The Silence Of Metawin.

10日前

Ten days earlier

For as long as he has lived, Bright Vachirawit has rarely questioned any decision he makes. Regret, as his Aunt had once told him, is an emotion of use only to fools and poets. Mistakes only become such when they are coupled with regret, a mistake embraced as a friend is transformed in its nature to a future averted misstep. For this reason, on the very rare occasions when Bright considers that he has made a mistake, his lifelong habit has been to step towards before he steps away, to glean what valuable lessons he can before exiting the scene. Before the day he found himself finally in possession of the only thing he had ever truly wanted, he had never felt afraid of making one.

Bright's love for Win is not a thing of warmth and comfort, it's not something that fills him with hope or light, it's a creature that more often than not thrashes inside him like a tethered animal, seeking purchase for its feet in slick, sliding darkness. That he wants to be with him, to see his face every day, to breathe the same air and share the same table, is something he has been certain of ever since Win first walked into his life all those years before. His presence had given it a vibrancy and purpose he hadn't even known it lacked until it was added and subtracted, and now Bright knows that he can never return to an existence without him. A life without Win would be like a fine meal without wine: incomplete, tasteless and hopelessly off-balance.

In the months since they came to Japan, since they began sharing their lives completely, he has felt the balance shift and settle inside him many times. Watching Win wake every morning, seeing the strength returning to his limbs, the clarity to his eyes, fills him at first with profound relief and then a slowly growing, unfamiliar longing. He finds himself making excuses to touch him, creates activities that will draw him closer to his side, opportunities for their hands to work together. Bright is not a shy man, but for him physical contact with a partner has only ever been about achieving his own pleasure. That they receive pleasure too is only good manners of course - he would no more withhold that than he would refuse to pay his wine merchant - but yearning to touch, look on, worship the body of another, with no other thought except to prove his devotion? This strange concept begins to come to him surprisingly frequently around Win, and both fascinates and disturbs him.

Often in the evenings, after they've talked, bathed, laid together on the roof, there is a moment or two when he feels his whole body still in a kind of silent, frozen questioning that feels increasingly like anxiety. He feels the moment when Win Will turn from him like the approach of an inescapable tsunami, specifically the point at which the sea is drawn back from the shore leaving the delicate sea-creatures exposed to the horizon. When Win leaves for his own room, his own bed, he feels a hollow ache that he finally recognizes as something he has heard spoken of, written of and sung of in every beautiful language he has ever read poetry in. Bright loves Win, has known and accepted this for many years, what he finds far harder to accept is how badly he now yearns for him.

In the end, it's a conversation about the Hero's Journey that breaks his freeze. Win's gentle teasing about the nature of their story, their 'dark romance', uncoils something inside him and he finds himself looking into his face with a sudden stir of surprise. He feels the air between them, warm and heavy with intimacy that has grown over months, and for the first time believes he sees Win stepping, edging towards the same thing he has been. And then, he gently sets his glass down on the kitchen surface between them, and - as he has every night for the last three months - bids him a soft goodnight.

After Win's door slides closed, Bright stands for a long moment or two before quietly pulling his coat from the back of the door and shrugging it on to his shoulders. He doesn't pack a bag, and when he begins to walk, he doesn't even fully know in what direction he is walking. Heading down the mountainside in the dark, the track barely visible in the moonlight, his mind is a roiling blackness shot with red and silver. Every step he takes moves him further away from the only thing he loves and wants on the face of the Earth, and he feels the distance open between them like the widening of a wound.