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The right side of the bed is empty when Jerome wakes with a start.
It shouldn’t leave him feeling as rattled as it does – he’s back on his own bed, the walls of his bedroom the only thing welcoming him as his gaze madly searches for the person he intrinsically knows won’t be there.
It’d probably be easier that Jinn isn’t right next to him, where Jerome can make sure he’s unharmed, if he wasn’t on the verge of a panic attack.
When did Jinn’s sheets start to feel more familiar to him than his own?
How much of his sanity has Jerome lost to the visions that the future has become one and the same as the past?
Palm pressed to his chest, he tries to regulate his uneven breathing, air coming in laboured and out shaky, the images of his dreams still playing behind his eyelids each time he blinks.
The sweetness of Jinn, smile wide and eyes twinkling, too quickly faded into another scene of bloody misery, Jerome weeping uncontrollably as he cradled his lifeless lover to his chest, begging the heavens to bring him back and receiving no reply.
A rational part of Jerome knows it isn’t real – the other yells that it isn’t real yet, bound to happen sooner rather than later, in ten years or in a few hours.
Terror grips at his insides anyway, blinking away the tears that linger to his eyelashes as he attempts, to no avail, to send the visions of broken glass and screeching tires back into his head, the only place they should exist in.
The first rays of sunshine creep in from under the curtains, and Jerome knows it’s fruitless to lie back down when sleep will continue to elude him, tossing beneath the sheets the only fate that awaits him until his alarm clock starts to ring.
Tossing the covers off, he ignores the pain that shoots up his injured arm, mind too focused on crossing the street and barging into Jinn’s room to reassure himself no harm has come the other man’s way to care much for the fact that every nerve of him seems to be lit like livewires, wet eyes scrunching shut at the migraine that hits him as soon as he gets to his feet.
Jerome curls his hand around a curtain, to stabilize himself or pull it open to peer into Jinn’s room he isn’t sure, but if it works for both, he won’t complain.
He’s been connected to Jinn for as long as he can recall being alive, of that he’s certain, yet something has undeniably changed – between the visions and Jinn’s feelings coming into the light, Jerome’s own have decided to make themselves known, tumbling out of the box above the wardrobe he never noticed was there, covering him in questions he has no answers for.
What is he meant to make of the mess created in his chest, heartbeat fleeting wildly? How is he supposed to interpret the thoughts racing through his brain?
All these pictures of Jinn playing like a movie in his mind, pictures he knows mingle past and future together to show Jerome that he’ll love Jinn, that he already–
When did it happen? How? What was the exact moment that Jinn saw something in him that made him think Jerome was the one?
In all his no-strings-attached, fleeting moment with other people, Jerome’s never once stopped to think about notions previously ludicrous to him, things like worth and care and attention, knowing he could easily get others to fall for him and then walk away without paying any mind if hearts got broken in the process.
It wasn’t his heart then – it’s Jinn’s now, and suddenly there’s a shift, like a flicker in him Jerome can’t name, can barely describe.
All he knows is that he’s always needed Jinn to pay attention to him, to look at him and find Jerome there, no matter the ire brewing in the other man. All he knows is that what he needs now is for Jinn to see him, read the words that will only be written when they’re different people, pick apart his brain in ways Jerome can’t do.
Has he run out of time before it’s even begun ticking? Has he thought himself so mighty, and fallen down with a single blow?
It’s not a punch and it’s not an insult – it’s a quiet confession, never meant for his eyes, to be found when they’re older, when he’s wiser, and Jerome can do nothing but care, care more than he knows, more than he has the ability to set into words that don’t belong to him, at least not yet.
And Jerome catches himself thinking something he never thought he could, would’ve laughed out loud if he’d been told it would cross his mind and stay there merely a month ago.
But the thought is here, gnawing at his brain, keeping him awake alongside the visions he can’t run away from.
Does he have the right to ask Jinn to stay, to help him unravel the confusion in his glimpses of something, something else, something more than the stalemate they’re in now?
Jerome, always believing himself to have the upper hand, always the winner in their battlefield built for two, watches as it all falls down around them like a house of cards, wondering, for the very first time in his life, if he’s worthy of a love from someone he’s only made to break.
Is it too late to come to a realization years in the making, ponderings he’s only meant to reach years in the future?
Jinn’s window is open, no sign of him in the bedroom, and Jerome can feel his heart kickstart in worry, the sound of crashing cars ringing in his ears, his own sobs echoing back to him.
