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“You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him.
You have not found that place yet.”
Richard Siken, Crush
There was something about the quiet.
In those tiny moments between breaths, when nobody existed in the world but the two of them, and Pran could pretend everything was fine.
Those were the moments he loved the most.
Whether they were alone in his room or standing ten feet apart in a public place surrounded by watchful eyes, in those moments, when Pat caught his eye and it all went quiet, he was truly at peace. Because their relationship had always been one of push and pull, even when they weren’t enemies, constantly hiding their friendship for fear of the consequences. Even now, they were hiding. But there was no push and pull anymore, at least not in those moments. In those breaths, the world was theirs.
The first time it happened was when they’d seen each other again - world grinding to a halt as they realised who the other was, realised that the axis was about to shift again.
Then it happened again when Pat covered Pran’s mouth to hide him from his friends, lingered a little too long with gaze unwavering and bodies too close.
It happened a few times after that, getting harder and harder to resist with each passing day.
Tickling him when he showed up at the empty dorm and they both froze, realising too late how close they were.
In the elevator on the way to pitch the bus stop, when Pat pressed his shoulder into him out of spite and Pran had to pretend he hated it while unable to tear his eyes away.
When they hid in the music shop and Pat forgot to stand up because he was busy inhaling Pran’s scent like he was trying to kill him.
Sitting on the floor in the hallway between their dorms after Pat gave him his guitar, the guitar he thought he’d lost, when Pran already thought he couldn’t fall any harder after Pat had done nothing but help him all week. With their feet just barely touching and Pat smiling at him and his fingers playing the song they’d played together so long ago, the one whose lyrics were all about the man in front of him.
The little moments in his room before Pat unknowingly broke his heart; staring at each other while he applied ointment; staring up at him hopefully when he opened the door to let him; blinking up at him with cheeky eyes while he sniffed the bedsheets and told him how good he smelled.
Pat acting cute in the kitchen the next morning and it working despite all of Pran’s heart begging it not to.
The moment before they kissed, when it was all Pran could do to breathe, to remember to inhale before Pat’s lips touched his. The way it broke the dam inside his chest and he couldn’t help but pull Pat back, kiss him harder, kiss him more.
And the kiss changed things.
Because it was impossible for it not to.
Because now, in those quiet moments, Pran could feel Pat’s lips on his and fingers in his hair and breaths mingling and he couldn’t escape it. He tried to. Tried to run away where Pat couldn’t follow, but Pat found a way. He always found a way.
Sitting on that beach, the first real moment they’d had together since the kiss, when Pat’s hand slid across the sand and touched his. Pran looked over at it. Looked at the hand he was constantly trying not to reach out for, and saw the same thing reflected in Pat’s eyes, along with a resolution that he wasn’t going to do that anymore. With that one tiny action, Pat told him he wasn’t holding back anymore, that he was going to keep pursuing him until he gave in. And he did it without speaking, without kissing him, without even really holding his hand. He did it with fingertips just barely grazing in the wet sand and eyes that held as much yearning as Pran’s. He did it in the quiet, with everything they didn’t need to say.
That was the thing about their rivalry. It had never been up to them. Always being forced into action by their parents or their friends, and both of them trying to make the dance work without stepping on each other’s toes too hard or getting too close.
But when left to their own devices, all either of them ever did was seek out the quiet.
Together, they could exist in the moments between moments.
At rest.
At peace.
With their fingers touching like it was their default setting. With their eyes meeting like they’d found the thing they pretended not to be looking for. With their lips curling into small smiles in the silence and the memories of a rooftop at night when they were gasping for air.
Pran loved Pat, and he was certain Pat loved him back, and it was the best feeling in the world, and it was a catastrophe, and it was all he’d ever wanted, and it broke his heart.
“You're trying not to tell him you love him, and you're trying to choke
down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he
touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you
feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something
you don't even have a name for.”
Richard Siken, Crush
Pat was a loud person.
He’d always occupied a space wholeheartedly, commanded a room, made jokes where they could be laughed at. It was how his father taught him to be. And his friends only encouraged it. He loved music and people and chatter and he loved being the center of attention.
