Reflections [Complete]

Arthit's Musings 4.

I stared at my reflection in the fogged up mirror and I might have to admit that I have not seen myself look this nervous since probably that time when I had to tell my dad that I had failed my 6th grade math exam. And I basically took this random memory as an excuse to let my thoughts wander free reign once again. Basically, anything to avoid leaving the bathroom after an unnecessarily long shower. At some point I am sure Kong would come inquiring if I had fallen and split my head open cause it's been way too long by any normal standards for me to be restricted in the confines of the bathroom in hotel room, especially since we were bang in the middle of our week long 'romantic getaway'. Well, minus the romance part that is.

But I couldn't really help it now, could I? I was god damn nervous. And Kong didn't have to be a genius to figure out something was wrong. And every day I didn't get my act together I was going to inject more doubts in his pretty little messed up head. Except getting my act together pretty much meant having a conversation I am sure he is dreading. And nothing about our past indicates us having figured out how to handle a confrontation in a healthy stable manner. Either I say something uncomfortable, he stiffens up, I get mad at him for not expressing his thoughts, and then we fight until I storm off. Or he in a very annoying ritual keeps cycling back to doubting our relation and the practicality of its future.

Although, this one time I couldn't really blame him. Cause as my family likes to remind me every chance they get, this instant I was very clearly the one at fault at fault. I should have invited Kong as my partner at the award ceremony but I hadn't. No matter what I believed the reasoning behind my decision was, no matter how much I justified my actions, I should have known what the implications of rejecting him publicly would look like. Ria and dad had warned me sufficiently that it would come back to bit me in the ass, and it had. Hard.

Not that Kong complained about it even once. Of course he didn't. Cause he doesn't complain about anything. Nor does he demand. He simply reluctantly accepts anything that I am willing to share with him. My time. My attention. My apartment. And that basically leaves me to my own musings, trying to blindly grapple with what he wants, what he needs, what he would like and the worst of all, what would set off his attack. And invariably I find a way of messing things up.

I was still very much navigating through my emotional turmoil, happily procrastinating stepping out of my current safe space when there was a soft knock on the door that immediately snapped me back to attention.

"Arthit? Is everything ok?"

"Uh..yeah...yeah...Everything is fine. I will be out in 5 minutes."

I looked at myself one last time and sucked in a deep breath. It's now or never. I hadn't brought him specifically for this week long vacation to hide in the bathroom. The primary intention was to atleast begin addressing the myriad of issues in our relation that we have all but aggravated without even attempting any forms of healthy communication. And I couldn't solve any of it by stressing out in my own head, but maybe we could try one thing.

Sex.

Now hear me out before the judging starts. I know how it looks. I don't invite him to a very public, very important ceremony and instead of even addressing or apologizing for it I cart us off to a remote, secluded beach and now expect him to sleep with me? Actually, now that I say it aloud, that is a pretty bang up description of my actions but I swear my intentions are a lot less ignoble.

As crass as it sounds this snag in our relation has been bothering me for a very long time. The fact that Kong views sex as an act he should be fearing rather than an something that should be mutually pleasurable is not only troublesome in of itself it may also be a big factor why our relation reaches only to a certain distance before it comes to a screeching halt. I was the closest person to him in nearly all aspects, physically, mentally, emotionally, and yet there was a certain part of him I just couldn't access and I feel unless he trusts me with his body he will never trust me with his mind. And as long as he equated sex with rape instead of the act of making love we would continue this never ending dance until one of us was too tired to continue.

It had been four days since we reached our destination and up until the only description apt for our trip was....pleasant? And that is not necessarily a very good thing. We had rather skillfully avoided any abrasive topics. No court cases, no media articles, no tensed conversations whatsoever. He hadn't brought up me not inviting him to the ceremony, and I hadn't probed his reaction to it. We had kept TV and news about my family, me, or him firmly away from any discussions keeping nearly all conversations about either work, his classes, or general chit chat that would have no bearing to our future. And every passing moment I knew how much our relationship was sinking. I was too scared to ever bring up something that I knew would negatively affect him, or anything that would cause him to clamp up again cause once he did there was no making him talk again. And he was....was...I don't bloody know what, cause he doesn't tell me anything. Atleast nothing of any relevance. Maybe he is scared I will run away again, maybe he thinks I will judge him, perhaps that I might not understand. I don't know what it is, but extracting anything from him is so goddamn difficult that I am not even sure how he will respond when I put forth my proposal. And the more we don't communicate the deeper our rift gets. I want us to be able to have a reasonable, healthy fight so that we can begin resolving our issues instead of letting them brew forever.

I am tired of this gigantic wall we have between us. I am tired of our hyper sensitive reactions to each other every time something remotely unpleasant comes to pass. I am tired of neither of us knowing who we were to each other and how our relation will pan out. I wanted to love him openly and freely and I wanted him to do the same, but more importantly I wanted to trust him. Trust him to tell me when things got difficult for him to handle. Trust him that he knows without a shadow of a doubt who he could turn to at the end of every good or bad day. Trust him that when he says he is ok he truly is, and the day he is not he will tell me. That I don't need to guess what he is feeling and thinking all the time. Cause by now it's almost a guarantee that if I am left to my own devices I will find a way to bungle things up. And in return I wanted him to trust me. That even if I don't know all the answers just yet I will always stand by him to find them out together. That nothing in this world was more important to me than him.

I stepped out of the bathroom to find him sitting cross legged on the bed reading a book and he looked up and gave me an innocent smile as I came an sat across from him, but looking at my serious expression it automatically shrunk and with a small frown he asked me.

"What's wrong?"

Shit! I already made him nervous and I hadn't even begun yet.

"Uh, nothing. Nothing is wrong."

"Oh, okay."

"But...I wanted to say something."

"What is it?"

I pondered at his confused expressions for a brief moment. What i was about to say had honestly been something I had struggled with for a while myself. If I really wanted to have sex with Kong I had several opportunities to have pushed through and do the so called deed in the past. Kong hadn't ever vocally resisted, and other than the very first time he hadn't even physically pushed me away. But every single time beyond a certain point he would freeze up. Like he was simply expecting me to take him and get it over with. And as horrible as I was at reading all his subtle cues I was pretty darn sure that simply satisfying my carnal desires at that moment was going to do very little to develop the trust that I have been chanting non-stop in my head. Infact it might even make our relation progressively worse.

I also knew that sub-consciously he compared me to Chak. And as much as that pained me to accept, I knew it was true. Chak and I were similar in many ways, both in our personalities and our history with interacting with Kong. And no matter how much he tried I feel it was hard for him to disassociate the two of us in his mind. Especially when you add his inherent knee-jerk fear of sex into the mix our bedroom activities were always going to be clouded with his past. Along with his constant feelings of inferiority. In all aspects of our relationship. Sex between a couple was not supposed to be a battle with a winner and a loser. Where one over powers the other. Where one only gives and the other takes. It is supposed to be mutual. And maybe in a perfect scenario, hopefully sometime in the future Kong and I can share that feeling, but right now I think it is important for him to feel in control. Especially when he is at his most vulnerable.

"I want us to have sex. I want you to top me."

.