Shaking his head, he sprints down the stairs two steps at a time, not even remembering that his parents might wake up and come after him, berate him for waking too early and exerting himself when he’s still in a cast.
Whatever.
He can think about himself later.
Now, all he can think of is Jinn.
Is he safe? Is he in pain? Will he even want to talk to Jerome once he finds him?
His feet trace the path out of the house and onto the street on their own, the pounding in Jerome’s head worsening with each hit of his hastily put on sneakers against the pavement, running down the street like his body already knows where it should go, pulling him towards Jinn like he can see the next five seconds as clearly as he sees the ten years to come.
Jinn’s exactly where Jerome expects him to be – sitting on the curb like they’re still in high school, holding his cigarette between the fingers of his right hand as he’s always done, that brown jacket he got from the shop down the street from the ice cream parlour they visited every day from year 4 to graduation lying by his side on the pavement, the furrow of his brows as familiar as if Jerome was looking at his own reflection.
How many little facts about Jinn has he collected like memorabilia through the years, and why did it take so long for Jerome to realise Jinn’s as much a part of him as himself?
How much has he forgotten, taken for granted, that he never should have?
Jerome finds himself unable to forget now – words carved down in the heat of the moment, the baring of Jinn’s soul in ways he never thought he’d see, spin inside his head and leave him dizzy, even more so than the dreams that plague him in his waking and restless hours.
No, not plague.
That’d mean that Jerome has been taken on wrong turns because of them.
Follow, like memories he hasn’t lived through yet, conclusions he now knows that without Jinn, he’d never reach.
He takes the moment when Jinn hasn’t realized he’s here yet to look at him, take in a sight that he’s seen a thousand times before, knows that he’ll come to another million and a half.
Jerome looks at him like he’s seeing Jinn for the very first time, like he’s seeing many versions of Jinn all at once, the past and the present and the future.
If only Jerome understood what he’s feeling now, that is.
If only Jerome manages to keep Jinn by his side.
Have Jinn’s eyes always been this filled with emotions Jerome can’t decipher? Has his hair always been tousled by the wind just so, and his shoes scuffed like that, and the shape of his lips calling for Jerome?
“Are you here to rat me out to my mom?” Jinn’s voice breaks through the revelry, spectres of their future kisses lingering over Jerome’s mouth as if they’ve already happened.
When Jinn turns his gaze towards him, far away in all manners, Jerome suddenly feels small. “When have I ever done that?” he tries to joke, tone sounding stilted to his own ears.
Jinn’s glare still makes him look like an angry little kitten, yet it pierces right through Jerome’s chest now, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to wave off the awkwardness that creeps in through the cracks of his carefully curated façade of aloofness. “I’ve lost count of how many times.”
“You’ve rated me out too,” Jerome points out, wanting to kick himself for even bringing it up, “we’re even.”
Taking a long drag from his cigarette, Jinn looks at him like he wants nothing more than for Jerome to disappear, pretend that they’ve never known each other at all. “Are we? Doesn’t look like it.”
And Jerome knows where all the anger just below the surface comes from, the short glimpses of Jinn’s diary he managed to catch branded into his mind.
Jerome can’t, won’t, will never forget – he’s the reason why Jinn’s pushing him away.
Jinn casts his eyes elsewhere, staring into the distance that sprawls beyond the neighbourhood they’ve lived in their whole lives, and Jerome misses having his gaze on him instantly, perturbed by his indifference in ways he can’t describe.
He needs Jinn to look at him again, to keep looking at Jerome for as long as possible, so he can be certain that nothing will harm Jinn.
So he can be certain he’s still the only one in Jinn’s heart.
Jerome knows he shouldn’t, doesn’t stand within the right to wonder if someone has taken his place, if Jinn still feels the same way he did yesterday, or the day before, or ten years into the future. When Jerome can’t ask for it, can’t beg on his knees for Jinn to see him. Not yet, not here.
But he will, one day. He’s seen it, with eyes that aren’t his, felt it with a heart that’s entirely his own.
When Jerome can ask for it, Jinn will answer.
For now, what he has is the curb they’ve sat on a thousand times before, a pack of cigarettes that Jinn won’t share, and the memories from the future, the glimpses of the past.
The things that Jerome can’t tell him, but will, has already done so.
Steps firm, he makes his way to rest right beside Jinn, feeling the other man’s heavy sigh of displeasure reverberate through his own chest, each inhale from Jinn felt as if the air was coming from Jerome’s lungs into his.