But when Pran returned, things shifted.
Pat started unconsciously reaching back into the quiet.
He even gave his headphones up to Pran, offering him some symbol of the noise he listened to on his own, without really thinking it through.
Quiet moments without Pran in them, he began to realise, weren’t the right kind. He didn’t feel relaxed in those moments, because his brain was far too loud. It always had been, was part of why he was so outgoing himself - always trying to speak over the volume of anxieties crescendoing in the back of his mind. But somehow, with Pran nearby, it all just faded into nothing, became background noise he could ignore.
It took him a while to understand why, but once he did, he had no intentions of pretending to go back to what they used to be. He just couldn’t, more than anything else. You can’t unring a bell like that. Especially not when the bell only stopped tolling when Pran was looking at him with so much unspoken emotion in his eyes.
Kissing him had taken effort - a leap of faith.
Being kissed back had been as easy as breathing, and Pat never wanted to stop. He wanted to keep holding Pran’s face in his hands and just kiss it endlessly and damn the world around them.
Watching Pran walk away had felt like that world around them falling in on him, damned to the sound of destruction.
He missed the quiet.
He missed it so much he kept trying to make Pran talk, to make the only kind of noise he wanted to listen to. He missed it so much he followed him into enemy territory. He missed it so much he suggested a bet he didn’t need to tell Pran how he felt, because he knew Pran did need it.
Flirting with him was torture of the best kind. Agony because those quiet moments were constant but they were also so easily snatched away, always teetering on a knife-edge of being discovered together or Pran pulling away. Bliss because Pat had never been so close to him, had never wanted someone to lie to him as much as when Pran pretended he still didn’t like him.
Dating Pran wasn’t any different to flirting with him, except that Pran no longer lied, and Pat no longer went along with it. It was like they were always going to end up this way. They still bickered, they still flirted, they still got lost in each other’s eyes in the small moments between breaths where no-one could tear them apart. The quiet curled back in under cover of darkness and entwined their hearts.
But the quiet had an edge to it now.
There was something charged in it, waiting for one of them to move first, like even Time couldn’t stand how long they’d been apart. Like even Time was willing to bend around those moments if only they could get a hand on each other.
More than ever, Pat struggled to hold back in public, catching himself at the last second so many times before he almost reached out and touched Pran the way he knew Pran wanted him to. A hand in his, foreheads pressed against temples, lips pressing soft kisses in the dark of Pran’s room - all of it, Pat wanted to do in the light. But he held back, for Pran. He knew how much it terrified him and he wasn’t willing to hurt him like that. So he was willing to take as many of those tiny, quiet moments as he could and live in them, live in his love for Pran, until Pran was ready to tell the world.
Until they got exposed anyway.
And the noise came rushing back in like a freight train.
All the things that had always been trying to tear them apart flooded in, filling the air and wedging themselves between them on that stage, under the gaze of their friends and classmates and strangers.
Pat wanted to hold Pran’s hand; didn’t know if he was allowed.
He wanted to hate Wai for what he’d done, but he didn’t know if Pran would allow that either, despite the pain he’d caused. He didn’t know what to do.
He wanted to bring back those moments just before the curtain fell.
Instead, he got arguments with his friends and awkward conversations with his sister and Pran breaking down because if their friends knew then their parents could find out any day now and once that happened their worlds really would implode.
Things settled down, for a while.
Their friends came around - Pat’s more quickly than Pran’s, much to his surprise if he was honest with himself. He was almost sure they were going to reject him, that Pran’s perfect friends would be the picture of goodness, but it was somehow the reverse. Pran’s friends considered the secrecy a betrayal while Pat’s understood what made them hide. They all did, in the end, once they could see how much they cared about each other, how much this had been killing them, how much they just wanted to be close to one another without needing to make some flimsy excuse.
For a few weeks, they could love each other out loud.
