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He finds it so easy to lose track of time.
Especially when he’s in one of his working fugues, leant over his desk, determined and dog-eared and oblivious to all distractions. It's only once he's bowing with exhaustion that he’ll peer at the window and realise in one brief, dizzying moment that the sun is rising through the curtains. He has the same feeling when he rouses to the glare of the blinding sun from a lazy afternoon nap, disoriented and hazy - unsure if he's still in the remnants of some waking dream. Everything brushed in a warm hue. Softer. Slower. The mirage of a premonition even. A premonition of another life yet to be lived.
When sleep has so very often coasted at his consciousness, you find yourself questioning... how did I get here?
Existing within that strange margin of time. Who was I before, after, or somewhere in between?
But something anchors him to the earth. A steady beat beneath his ear.
Three. Two. One.
The countdown at the starting line of the track, the crowd chanting before the whistle blows. Before the roar of engines comes to life, and the wind dashes out of his sight.
Three. Two. One.
He’ll keep on counting until he sees that flash of red return into his periphery. Until he can afford to release the air inside his lungs.
Three. Two. One.
There you are.
He blinks a few times, feels the edge of something warm nudge against his nose. Brown eyes, inviting, welcoming him back home. Hey there sleepyhead. A kiss pressed to his brow.
“Sky?”
He looks up.
“Are you ready to begin?”
-----
It’s cold.
It’s so much colder than he ever expected it to be. He watches, entranced, as the breath that leaves Prapai’s lips catches the light, a waft of white in the cool air, crystallising. He stiffens for a brief second when it resembles smoke, the dancing plumes of a house on fire or the end of a freshly lit cigarette forever billowing.
Prapai turns and smiles at him, “I told you it would be cold.” He quickly reaches for his scarf and swaddles it round Sky’s already bundled neck. He feels like a human burrito.
The light here is vastly different from that of Bangkok. Prapai usually feels like the driving flash of a taillight. A scar of life on an endless night. Whereas here, outline haloed in a soft glow, Prapai looks more serene, an apparition suspended and captured in a bottle. An element stalled, or tempered.
Sky had wanted to see England. Wanted to learn about anything that held a piece of Prapai’s history. Like he could covet all these little treasures together and formulate a constellation that only he could read. That maybe one day if he suddenly woke up and Prapai had drifted away like a wind sometimes does, he’d know where to find him.
So Prapai did just that. Walked him round the bustling streets of London. Took him for a drive along the small winding roads that meandered through expanses of rolling hills in the Lake District. Led him through all these windows of his past, filled to the brim with nostalgic tales of an adventurous and reckless youth.
“Your cheeks are pink,” Prapai muses as he exhales hot air all over Sky’s lips, and swipes his fingers on either side of Sky’s face in an attempt to warm them.
A while later, Prapai gently ushers him around a cute little village on their way back into the city. When he watches Prapai order through a cafe window in English, he finds himself enthralled and frozen still as if watching a refracted version of reality. One in which he didn’t exist yet or perhaps never did.
Prapai swipes at his nose affectionately before handing him the hot beverage, which nicely begins to warm his palms.
“Impressed?”
But all Sky can think is how different things would be if he hadn’t accompanied Rain into the race track that night. How easily a single decision can change the course of your own history, without you even realising it.
Is there an alternative turn of events in which this is where Sky finds him?
-----
Truthfully, he wasn’t thinking. He just reacted.
He knows Prapai well enough by now to understand precisely why he’s angry. But he also knows that Prapai would have done the same in a heartbeat. So he purposely prolongs the distance before he speaks. Before he attempts to cut through the bloated, stagnating tension.
“I’m not going to apologise.”
Prapai stares at him unblinkingly. An accusation implied but not declared.
“You would have done the same for me,” Sky continues, “so I’m not going to be sorry for what I did.”
“You could have been seriously hurt Sky.”
“But I’m not,” Sky emphasises, “so don’t do that.”
Don’t make me feel bad for trying to protect you for a change. That’s not how this works. I’m tired of just standing by and letting things happen.
Does it hurt to think you could have done more? Fought back?
Is that how it was?
Saifah glances gingerly between them upon his return to the room which has become the container for their unspoken stalemate.
“Did I interrupt something?”
Prapai’s face remains grave and unmoving, “Talk some sense into him,” before he curtly makes an exit, the door swinging resoundingly shut.
-----
He doesn't know what he's expecting. Why he's fearful. Nervous. Entertaining a negative reaction he knows won't come. Because that would be a disservice and an insult to the people who have embraced him with open arms. All those concerns are quickly squashed when he's bundled into a tight embrace, slow to catch his breath.
“Call me Mom, we’re practically family now anyway.”
Something hot stings at the corner of his eyes as the single word rises to his lips. “...Mom.” He can’t remember the last time he was held like this by his own, who is so far away and who he only sees now a few times a year.
“I’m so happy for you both! That son of mine certainly took his time. I was starting to worry if he’d ever muster the courage to ask.” For some reason, Sky feels inclined to tighten his grip ever so slightly. “Phan sometimes still lets me hold her like this, but the other two haven’t in years.” Small hands smooth over his back, the scent of vanilla and jasmine in Prapai’s mother’s perfume. He’d forgotten how safe it felt to have a parent to anchor yourself to in this way. Whose acceptance and comforting embrace would be enough to shield you from all the trepidation of navigating life on your own.