“Aren’t you just going to leave?” Jinn asks, still looking out onto the street with a forlorn expression. “It’s too early.”
“I couldn’t go back to bed,” Jerome tells him the partial truth, withholding the fact that he knows he wouldn’t be able to sleep again if he didn’t come after Jinn, didn’t quieten the voices telling him that something got to Jinn before he did.
You and I both know I can’t stay away from you, don’t we? he wants to say, to be honest for once about the brewing feelings taking a hold of his heartbeats, but the words get stuck, too much in his mind to allow them to come out before Jerome can fully understand the weight of what he means.
“I won’t rat you out,” he says instead, throat tightening enough that Jerome feels like he’s chocking on the secrets he’s keeping inside.
“Good,” Jinn replies, cigarette brought up again. There’s a minute flicker of his eyes in Jerome’s direction, likely to be missed if Jerome wasn’t staring at him as if incapable of looking away. “Then why are you here?”
“I just…” Jerome isn’t sure how to explain it, the pull that keeps bringing him to stand in front of Jinn every time, not when he’s just begun to acknowledge that it’s there, that maybe it’s always been there, and he just hadn’t noticed it – or was stopping himself from doing so. “I just want to talk.”
“About?”
The question puts Jerome on the spot – there are far too many things he wants to tell Jinn about, menial nothings of his life, the all-encompassing changes that seeing the future, their future, has brought into his reality, the thoughts running through his brain as soon as he wakes, when he’s trying to forget the visions at 3 AM on a Wednesday.
Jinn’s the first person he wants to talk to in the mornings, the last person he wants to see before bed, the only one he wants to tell everything about himself.
Would it be too much to call him all the time? Would it be too much if he said that no one’s ever made him feel so anxious to see them, just to say that he’s happy or sad or tired or that he really wants Jinn to come with him to the ice cream parlour, just this once?
Jerome’s pretty sure he’s going mad. Jerome’s pretty sure he’s falling–
“I don’t know,” he says, the smoke sprawling around them in the early morning air. It looks too much like a scene from a whole lifetime ago, too much like a moment they’re yet to share. “How’s your project going?”
That’s what makes Jinn turn back to him, incredulity clear in the way he glares at Jerome like he’s lost his mind. “Really?” he scoffs, another drag of his cigarette lingering between them. “You got out of your house at fuck o’clock in the morning to sit on the curb with me and ask about my project?”
“You don’t want to talk about the thing I want to talk about,” Jerome admits, the diary still in his brain, despite Jinn’s pleading for him to forget it.
How is Jerome supposed to do that? How is he meant to simply cast aside the fact that Jinn’s feelings are real, as real as the reverberations each action he takes now will have in the life they’ll live with each other one day?
How is he meant to pretend that his world hasn’t turned downside up, rippling through the connection that has always existed between them and lighting up the hidden corners of Jerome’s heart?
“We’re not having this conversation,” eyes rolling, Jinn snarls back, too quick on his feet to get up.
But Jerome can’t let him go, can’t stay away from him, reaching for his wrist as if on instinct, heat spreading from the fingertips that meet Jinn’s skin and up his arm, burning as if he’s just been branded.
Jinn refuses to meet his gaze, but if he didn’t, it’s likely he’d see Jerome begging with only his eyes for him to stay. It’s a loss that he doesn’t see it, but a win that he doesn’t tug his arm away, seating back down.
Scouring through his brain, Jerome wonders what he should say now, something that might make Jinn look at him again, even if in anger, even if Jinn wants to tell him to fuck off all the way back into his own house.
No, he can’t have Jinn hate him now. He can’t have Jinn walk away and leave him alone.
When he asks, he needs Jinn to answer.
Jerome can’t have Jinn and he can’t not have Jinn and the blurring lines between what’s his and what’s his future are bound to drive him crazy, but he doesn’t care.
It’s all him, it’s all Jerome and the love that will grow, the love that exists so far into the past, he isn’t sure when it began. It’s all Jerome and the feelings he has right now, because it wasn’t his heart then, but it is his heart now, and it’s Jinn’s.
“Do you remember that class competition in year 8?” he blurts out without meaning to, but it’s more than worth it, to once again follow the flow thoughtlessly, to find that with Jinn, he’s never had to hide.
Because a small smile twitches at the corner of Jinn’s lips, fleeting but still there, and it ignites something inside Jerome, flames that flicker like the end of Jinn’s cigarette, and then those eyes.