Damn the silence; Pat was going to yell it from the rooftops, draw it on the sidewalk, hell, he’d hire a skywriter if he had to. He did, in the end - aided and abetted by the architecture students, which he was almost certain was entirely a set-up from Pran, the romantic fucker - shouted for the entire university to hear that he liked Pran, he loved Pran, he always would.
He wanted the whole world to know that he was taken, that he loved Pran and nothing in that whole wide world could stop him.
And then their parents happened.
“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.”
Sylvia Plath
Pran had known it was coming.
It had to, eventually. It wasn’t like they could just continue to date in secret for the rest of their lives, get married, move in together, live happily ever after without their parents knowing.
He hadn’t been able to relax, not since Wai had dropped that curtain and exposed them for the world to see. They were living on borrowed time, barely a half-second ahead of their parents discovering them at all times, and the gap was shortening.
Pran wanted to tell Pat he loved him before they were caught, but he also couldn’t think of anything worse. Like it would jinx them, or maybe just that it would feel out of place between them, the way all those kinds of words did. Like their parents’ rivalry coated everything they did even when all they wanted to do was escape it. Like telling Pat he loved him would break them apart.
He was certain Pat knew.
Just like he knew Pat loved him, eyes lighting up when they saw him even when they were arguing, because he couldn’t help it, because his heart reacted before his brain had time to catch up and stop the smile that was surely to follow.
It didn’t matter that they both knew, however.
Because the words were tainted with the wrath of their parents and the judgement of their friends and the noise of the outside world.
So he kept not saying it.
He just reached out and let their fingers touch, hoping the quiet it brought would be enough.
Sometimes, it was.
But no amount of doomsday scenarios and depressing conversations he had in his head would have prepared him for that look on his mother’s face when he told her they were dating. That flash of sheer, unbridled disappointment. Because he was a disappointment. He always had been. Ever since he had first felt a flicker of something for Pat all those years ago back when he decided to keep a watch that Pat didn’t need to return to him. He’d known, the entire time, that he was doing nothing but letting his mother down. And it hurt, because he couldn’t stop. No matter how hard he tried to run away, to forget, Pran liked Pat so much it was impossible to ignore. Even after he was transferred, he never quite shook it. He thought he’d never see Pat again and even then he couldn’t quite lock those feelings away. Even without Pat in the picture, Pran was a disappointment, but now he’d committed to it. He’d made his choice and he wasn’t afraid to disappoint his mother anymore. Not when she was wrong.
She slapped him, and his world ruptured.
It was unbearably loud.
It's a tragedy
It's a tragedy
How we hold on to the pain we have
And the hurt it brings
And the memory
But I won't let go cuz I'm not a fool
I Can't Love You Too Deep - Tedy
Pat looked at his father and he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
Except… couldn’t he?
He’d always been a little wary of his father’s aggressive need to be the best, a little burdened by the constant pressure it put on him, but he pushed his resentment down because he respected his father too much.
Loved him too much.
Feared him too much.
But now, he looked at his father and he didn’t see the terrifying, awe-inspiring god he’d been raised to emulate and admire. No, he looked at him and he saw a man. Just a man. A man who had made mistakes and then fashioned his son into the right weapon to hide them. A man who raised his child to hate someone else simply because he refused to admit he’d ever done anything wrong.
And when Pat asked him if it was true, already knowing the answer, his father didn’t even have the courtesy to speak.
He just walked away.
The silence he left behind wasn’t the quiet that Pat craved so desperately - it was oppressive and painful and so heavy Pat thought he might collapse from the sheer weight of it.
His mother only made it worse, not seeming to understand just how much this had hurt him. She meant well, but his brain felt like it was on fire and his heart was breaking and his ears were ringing and all he could think was, Pran, Pran, Pran, I have to find Pran.
I have to apologise.
For everything.
I remember it now, it takes me back to when it all first started
But I've only got myself to blame for it, and I accept that now
It's time to let it go, go out and start again
But it's not that easy
High Hopes - Kodaline
Pran ran straight back to the dorms.
The safest place he could think of.
But the world was too noisy without Pat’s presence to shut it out. Everything was too much - the wind outside, the creak of the floor beneath his feet, the sounds of people in the hallway - he was suffocating in the only place he thought he could escape to.