As he attempts to blink the heat away from where his chin rests on her shoulder, his eyes drift up to catch the gaze of another across the room, silently watching him from the doorway.
It takes him a few moments to realise that Prapai is holding back tears too, his eyes visibly glassy. It’s been a while since he last saw him cry. But this time Prapai’s face is split into a smile, and Sky thinks it’s the first time he’s seen tears that are the result of happiness and not devastation.
-----
The rain is coming down in buckets.
He gazes into the dark expanse of the road, glittering with lights. The sound of tyres on wet tarmac. Despite the downpour, he wants to be the first thing Prapai sees. His beacon amidst the storm.
I’m here.
He glances at this watch again. He’s getting used to this type of waiting. The type that rewards your patience when you finally get to invite your home back into your arms.
He hears Prapai’s taxi before he sees it. Stands to attention expectantly as the car door swings open. Spots the instant lowering of Prapai’s brow when his eyes find Sky’s with ease across the short distance of the curb.
“Honey, you’re going to catch a cold,” Prapai admonishes in a rush as he takes the handle of the umbrella from Sky’s and into his own hand.
“You would have been drenched otherwise,” Sky explains and dabs the dusting of rain from Prapai’s face with his sleeve.
“How long were you waiting?”
Sky shakes his head, “Not long.”
“It’s less than a minute from here to the condo. I could have just ran. You didn’t have to.”
Shielded from the weather cascading around the confines of their shelter, he feels oddly fearless. Sky brings his hand down to rest on Prapai’s chest, a smile tugging at his lips, “I wanted to.”
-----
“How long are you going to hold this against me?” Sky murmurs.
Prapai goes stiff from where he’s standing by the sink. He watches the muscles in Prapai’s hand clench and flex.
“Look at me.”
His eyes move to fix on the tick in Prapai’s jaw instead as it tenses, works around the argument that is long overdue. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to know that you would throw yourself in danger in order to protect me? No. Not would. Did.”
It’s a ridiculous question really.
One that ignites something terribly ragged and sharp and impossible to swallow. An anger of his own.
Sometimes we’re the ones stopping ourselves from letting go.
He lets out a deprecating scoff, “And do you hear yourself? Do you have any idea how often our lives are in jeopardy at any given second? The truth of the matter is I could get hit by a car, get diagnosed with some terminal illness, get stuck in a collapsing building -I could be struck by lightning even- I-”
“Sky-” Prapai warns, turning around, his eyes haunted.
“The truth is you can’t protect me from everything P’Pai. You can’t protect me from life itself, and you shouldn’t have to!"
He watches Prapai close his eyes, head swivelled away like he’s desperately trying to endure some unspeakable pain, or praying to some higher power like his life depends on it. It’s an expression Prapai’s been wearing a lot recently. Unable to look at him. As if doing so will make good on all those possible dangers. Bring them into damning fruition somehow.
He doesn’t bother counting this time. Maybe the silence drags on for hours or mere seconds as they both reside in this fragile limbo. Allows it to sit indefinitely, unsure who will be first to break it.
Eventually, Sky moves to gently wrap his arms around Prapai’s waist, his words softening, “I’m not going to leave you. Yes, the risk of losing me is always going to be there, trust me, I know. But I would never leave you if I can help it. I promise. But you can't keep punishing me for what I did. It isn't fair.”
When Prapai finally surrenders, uncoils and loosens in order to hold him close, he hears him suck in a breath.
“You’re braver than I am Sky.”
He tightens his arms. How does he explain that it’s only because Prapai had created the conditions to make Sky feel safer than he’d ever done his entire life. He knows that if the time ever came, he may burst into a blizzard of snow, like the ones he’d seen in England, fluttering in a thousand tiny shards of ice.
“That’s not true.”
-----
He's surprised to find it hasn’t changed. He had avoided this part of the city for as long as he could remember. His very first few weeks in Bangkok.
He gravitates towards the table in the middle, the one closest to the bar, where once he was accompanied by his friends. And he watches the door.
Do you feel to blame?
He looks down at his hands, his sleeves no longer pulled down to conceal. He fiddles with the ring on his left out of habit, and soon he peers back up at the door like he's waiting for someone or something.
He pictures himself like he’s watching a movie.
He recalls the flitting wings of exhilaration in his stomach at the trill of the door opening. The stride of a man who immediately caught his eye. The pining eyes of a boy. Lonely and a little lost in the big city.
I forgive you.
I forgive you Sky.
You weren’t to know. You couldn’t have known.
It’s only through therapy that he came to realise that he’d been in mourning all this time. Mourning the boy he was and had been. Mourning the fact that he felt to blame for the loss of that boy. Mourning the boy he’d never see or know in quite the same way ever again.
He rises from his chair and curiously, he feels lighter. Like a piece of his soul will remain in that chair far beyond this very moment he’s decided to walk away.
It was well and truly time to move on.
The door rings out a final time as if signalling the end of a closed chapter, the last track scratching to a silent whisper on a record.
Three. Two. One.
As fate would have it, the soft trails of a unexpected wind enters his path. “Are you looking for someone?”
Maybe. Once upon a time. I was waiting for someone to find me.
Sky smiles, “I’m waiting for my husband.”
“Oh?”
“He’s going to take me home.”
Prapai opens his arms and Sky folds himself into his chest like he was always meant to.
“Welcome back my love.”