Brown like melted chocolate, sparkly with the amusement Jerome regrets not being the reason behind before.
Jinn’s eyes are beautiful, and Jerome never wants them to turn away from him.
“What,” Jinn breathes out, a hint of a laugh, a pang in Jerome’s chest, “the one where I beat your ass?”
Jerome can’t hold back his own grin, biting down on his bottom lip to keep at bay for long enough to see that spark rise in Jinn’s gaze. “Let’s say you did that–”
“Are you admitting defeat, Khun Jerome?” Jinn interrupts him, and Jerome can’t even find in himself the fight to quip back at him, not when Jinn’s smile grows, not when Jinn looks at him like he too can see the future, see Jerome sitting by his side, see Jerome the way Jerome sees him.
What compels him to be entirely truthful right now, Jerome doesn’t know – what he does know is that he must do so, as if something awful will happen if he doesn’t. “If it’ll make you smile like that, then yeah, sure. I lost.”
Jinn blinks at him, confusion etched into each line of his face, brows furrowed as his lips turn downwards. Jerome wants to reach out and press his thumb to his forehead, undo his frown, yet keeps his hands firmly to his sides, an invisible line on the curb he dares not cross.
Their knees still bump against each other, though, the warmth of Jinn felt through the fabric of his pants on Jerome’s cold bare knee, and Jerome’s grateful for this single point of contact, a tether to keep him in the present where he needs to be now.
Swallowing hard, Jinn looks down at his own feet, shoes scuffing against the pavement as he taps his cigarette, ashes falling. “What about that competition?”
It takes a second for Jerome to remember what they were talking about before, fingers itching to light a cigarette for himself and distressing when he doesn’t take up to their demands. “We went out for chips after,” he recalls, watching Jinn puff out more smoke.
“Are you going to remind me that I spilled dip on my new pants?” Jinn groans, letting his head fall back as he leans on one arm, staring up at the sky as the morning rolls over them.
“I didn’t say that,” Jerome smirks to himself, looking at Jinn while Jinn looks at the rising sun. It’s so new and still so familiar to think that they’re one and the same. “And you spilled dip on my pants,” he adds, pointing to his chest.
“That’s true!” Jinn lights up at that, head lolling to the side so he can beam, as bright as sunlight, at Jerome.
He doesn’t deserve this, does he? He doesn’t deserve to have Jinn smile this sweetly, or open up his memories to Jerome, or have a Jerome-shaped vacancy right next to him on the curb or the floor of his bedroom.
And yet.
As Jinn brings the cigarette up for another drag, the bud almost burnt out, Jerome can’t help but follow the movement with fascination. Having quit mere weeks ago, he remembers what it tasted like, the void relief he’d feel with a cigarette between his fingers.
Briefly, he wonders if it’d taste any different on Jinn’s lips.
“Why do you smoke?” he says out loud, eyes glued to the way Jinn’s fingers curl around the burning end. Jinn doesn’t need a reason, and Jerome doesn’t have the right to know.
With a shrug, Jinn drops the cigarette, stepping on it to extinguish the flame before picking the bud back up. “I don’t know.” Shoulder bumping against Jerome’s, he seems to gather himself from the sudden contact, looking as rattled as Jerome feels as he asks, “Why did you quit?”
Jerome knows he can’t tell him it’s because in ten years’ time, he won’t be smoking anymore, so he chooses the next best answer. “Someone told me it won’t help me sleep.”
Jinn shakes his head, fiddling with his lighter like it’s second nature to do. “You quit before that.”
Fighting back the urge to cover Jinn’s hand with his own, Jerome sees something in the back of his head – not a vision, but an actual recollection, something that is their and not their future’s, and he’s filled with a sudden need to tell Jinn about his night troubles, or at least some of them. “I just thought I should stop. I’ve been having a hard time falling asleep lately. And staying asleep, too.”
“Why?” And the worry in Jinn’s eyes is too familiar for Jerome to not feel a painful grip around his heart at the sight of it. He saw it as Jinn pounded on the windows of his car after the accident, and he saw it in the moment Jinn thought he wasn’t looking, and he’ll see it when he trips during a date and scrapes his knee, Jinn fondly berating him for not looking at he’s going.
I’d rather look at you, he’ll reply, pulling Jinn into a kiss when he’s shoved away.
“I keep thinking…” About you, his brain unhelpfully supplies. “I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Did you tell the doctors about that?”
