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Having Pat in his room, tainting his organized sanctuary with inklings of chaos and fluidity and out of order, Pran feels like he is about to explode.
His heart. His mind. Mostly his heart is doing some mysterious things Pran cannot even arrange into coherent sentences. It cuts and stings so bad that Pran finds himself no longer breathing, thinking, living. Because if he does, then the world, his world, will blaze into cinders, and every strand of sanity in him will snap like it means nothing. Pran wants it to mean something- just for once. Only for him and no one else. Not his parents, friends, Pat. Just him.
To Pran, this cacophony, his small room, with smiley/frown sticky notes and yellow fairy lights and stacks of colour-coded pens and abstract drawings and forgotten sketches and fabric softener and symmetry lines and precise angles and no specks of dust anywhere, is his home. The only place he can run away from Pat and forgets.
Enclosed in between these four walls, they stifle him in deadened silence, null from expectations and awards and achievements and everything that means close to nothing to Pran. He finds asylum in this glass box. Pran discovers himself removing thousands of layers he tries to put up, and life in this house strips him naked, left with only taut skins and shackled bones. The only place he can be true to himself without the fear of losing something he can never have.
Hushed nights filled with molten tears gushing down to his chin, memories playing like a broken record in his mind: rewinding, forwarding, pausing. Everything is so disjointed, like a mesh of spiderwebs over abandoned toys and distant ceilings. But Pat is so fucking apparent in every scrap of thought Pran possesses. How can someone burn so bright and glow so blindingly when all they ever have is nothingness? Nothing but the title enemies. Nothing more than so-called friends behind closed doors. Are they even friends, or is it just one of Pran's wild assumptions?
How can Pran let himself be so feeble? To yearn for him, to love him from afar. To pretend that whatever he feels is hatred and despair, and anger. All those white lies are only for show. White lies that means the exact opposite. White lies that continue to bleed in ruby, grey, ebony. White lies that shaped Pran into who he is now. Heartless on the outside, hollow on the inside. Clinging onto fragments of yesterday, letting go of everything he has today.
It aches to the point that Pran loathes himself for feeling a speck of sympathy for Pat. He should feel sorry for himself first. Why must Pran be so selfless? Why must he allow everything to go berserk when it comes to Pat? Why him and not anyone else? Why must it be him?
In hindsight, Pran's heart is cracking into micro pieces, thinner than ashes, like sea foams wandering across the boundless sea. So fragile. So lost and cold and detached. His chest, his stomach, his ribcage, his intestines- churning, scorched in a wildfire, mercilessly. Pran questions if there is an end to it. To every notion that crowd his mind and heart. Aimless, whirling everywhere and nowhere. Estrangement. What the hell is this?
Fuck this feeling, Pran finds himself murmuring. And only the night breeze listens to the delicate whispers of his heart, witnessing the scalding tears in his eyes. How can Pat be so stupid not to notice?
On second thought, Pat has always been dense when it comes to him. Pat does not even realize the watch he wears every day. What is Pran doing, anyway? Is he expecting miracles to happen? For Pat to come at him and say those three words Pran has been dying to say? Dream on, Pran.
And Pran continues to dream, but he is having nightmares instead. Pat, in his wake, is like a lucid visage that feels so real that it frightens him to death. Pat, in his sleep, is like a blatant illusion that scars him to the core, pushing him to the edge of the hilltop and pulling him back to his embrace, where it is wrong to feel protected or any sense of belonging. He is going out of his mind.
Pran should not have opened the door. He should not have placed his hopes too high without knowing the pain he would encounter in the end. Why must we aim so high but end up falling to the ground, anyway? Pran should have known better- he went through this before, back in high school. Why must you go through it again, Pran? Are you fucking stupid?
"I hate you," he says, stressing every syllable. He prays to God, desperately, perilously, for Pat to understand how bitter those words are, how awful it tastes on his tongue, loitering everywhere and numbs him. It stays there until he hears soft snores coming from the latter. Pat does not feel it. Fuck you, Pran cries.
He cannot stop the tears from flowing- like a steady stream under his bare feet, the autumn sun above his head, the moonless night enveloping him to dreamland, the world continues to revolve, and Pran is afraid. Pat is here, in his universe, and there is no stillness, no silence, nothing that is familiar to Pran. Everything is different now- Pat is an extraneous outburst that Pran no longer appreciates or holds dearly to his heart. He resents him. Because of Pat, he detests these four walls now.
Where should he go next? To the dimming stars? The anomaly of the night sky? Those seamless clouds? Where can Pran reside tonight, anywhere but here? All places in the world- murky, dusty, everywhere but here?
The more he looks at Pat, the deeper he falls. And it does not make sense. For sane people, after knowing someone you love has a crush on someone else, it is a sign to step down and try to forget. Move on, a simpler term. But how can Pran ever forget him? How can he forget someone with the name of Pat, who is helpful and loud and obnoxious and annoying and kind and handsome and so, so beautiful? How can he forget this man?
Pran wants to forget. Someday, somehow, when he builds the forts higher, mightier, sturdier, he will forget him. Surely.
Tonight, as muffled sobs grace his pale lips, the bruise hot and painful still on his tense shoulder, Pran glances at the sleeping Pat from the corner of his eyes. Separated by elusive fate, this is as close he can ever get to look at him without having second guesses or nonsensical what if's. I like you. But Pran does not say it out loud. Not in this lifetime. Not in his next either.
I like Ink.
Pran flutters his eyes close and counts to ten. Then it becomes a thousand. Hundred thousand. One million. Infinite. No matter how long he counts, his pillow is still wet, soaked to the nooks and crannies, damp and shallow. No matter how desperate he tries to sleep the entropy away, it is no use. They are going in circles. Somewhere. Everywhere. Here. Now. Always.
Pran no longer attempts to stop the tears from cascading. As a steady stream under his shoeless feet, the dark sky and wandering clouds, Pran continues to float anywhere. Anywhere but here.
Then Pran realizes- he and Pat are parallel lines. They mingle side by side, walking along unkempt boundaries like jubilant madmen. But, they can never intersect. Not in this lifetime. Possibly, before and after too.
Pran cries, but quietly, alone, wasted. He would not want his Just a Friend to catch him in this pathetic state.