyone in on it, is this real? Is this not?
Or maybe reality demands a certain secrecy. A certain unspeakable, untold, unfathomable piece of fiction, or fantasy, or outrage, that completes the logic. Maybe real is when Phuwin saw Pond giving the cold shoulder to someone for the first time, and was afraid; or when Pond accidentally hit him, and Phuwin knew that it hurt so much because Pond was stronger than most people; or when he told Pond he was anxious and exhausted, and Pond didn’t say anything sympathetic in return; or when they both reached for a water bottle at the same time, their hands brushed, and Pond didn’t let go of it until someone appeared with a camera, recorder on.
It's a flood. It’s so much. Half-remembered moments, incoherent late-night talks, tired gestures, gossipy glances, shared laughter, shared sobs. Phuwin recalls the easiest those moments that he regrets the most: him snapping at Pond for a whole week; not picking up Pond’s calls until Pond got so worried he crashed Phuwin’s condo; that one weekend when he locked himself in his bedroom for hours, making music, and forgot that Pond was on the other side, waiting to watch a movie. A neglectful Phuwin. A clingy Phuwin. And now, it seems that he’s reached an impasse between the two, and become a third thing, an entirely new monster.
He used to be all about Pond when they were together, always wanting to be close to him, closer, until there were no justifications left in the world. He wanted to blur the lines because he was foolish enough to think that he would be happier that way. He wanted this right here—Pond looking him in the eyes, five years of history behind them, making a new history by telling him I love you, not for service, and Can I hug you? And Phuwin would be a fucking idiot to say no, and a cruel one at that, so now they’re hugging, Pond’s tears are on his clothes, and he imagines what they feel like on his bare skin. Pond’s slightly thicker voice at his shoulder, his full fragile weight leaning into Phuwin’s fortress, and Phuwin telling him I know, I know, I know…
Backstage, when they’re left alone for a bit to freshen up and gather themselves, Pond turns to Phuwin again, smiling in that secret mythical way that none of their fans would ever get to see in this reality, and draws Phuwin into his arms again. Phuwin closes his eyes, breathes. Pond is warm, and smells of Versace Eros and makeup products. He smells cluttered, expensive, performative. Phuwin is bracing himself to hear another I love you, but then the embrace breaks, and Pond draws back just enough to give Phuwin room to breathe. He looks into Phuwin’s eyes, softer now, his voice matching his gaze as he says, “I love you.”
I am not him, Phuwin reminds himself. But he thinks it might be too late: his body is flushed, heat waves in his pulse, and his fingers dig harder into Pond’s arms one either side to stop the little tremor that goes through him anyway. I don’t want this, but his lips are parted, and he can’t look away, he’s magnetized to Pond’s stare, he’s stuck. I don’t like him anymore, and yet, he makes an age-old mistake, his eyes dropping to Pond’s lips, skidding back up, catching the knowing glint in Pond’s eyes, and then dropping back down again, helpless, a little more panicked. Not like that.
Reality spreads its insolent debris beneath his feet, and all Phuwin can do is inhale through his slightly open mouth—on the verge of heaving—stricken—elated. The lack of an answer is in itself an answer reflected in Pond’s warm brown eyes, lit up as if a sheet of soil on a bed of burning coals. Phuwin thought he was growing up, done with his first love, done entertaining the childish romances in his own head, proud to be a graduate of those emotions, a conqueror of old bygone yearning when Pond’s older-brother gaze was the kind of love he wanted to replace with some other kind. He thought it was a phase, and he’d outgrown it, or maybe love was also energy and energy is never destroyed or created, only transformed. He thought his cup was full and the overspill would be for someone else to mop up. He thought he was somebody else’s now, just because he was no longer Pond’s.
He is not that Phuwin. Phuwin is not that Phuwin. He’s simply an older one of that same Phuwin, and turns out his clear-cut boundaries and emotions were never as solid as he thought. He’s managed to build a tower from the inside and now he can’t get out; he put his hand into drying cement, and he forgot it’s not clay-doh. Phuwin forgot what it was like … to want Pond, and now he’s starting to remember. Unfair. He wants to shout at the top of his lungs—unfair.
He’s not been outgrowing or transforming anything, he’s just been nursing it in silence, and letting it grow on his walls and meld with the architecture. Phuwin realizes with some horror that he never stopped liking Pond like that—he’s been waiting for Pond. This has been a waiting. A seat in one of the chairs outside the doctor’s office, a slump against a wall under the shed from torrential rain, a patient grip on the phone before the numbers turn to a safe-charged zone. A waiting that is so enduring that it appears dead but flinches at the first sign of sunlight. A waiting so deep that Phuwin didn’t even know he was waiting. A waiting that feels like a betrayal when it comes to fruition. A waiting that is actually a rekindling, a do-over, a new page. Because Phuwin is not nineteen anymore, and this doesn’t feel like what it used to at nineteen, this feels like nothing Phuwin’s ever felt before and yet somehow exactly the same.
Pond lets go—unhurried, gentle, almost more passionately than when he hugged him—palms sliding down Phuwin’s waist, circling past his hips, fingers gliding on the velvet shirt, savoring, as the distance between their bodies restores to normal room temperatures. Leaving Phuwin burning like a candle in the middle of the room.
“Love you too,” Phuwin manages around the lump in his throat. His voice breaks a little, puberty recycled in more ways than one, and he withdraws his hands from Pond’s arms in little sipping glances between the floor and Pond’s molten smile.
Maybe not giving a verbal answer is too exposing; maybe he’s reverting to old habits because he’s scared. He’s not nineteen anymore, and he’s certainly not as foolish as he used to be, and he’s no longer daydreaming about Pond in inappropriate ways, no, which is why he can’t be unafraid and blithe. Five years, Phuwin repeats it to himself like a mantra. Five years.
There were times when Phuwin’s personal feelings for Pond were bigger, and times where his professional feelings were bigger, but now Phuwin has a new dilemma before him, one that’s rapidly revealing itself to be deep-rooted, deeper than he thought: is this personal or professional? Both, a voice in his head says. Phuwin wants to punch something.
He looks at Pond’s face and feels his blood rise to his cheeks faster and hotter than before. He’ll know what that knowing look means on Pond even with his eyes closed. As if Pond is already in his head, whether Phuwin likes it or not, and he can see everything that Phuwin would consider childhood trinkets: useless but sentimentally valuable. It’s not judgement, but acknowledgement—in a way only Pond can, Phuwin is seen and accepted, and not commented on. Almost as if he’s in no hurry, because he can see the destination, and he knows he’ll make the journey with Phuwin.
Great. Phuwin’s gone back to being delusional again—just like when he was nineteen. Fucking great.
(Almost as if he’s waiting for Phuwin, like Phuwin waited for him.)