Oceans In The Stars (KleunNuea oneshots )

love became...

“Khabkhleun, we need to break up,” Gia’s voice cut through Khabkhleun’s thoughts almost immediately. What? He almost dropped the book in his hands, though he barely looked up from it. “Why?”

His heart seemed to drop through all fifteen levels of the school then, plummeting through the ground. Gia looked at him petulantly, something unreadable in her eyes even as she looked at him. She pulled at the collar around her neck, fidgeting. That only unsettled Khabkhleun more, his attention completely off the book now. “Did I do something wrong?”

Familiar onyx eyes avoided his gaze. “It’s not you, Khabkhleun. It’s us. There’s something that seems so off about us.”

Khabkleun’s breath caught hearing that. What’s wrong with us? He wanted to ask, but the words danced on the ghost of his lips, a whisper against the wind. But the image of another swarmed into his mind, dancing in the edge of his memory, as if teasing him with sweet longing. A familiar silhouette, one that he'd subconsciously memorised. Chocolate eyes and a shy smile waved at him, staring at him in a way that Khleun couldn't describe. Not when his words failed him, as they usually did, when he was meant to be talking out loud. But he'd always been better at writing words than typing words, and preferred things that way. Easier to think, to process. The other boy set alight something in his heart, something that clung onto him like the vines of a rose, its roots piercing through every crevice of his heart, one that beat in secret. Something  he'd never felt when he was around Georgia, something that ran deeper than his love for her, which seemed to pale in comparison. Then he realised.

Not in that way.
He didn't love Georgia romantically.
His love for her wasn't that kind of love. But something more platonic, the familiarity of having a childhood friend, one who knew you, understood you, in some way. Better than almost anyone else. But thoughts of her were nothing like thoughts of him, nothing like the feeling of falling, adoring someone more deeply than you realised. It was a passing familiarity, something that he liked only because they had been next to each other for so long. Something like having a sibling, hoping they'd understand you without judging. But romantic love. Romantic love…just wasn't that way.

To Khleun, romantic love was the smile that thinking of the other brought to his face just by entering his thoughts. The way his heart sped up when he entered his room, a nuclear fission of anxiety and hope. The way every accidental brush of skin made him feel something, the way anything, almost anything, reminded him painfully of Daonuea. A sunflower in the field, the brightest star in the sky. No matter how the Earth turns, the North Star would always shine in the same place, illuminating the way to his heart. Even the ocean reminded Khleun of him, watching as the waves lapped past. He wanted Nuea next to him, it didn't matter if they were talking or not. Something about him soothed him. Talking to him or listening to him talk was calming. With him he felt anxious, but his presence made him feel safe, comfortable. As if there was nothing and everything to hide, because he'd already seen every corner and crevice of his heart, having been in it for so long.

But at the same time, the fact there was more to explore about him, always more, thrilled and terrified him. Everyday he learnt something new about him. However inconsequential it seemed, he clung onto the little slips of information as if they were the last thing he held onto, at the edge of the cliff.

I love him, not her. Is that it?

Her eyes answered the unasked question in his own. Neither of them felt that way. "It's because we don't feel that way, isn't it?"

She nodded slowly, the tears starting to gather in her eyes as she turned away. "I like someone else, Khabkhleun. What we have…I don't want to do this anymore. We're fooling ourselves. We don't like each other that way."