Laughing softly, Jerome stares at his own hands like they’ll somehow offer the solution to his troubles. “I don’t think the doctors can help me with this.”
Eyes rolling, Jinn pockets the lighter, his lips curled in something Jerome can’t define. “You’re such a stubborn dickhead.”
But Jerome wants to decipher it, to understand all the bits and pieces that make Jinn who he is. To know why he never noticed his heart has been on the lines that separate them, why Jerome never saw that his own lies between them.
“Yeah,” he breathes out, “I am.”
Jinn gazes at him with parted lips, the scent of minty cigarettes clinging to his clothes, to the brown jacket he got years ago and still wears despite it not quite fitting him anymore, and Jerome wonders what it’d take to mend the distance that he created between them when Jinn has never been the one to walk away.
Jerome is, always running.
Jerome can’t be anymore, sitting here like it’ll somehow change the future he’s seemingly unable to stop seeing.
Because he can love Jinn in the next ten years, the next ten seconds, but he can’t save Jinn, and it’s killing him.
He can’t save Jinn, he can’t save himself, yet what he can do is make sense out of the mess of his feelings, so Jinn gets only the best of him, not the version of Jerome held within rage-induced lines on the pages of a diary.
The real Jerome, with his broken fingers and his stubbornness to make things right and his heart, crossing the invisible barriers that keep Jinn here and a thousand miles away at the same time.
Unable to tell what’s in Jinn’s mind, he’s left to ponder what exists in the recesses of his own, the thoughts that belong to past Jerome and future Jerome coalescing into whoever present Jerome is, Jinn’s friend and enemy and possible lover, in ways not even he can delineate.
“Ask what you want to ask,” Jinn whispers, tentatively, as if afraid that saying it too loudly will make the whole world hear what’s for Jerome’s ears only.
A corner of Jerome’s lips lifts, thinking to himself that Jinn sounds so much like future Jinn when his voice goes soft like this, like he already knows about Jerome’s feelings when he hasn’t put the pieces of them together to see the whole picture. “Not yet,” he mumbles. “Not until I’m sure. It’s the least you deserve.”
Eyebrows scrunching together, Jinn stares him up and down with suspicion. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Jerome knocks their knees together again, hands resting on his lap. “I’ll figure it out soon, don’t worry.”
It doesn’t quell the sceptical look in Jinn’s eyes, but they’re glinting again, and Jerome takes it as a victory if there’s any. “Since when are you like this?”
“Like what?”
Jinn takes a moment to reply, a deep inhale before he says, almost like he doesn’t want to admit it, “Thoughtful.”
The questions return to Jerome’s mind in full force, as if he could ever outrun them. Can Jinn see him? Is there still time?
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know yet,” he ruffles Jinn’s hair, uncaring for the slap he receives for it, “Nong Jinn.”
“Fuck you,” Jinn spits out, though his voice doesn’t sound as angry as he probably wanted it to, shoving Jerome away and flipping him a middle finger as the taller man pretends to be harmed by it, paying no mind to the dirt from the pavement he’ll get onto his pyjamas as he lies there.
From his spot on the ground, he allows himself to openly gaze at Jinn, hit with a serene vision of himself doing the same in the middle of their living room, lying on the hardwood floor with the fans turned to maximum power as the heat clings to their skin, Jinn sitting next to him with a huge bowl of strawberry ice cream in his hands.
He can’t fully make out what future Jinn is saying, something about work he thinks, but he knows he won’t be blamed for not really paying attention, Jinn’s giggles as Jerome pulls himself up to kiss him on the lips still ringing in his ears as he returns to the present, Jinn standing over him with his hand held out.
“We’re gonna be late for breakfast,” he explains, pointedly avoiding Jerome’s eyes.
Clasping Jinn’s hand with his own, Jerome hauls himself up, stumbling slightly and regaining his footing to come face to face with the shorter man.
They’re so close, he swears he can smell the scent of Jinn’s toothpaste underneath the smoke, the shampoo that lingers on his soft hair.
“Last to get home has to do laundry?” he proposes to break himself out of this haze made entirely of Jinn, sprinting away before the other even has a chance to respond.
“J!” Jinn calls out behind him, the sounds of his shoes hitting the pavement reverberating through the street alongside their laughter. “Jerome, you asshole!”
Jerome has never felt freer, and he knows there’s more to come.
When he asks, Jinn will answer.
When he knows, Jinn will be the first thing he’ll see.