Catch me (when I fall)

Epilogue Part: 1

Author's short note: Having finally, finally worked up the courage to write out this futuristic ending where our SarawaTine boys are working. I remember having promised this quite a while ago but somehow never got past drafting it. I hope you guys enjoy this finale! 

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Tine wakes up to gold. Gold in the hum of a vaguely familiar Scrubb song, gold in the light glinting off the strings of an even more familiar guitar, gold in the most familiar eyes looking back at him. 

He basks in it, only for a minute or a month or mayhaps- an eternity, who knows. Then he quirks up a small frown-smile, which is a weird thing he does to show his mock irritation.  He watches as Wat's eyes flit all over from the his sleep-mused hair down to the give-away curl of his lips. Watches him stretch languidly over and across the Nuisance guitar poised in his lap, just to smooth out Tine's superficially scrunched eyebrows. 

Then he's finger-walking down the slope of his nose, grazing across the groove upon his lips and stopping at the ends of his smile. The fingertips stretch his mouth wider until his cheeks almost hurt. 

"There, I fixed it. Yes, it's much better now-" comes Wat's self-pleased observation. Tine scoffs and gives him a playful shove in return. 

The momentum has Sarawat swaying back but he unexpectedly turns it around so that he's drawing closer to Tine, closer than before, like a pendulum under the grip of gravity. It leaves Tine a little breathless before he decides some things are a little more important than breathing. With this thought, he props himself on his elbows- even as Wat's searching gaze lingers on him while he does it- and rises up to meet his boyfriend in the middle. 

'More like magnets that pendulums,' Tine supposes, 'since they're drawn to each other.'

Before Tine can even begin to draw away, there's a calloused hand sifting through his rumpled hair. Immediately, he feels himself melt into the sheets underneath. Wat's head rubs are really something. There's a protest on the tip of his tongue- something like, "I have to...hmmm" that never leaves his mouth; Wat lives up to his name of being a sneaky munchkin by persuading Tine back into the pull of a blissful sleep.

When he wakes up again, it's to a cocoon of warmth and perfume and a lingering point of pressure at the very center of his forehead. There's a few minutes of rebooting before Tine understands that Sarawat has planted a peck- a goodbye kiss by the likes of it- and is proceeding down the loft. 

He stumbles after kind of very much like a bleary-eyed monster and manages to land a chiding slap on Wat's unsuspecting bottom since he is at fault for ruining Tine's wonderful plan of dropping his boyfriend at the company. So much for the 'Be a Good Boyfriend' plan. 

The only consolation he gets is that he's already prepacked Wat's lunch and he when he hand it over, he has the pleasure of seeing his boyfriend's light up like a Christmas tree. 

Two reminders of "make sure you finish all of that, Wat" and a final, cheesy goodbye wave later, Tine's turning back from the wood panels of their front door to a now quiet home. Biscuit is sleeping upstairs in her usual imitation of a dead log so she doesn't count. There are traces of Wat everywhere, even in his disquieting absence. 

When he enters the bathroom, there's paste already smeared onto his brush . There's a galaxy on the granite floor from where puffs of powder- the fragrant type Wat adores- have settled down as white spots on cool grey. It's so predictably Sarawat that it has Tine smiling even as his toes are invariably coated in it, like stars smeared onto his skin. 

When he returns back down, considerably freshened up and decidedly awake, the morning doesn't seem too empty anymore. Biscuit is bounding- very much in favour of a quick breakfast and the radio has been left on, as if Wat knew and didn't want Tine to feel lonely. So the day starts. 

After that, it back to those pesky clauses pertaining to the new album and maintaining an one-sided conversation with Biscuit about the loopholes in his legal draft. It's not difficult for his mind to start wandering; it's been weeks since the case started and he's only been through these documents a thousand times or so. It's almost inevitable actually. As all this do, it leads back to Sarawat. 

"What would he be doing now," Tine wonders, "I should call him but what if he's busy- no, I probably shouldn't..."

Then his phone is ringing and his boyfriend's caller ID is flashing across the screen. Tine smiles and picks it up. 

"Tine... I need some help."