He was drowning in the sounds of his world falling apart.
He wasn’t sure how, or when, but he ended up on the roof. Staring out over the city and thinking back to that moment so many months ago when Pat had told him he didn’t want to be friends. The way his chest had caved in at those words because that left only two options - either he really hated him, or he really loved him - and both of those options would destroy him. But he kissed Pat anyway, because how could he not?
That moment had been spectacular. One truly, soul-crushingly perfect moment where the entire universe blinked out of existence and it was just the two of them on that roof, hands holding each other closer because they knew the moment would have to end and neither of them could stand the thought.
One moment where every single thing that Pran was so afraid of just… stopped.
And then it all came flooding right back in and he ran away because he had to. Because if he admitted this was real, then he could lose Pat, which meant losing everything, and he wasn’t strong enough for that.
He still wasn’t strong enough for that.
Pran couldn’t lose Pat, not after everything they’d done to get here. They were each other’s lighthouses, the safest place for each other to breathe and just exist, in those seconds of quiet where nobody else existed but them.
Pat was home.
But his home wasn’t here and Pran was worried and scared and everything was just so loud.
Pran missed the quiet so desperately he considered running away and taking Pat with him.
He wanted to lace their fingers together and drown out the world with their own silence.
He wanted to kiss him and be held by him and hold him in return.
He wanted.
He wanted so hopelessly, so brokenly, that he was sure Pat could hear it.
He wanted their secrets back, so they could live in the moments nobody knew existed.
They couldn’t do that anymore.
Just lay it all down.
Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know I know I know.
I knew before you got home.
This world you're in now,
it doesn't have to be alone,
I'll get there somehow,
'cause I know I know I know
when, even springtime feels cold.
Nightminds - Missy Higgins
When Pat got to the roof, Pran was calling him. He could feel his phone buzzing in his pocket. Pran turned and saw him and Pat expected to see resentment, annoyance, frustration - but all he saw was sadness.
Pran looked at him like he was shouldering the weight of the world on his own, and Pat knew that he’d always had that look buried somewhere; he’d always been able to spot those flickers of pain behind his defiant smirk, but this wasn’t that. This was raw, devastated pain all over his face, and Pat couldn’t bear it.
They reached for each other at the same time, falling into each other the way they always had, holding tight this time because neither ever wanted to let go. Pran sobbed into his shoulder so brokenly it felt like an open wound in Pat’s chest but he held himself together, for Pran. He held the man he loved while he cried and he tried not to cry too because Pran needed him to be strong, now more than ever, but he couldn’t stop a few tears escaping. Because there was nothing that could hurt him more than Pran’s pain.
“I can’t take it anymore.”
Pat’s heart wasn’t broken anymore, it was just gone.
Because whose heart could remain whole in their chest, could keep beating, could withstand a sentence as heartbreaking as that?
So Pat said the only thing he could.
“Let’s get away from here.”
It was the only option. The only way to protect him from their families, and himself, was to take him and run far, far away.
“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
Richard Siken, Crush
“Let’s get away from here.” Pat said.
Pran didn’t think he could love him more, but Pat had always been competitive, had never met a bar he couldn’t clear.
Pat held him and stroked his hair and squeezed the back of his neck comfortingly and he promised Pran he would take him away somewhere safe where they didn’t have to think about any of this anymore. Where they could be free.
And Pran loved him for it.
Loved him and loved him and loved him until he thought the world might cave in from it.
But he still couldn’t say it.
So instead, he let Pat take the lead until they were sitting on a bus on the way to the coast, his head on Pat’s shoulder and Pat’s fingers still in his hair, leaving the city and all their problems behind them. It wasn’t a solution - he knew they’d have to go back and face it all eventually - but right now, it was all he could do to not break down entirely.
The bus was too loud.
Boy, I'm holdin' onto something
Won't let go of you for nothing
I'm runnin', runnin' just to keep my hands on you
There For You - Troye Sivan
As stupid as it was, Pat was relieved Pran was crying.
