Stand By Your Men

2.

Ming woke up to find Wayo staring up at him. "Are you okay?" He asked of his friend (although he was no longer sure the titled was still valid).

Wayo nodded vigorously then smiled, "I didn't know you could be like this."

"Like what?" Ming asked a little confused.

"Such a gentle and considerate lover."

"You thought what...that I was a selfish prick." He asked doing nothing to mask the hurt the assumption caused him.

"I guess so. You always seem so cool and unaffected."

Ming was really trying not to take offence but it was exactly the same thing P'Kit had said about him. So he'd played around with a lot of women in the past, it wasn't because he wanted to hurt them. He just hadn't found what he was looking for with them. It made him a player. But he wasn't an asshole. But apparently neither Kit nor Wayo could see the difference.

His sigh was loud in the quiet room, "I'm human too." He whispered before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up.

"I know. And maybe you should let more people see this side of you." Wayo whispered back and he knelt behind him and hugged his neck from behind.

Ming smiled ruefully before turning his head and kissing Wayo's cheek. "Maybe I will. But right now we both need to shower then I have to go to class. You can rest here and I'll bring you something at lunch but you'll have to make do with instant noodles for breakfast."

"I'm also going to class."

"You are?"

"Yeah." Wayo said as he pulled him towards the bathroom. "I'm a little sore but it really isn't so bad that I need to stay in bed like an invalid." Then he smiled cheekily and grabbed Ming's cock stroking it so that it went from half-mast to fully hard. "Maybe we can even have some fun in the shower."

Ming had dropped Wayo off at his faculty but not before driving passed the department of medicine so Wayo could see if he could catch a glimpse of P'Pha. Ming dared not point out the unfairness of what Wayo was doing to him. He knew the score from the beginning. It was just hard to see Wayo still pining for P'Pha even after the amazing sex they'd shared the night before. It was like he wasn't even a blip on the other man's radar. What they had shared already forgotten in his never ending quest to get a mere glimpse of the love of his life in order to feel like he was okay.

Ming didn't say anything. What could he possibly say that would take his insignificant self and make him someone his friend could truly see? Dissatisfied with his inability to come up with even one hopeful suggestion Ming just waved off his best friend and went to class.

It was he who should have spent the day in bed because he was too distracted to even pay any attention. He was particularly conscious of the fact that his phone had vibrated a couple of times during his class but he hadn't dared check his messages. Whomever it was wasn't likely to have anything to say that he was ready to hear. Whether it was Wayo telling him he thought they'd made a mistake or Kit berating him for being an asshole or perhaps anyone of the medicine or engineering seniors telling him to get his head out of his ass. He just couldn't take it. So when lunch time came around he was totally unprepared for the attack that P'Beam launched against him right in the middle of the cafeteria.

The punch caught him off-guard. The quick flying accusations sending such a hot wave of shame through him that he couldn't even retaliate. What was there to say, P'Beam was right about all of it. He felt like he had cheated. He knew he had slept with Wayo even though he shouldn't. He was an asshole (after all). It didn't matter that he threw out his ready excuse; "P'Kit had not even accepted me yet." It didn't make him feel better. And it didn't stop P'Beam from knocking his legs out from under him and sending him sprawling on the ground.

P'Forth was doing his best to calm P'Beam but the other man wasn't listening. Ming would have been curious about their interaction but he was too steeped in his own self-loathing and misery to care about how hot they looked together.

"You can't just fuck anyone else while you are courting." P'Beam's retort saying out loud what Ming already knew in his heart but was desperately trying to ignore. But when he said 'Almost...' something inside Ming just broke open.

"Almost!" Ming cut in viciously. Something about the soft spoken vitriol being worse than if he had shouted. "It was just almost all the time! Don't blame me if your best friend chose to act as if he was all that. He is not the cutest. He's not even my first love! And being the one who always does the chasing is tiring. Love is two way. I am handsome and deserve better treatment for gods-sake. I am even a campus moon. Good enough not to be treated like nothing."

He had to stop. To take a deep breath and swallow down the anger and the pain and the frustration. What had he given away? Did they know just how much it hurt? Did they understand what it was like to be invisible in the face of his feelings for Wayo just because P'Pha was such a bright light he left everyone else in the shadows? Or to finally believe he had found someone who could be his only to discover he was once again walking the path of unrequited love. Waiting on something that would never happen and trying to convince himself that it didn't matter. That he could bear it. That someone someday would look at him like he was worth their time.

Ming wouldn't cry. It was beneath him. And nobody needed to know anyway. Not that they cared. P'Beam was still on his high horse. Calling him names and threatening him. Perhaps it was easier to be an asshole because instead of holding his tongue like he might have he took the insult thrown at him and hurled it back. "Prick?! Can you even hear yourself?! Don't you think I know what you did?! You..."

"Ming." His name was said like the crack of a whip.

Startled Ming looked up into P'Forth's face and what he saw there was enough to silence him. He had no desire to die young. Nothing would come of finishing that sentence except his untimely demise. Nothing would change because of airing their dirty laundry. Except he was once again surprised to figure out that his dirty laundry was now common knowledge.

Embarrassed, ashamed, alone...what more was there to say or do? He had been accused and found guilty. He wanted to justify it all somehow but there was nothing that could make this okay. Even after he got up from the ground and dusted himself off, there was nothing he could do to clean the muck that felt like it was oozing out from the deepest part of his soul and seeping out through his pores.

They were talking over him. Ming had to listen to his senior and his now-acknowledged-love-interest talk about him like he wasn't there. Saying things that made him look away in shame and he couldn't even come up with a good enough reason for his action. Urgency didn't excuse insensitivity. Fear didn't excuse the hurt he was causing. Desperation didn't excuse his cowardice.

Only acting like none of it matter finally worked. He owned his feelings for Wayo but also admitted to Wayo's undying love for P'Pha and the fact that there was no future for them. As for Kit...whatever he'd felt would go with him to the grave as he threw out the best line he could find; "He was the closest thing I could find to Wayo." It would work too. He knew P'Kit would never stand for being used as someone's replacement. And Ming had no doubt P'Beam would tell him just so P'Kit could finally forget about him. He sealed the deal by admitting that he was an asshole. Hopefully that would be enough.

P'Beam finally let P'Forth talk him out of doing Ming any further bodily harm. Ming had sat down in an attempt to finish his lunch but his appetite was gone. He had no desire to sit there and watch the two lovebirds when he felt like his heart had been put through a meat grinder. He definitely didn't want to sit around the cafeteria and watch as people pointed towards him and whispered behind his back.