HYSM

Twelve

'The cold, hard, light of day'.

After the magnificent, glowing amber flames of midnight passions, everything can look so different in the morning, Mew knew. So when his eyes jolted open to the harsh buzzing of his phone alarm, he thought he was prepared. With last rational thoughts before sleeping, he had braced himself for that - pulled up the castle drawbridge and filled the moat with dark, guarded, alligator infested waters.

Even by the time the elder man had returned from his shower the previous night - somewhat reluctantly rinsing and soaping the scent of Gulf and sweet cherries from his lips and skin - the younger had already retreated, stonily, back to his own bed. He was lying on his side facing away to the wall, duvet pulled all the way up to his battened eyes. Out of Mew's reach once again: A silent, forbidden territory, ironically impenetrable.

Mew warned his heart then, as his moat widened and deepened, that he would awake to an empty room - and indeed he did, as he rubbed at bleary, weary eyes. Just emptiness there - in the room around, and then within.

Because ultimately, even knowing that the thing is coming, doesn't make dreaded hurt sting any the less.

The closeness with which they had seemed united in those moments, as they had opened themselves up. The emotions that had fizzed there at the surface as Gulf cried out Mew's name, needing him so desperately. The way he had clung to him in the seconds after climax, grasped so tightly in his arms that Mew worried the younger man would crack a rib. Yet all just...nothing?

The elder felt an unnatural sort of hopeless rage begin to uncoil within. Like a hibernating snake, expertly camouflaged through all of his patient acceptance and understanding of Nong's confusion, but now rising with freshly acquired pain and bleeding heart to hiss out the question that Mew had long buried deep within the mangrove roots of his soul:

'Why am I not enough?'

Rare tears distorted his vision then, and for the first time in a long time, Mew didn't possess even the energy to stamp down his own feelings or daydream them wistfully away. So he just let the pitiful rain fall, trailing in stormy torrents down the man's cheeks as he succumbed to all of those years of unspoken, broken, jagged anger and frustration, gasping for breath amidst blows of stabbing hopelessness.

Because it was better that than just the exterior and reflective interior emptiness, actually. With cascading emotion came a cathartic cleansing and the potential for renewed strength to face the world, and Gulf, once again. With emptiness, there was only the stagnant paralysis and isolation of nothingness - where at one point there had been something.

So he sat on the end of his messy hotel bed - the exact spot beneath which he had knelt in pleasure-giving duty mere hours earlier - and cried and cried.

Cried for the self that loved so hard and unrequited. Cried for the unfortunates that passed forgettably through his life without hope, because they simply weren't Gulf Kanawut. Cried in the knowledge that he had held his Gulf like a delicate, enigmatic azure-winged butterfly in his fist, only for him - the moment Mew's hand spread open - to flutter away on the breath of some other breeze.

And when, at last, he was finished crying - no moisture left in ducts to form another tear - he lifted the hem of his damp vest to his swollen eyes, and patted them dry.

"Enough" - Mew scolded himself sternly out loud, and with a deep, quivering breath and one last steadying snuffle, he rose to start again.

Focus on the project work, forget about everything else - it was his only way forward. A familiar routine.

He hurried to wash and dress for the day's academic activities - checking his phone to find six missed calls from Tul - and had just pulled white trainers on to depart for the meeting point at the athletics stadium, when the door to the room swung suddenly open.

There, framed by the brighter light of the corridor behind him, stood the human form of that butterfly Gulf, struggling chaotically to hold takeaway coffees and paper bagged patisseries between one hand and his mouth, key card in the other as he propped open the door with an elbow.

"Help!" He managed to articulate through a muffled mouthful of breakfast supplies - but Mew didn't move. Was just staring at him, disbelieving, as the warmth he had felt with Gulf in his arms rushed and poured like molten, precious gold, back into his soul once again, as if filling an empty mould.

He hadn't left. He was here. He was fine.

A lopsided grin slowly spread, open and wide, across the face of the elder, eyes dancing into crescents as he was overcome by real, resurrected hopeful vitality. 

Then:

"HELP!", the younger repeated in eyebrow-raised exasperation.

And Mew was suddenly present in the room again, rushing to rescue steaming cardboard cups from Gulf's hands and lower them safely down onto the room's circular, glass topped coffee table, positioned half way between the two beds.

"Quick, let's eat and then we can go", Gulf said practically, business-like - not meeting Mew's eyes and so oblivious to the effect that that tiny word, "we", had had on his listener.

But then Mew didn't know either. Didn't know that Gulf lay awake for hours after he'd slept. Turned his body back outwards on his bed to watch his Phi - calmed by the comfort of his steady breathing - drinking in the masculine scent of him in the room. Grasping, in the winking dawn light, for any explanation of why he felt so much happiness in his heart. Because as confusion began to ebb, it was overwhelming joy that was flowing into the space left behind - he a hollow mould too. Solidifying.

Gulf was feeling things. It was...different to 'before'.

And that was why, when the hotel's multi-tasking, harassed, frizzy haired young coffee shop barista had asked which names should be written onto the two cups, he had answered, with a shy blush and an unfamiliar, soft voice:

"Just a smiley face, krub".

And smiled himself, even as he said it.