Because at least if he was crying then he wasn’t bottling it up, wasn’t pushing it down and letting it fester like he had been for years. It meant Pat was someone, maybe the only one, that Pran truly trusted. It was hard not to feel proud of himself for that. If he was someone Pran could trust, then maybe he was doing something right.
But on the bus, when everything slowed down and they had to just sit in the weight of their decision, Pat felt tears slip down his own cheeks. It wasn’t just Pran feeling betrayed and heartbroken and lied to; Pat’s life had fallen apart just as much, and he was barely keeping it together. The only thing that kept him going was Pran, and the thought of reaching the beach and finally, finally getting somewhere the world wasn’t so loud.
Because it had only been a few hours, but he missed the quiet.
Everything was too much, too loud, it was all happening too fast, and when their parents realised they were gone they were completely screwed, but he wasn’t thinking about any of it. His ears hadn’t stopped ringing since Dissaya had spilled what his father had truly done, and all he wanted was to drown out that noise.
He missed the moments the world stopped for long enough for them to breathe together. He touched Pran and it didn’t feel like the quiet, it felt like pain and fear and everything the quiet had been keeping out for so long.
He touched Pran anyway.
Because he needed to. Because Pran needed him to. Despite his panic, despite the way he had always pushed Pat away on instinct, Pran needed Pat not to stop touching him. So he did what he had been doing since their first kiss, or even before that when he didn’t know he liked him but he knew there was something different when they were together - he touched Pran anyway. He kept reaching over, letting their fingers brush in the dark, in the almost-quiet, telling him without telling him that he’d never stop trying to follow him.
I love you.
He didn’t say it.
They never needed to.
They both knew.
Morning sun warms our skin
And distant sounds
The day begins
Soon their world will come calling for us
But this is the space they cannot touch
Space They Cannot Touch - Kate Miller-Heidke
The beach was quiet.
Pran felt the water splash against his shins, the sand squish between his toes, the sun bear down on his shoulders, and everything felt okay.
Not good.
But okay.
He was okay.
Pat was okay.
They were okay.
Pat was holding his hand as they walked along the beach, after a few days without mentioning their parents or university or the outside world at all, and it felt okay. They could rest and live and love each other and hold hands and hug and kiss in the ocean or in the middle of the road and nobody would bat an eyelid, and they did, as much as possible, to make up for all the time they missed out on. And it was different and it was better because they could finally savour those moments without Pran constantly trying to look over his shoulder, expecting to get caught. He could reach for Pat first, kiss him first, and the universe wouldn't punish him for it because the damage was already done. For once, Time was truly on their side.
Pran never felt safer than when he was within arm’s reach of Pat, and he knew Pat felt the same because he’d been unable to tear himself away since they arrived, sticking to him like glue. Like he was afraid Pran would disappear if he looked away for too long. Pran understood the feeling, maybe better than anyone.
But he wasn’t leaving.
He wouldn’t, unless Pat was coming with him.
Neither of them could bear to stand up to their parents alone, but together? At least then if it failed, they’d have each other to lean on.
Because that had always been it, hadn’t it?
The two of them, against the world, while the world tried to force them against each other.
Everybody had reacted the same way when they found out they were dating. Surprise, shock, disbelief - but mainly fascination. “How did you even start?” It seemed like a fair question on the surface, because they were supposed to be bitter enemies, and how do you even begin to fall in love with your sworn enemy? But Pran hadn’t felt that way since they were kids, and even before Pat knew his feelings he had always tried to make it more of a fun rivalry than anything else, always meeting his eyes in a way that shouldn't have meant something, but always did.
There was something about the quiet, between them, there always had been.
It was like they couldn’t help but fall for each other.
That was what nobody else seemed to understand about Pat and Pran.
The hard thing had never been reaching out to touch the other; the hardest thing was always trying to hold back.
He looked out over the horizon, tightening his hand around Pat’s.
Pran was done holding back.
We took a back road; we're gonna look at the stars
We took a back road in my car
Down to the ocean, it's only water and sand
And in the ocean we'll hold hands
Bones - The Killers