Work Text:
The first time Pran touches himself, something inside him cracks, shatters, shutters.
Pran can't look his mother in the eye for a week afterwards. He scrubs his soiled underwear in the shower until his muscles ache from gripping the garment so tightly and his fingertips are pruned. What took you so long in the shower this morning, son?, he imagines his parents asking. But they don't notice – or they do, but they just don't ask, and Pran's not sure which is better. There's a part of him that wants them to know, that wants them to find out how dirty and awful and impure their son is, so that he can receive the appropriate punishment. But as things are, matters are forced into his own hands, and he doesn't quite know how to punish himself for this. There's no rulebook this time – doing that isn't in his mental inventory of infractions and punishments, cause and effect, action and consequence. He can't compartmentalise it, doesn't know how, doesn't want to add it to his catalogue, doesn't wish to remember how it felt (good, oh it was so good).
After that, it's like a floodgate has been opened, and no matter how hard he tries to push it back, down, out out out– he can't stop the feelings from bubbling to the surface. He's helpless in the face of his desire, his need. He burns and he smoulders and smokes, his body giving into the feeling even when his brain screams to hell and back, and his hands are cracked and dry from scrubbing them clean over and over again, every time, a vicious, endless cycle. Rub, scrub, rinse, repeat.
This is the first thing Pran learns to bury. The first desire he practices squashing, fitting it into a dusty box at the back of his mind.
He gets better at it as time passes. He learns to look his parents in the eye again despite the shame, uses his pocket money to buy a moisturising cream to soothe his red raw palms, begins to take care of his own laundry in a way that makes his mother's eyes brim with a fierce pride at his independence, his orderliness, his quiet, clean behaviour. If only she knew.
He's not like other children, Pran overhears her say to his father one night as he is loading his clothes into the washing machine, the sound of the TV rumbling low in the background. Pran understands what she really means from her tone. He's better than them.
Pran spends the rest of his childhood chasing that praise, trying to catch up to her expectation, always feeling one step behind, one degree lesser, an impostor in the shoes of Dissaya's Perfect Son. She doesn't know how filthy you really are.
* * *
The first time Pran realises he loves a boy, something inside him cracks, shatters, shutters. He is unclean, unkempt, unworthy.
His first thought is, what would my mother think?, but he can't picture it, can't imagine telling her this fundamental truth about himself, keeps drawing up a blank in his mind when he tries. What would she think? What would she do? What would she say? How would she react? In the absence of any answers, the questions fall flat, echoing uselessly against the walls of the glass box he calls his mind. Empty, void, carved clean. The rulebook has dissipated once again, and Pran's carefully formulated duplets of action and consequence hold no jurisdiction here. He feels childish, child-like, small and vulnerable and cracked open. The glass box is bending, deformed – it was never glass at all, and Pran's strength and conviction, these things he prides himself on, wobble along with its false materiality. His iron-clad control slips through his fingers like sand.
Pran doesn't know how to feel, so he doesn't. Shut down, reboot, refresh. Press F5 and watch the slate wipe clean.
And as with his previous shattering, he learns to pick up the pieces. Fragments of himself, the fine grains of his control, painstakingly swept into that dusty box at the back of his mind. He doesn't think about how full the box is getting. He doesn't.
Pran can't put himself back together, not exactly. He can't un-know what he's learnt about himself, these dirty secrets he's harbouring like a fugitive's closest friend. So he builds himself anew, an image of an image, impostor mark 2.0, Dissaya's Perfect Son twice removed. It will have to do. And if he works harder than ever before at scrubbing his palms in the sink each night before bed, well that's for him to know, and for him to bury.
* * *
Most days since his realisation, Pran feels like a low-resolution mock-up of himself. A screenshot of a photo of a screenshot. Exposure blown out, some parts too bright to make out the lines, others too dull to identify the details. But then he looks at– Pat. He looks at Pat across the classroom, across the roof between their windows, across the sports field, across the music room, and when Pat looks back, everything becomes a little sharper. When Pat's eyes are on him, Pran feels like he's being redrawn with a deft hand, the outlines of his body heavy and sure, his details crisp and defined. Pran lets it happen, basks in the feeling, and then he raises his hackles, edges becoming barbed, arguments and sleights of hand rolling out of him as naturally as a wave crashing onto shore. He has never felt more real, honest, true, more himself than in those moments of heat between him and Pat. He is defined by this messy, impossible something between them, a paradox of infinite proportions, a conundrum he never wants to solve. The feeling of hesitation. He craves it like oxygen.
And yet each day, Pran goes home, and he is unmoored once again.
His mother asks him about his days. She feeds him fresh fruit, cleanly peeled and carefully sliced. She gives him a reprimanding look when he slouches at the dinner table. She smooths down the flyaways in his hair. She leaves a damp cloth for him to find on his desk, the vacuum cleaner propped against the doorframe of his room, an unspoken command: Clean your room, son. It's not like you to leave it this long.
Pran cleans his room twice over to make up for his oversight, straightens his posture, books a haircut, cooks dinner for his parents every other night as a thank you. He scrubs his hands. He extracts the dirt from underneath his fingernails, peels away the grimy layers on his palms, the uncleanliness, the mess.
Pran is a mess. But if he can just get these specks of dirt, if he can just– scrub them all away, maybe he will be clean enough for his mother. And maybe he will be clean enough to be himself – to be not like other children, to be neater, smarter, better.
* * *
The first time Pat touches him, there, where it matters, something inside Pran heals, mends, unfurls.
He is unmoored, but he is real, and he wants this, wants Pat, wants everything. Kiss me, he whispers, and Pat does, their lips slotting together like coming home. Touch me, he gasps into Pat's mouth, crescent-filed fingernails digging into the flesh of Pat's bicep. More, more, there, that's it, please– Pran can't see, can't think, doesn't know how there was ever anything more to life than this. He feels alive, thrumming with it, molten heat and fire racing through his veins, blood pumping in his ears and Pat's breath on his neck, slick with sweat and so, so dirty. He feels unkempt and unclean but he feels whole, put together, collected, his entire being concentrated into the palm of Pat's hand where it touches them both; connected, intertwined. Don't stop, Pat, please. Pran is dirty and awful and impure and it is perfect.
When it's over, Pran covers Pat's tacky palm with his own and keeps it there, touching even through his oversensitivity; soft, languid strokes. He feels drawn out, a thread unspooled, stretched and worn thin as their hands continue to move together, the sound of it bordering on obscene. Dissaya's Perfect Son would never do this, he thinks incredulously, his hand stilling mid-motion. And then, quieter, his inner voice emboldened by Pat's touch: good job that's not me.
The thought is so hysterical that Pran can't help but laugh. Just an exhalation at first, sharp and short, but enough to make Pat glance up and away from their joined hands, a question in his gaze. Then suddenly it is loud, messy, chest-deep, and Pran can't stop. He feels it in his belly as he drops his forehead to Pat's shoulder and laughs and laughs and laughs until he's crying silent, salty tears. He's so happy and he loves Pat, he loves him, and he can't believe he ever denied himself this. Pran loves this boy, his Pat, who is utterly spent and confusedly amused underneath him, a tentative smile adorning his kiss-swollen lips. The feeling is too much, too soon, and Pran won't tell him for another year yet, but he feels it.
He feels it when Pat spills condensed milk all over the kitchen counter, when Pat burns the toast the first time Pran lets him use his toaster, when he finds Pat's dirty, balled up socks abandoned on the living room floor, when Pat comes undone in his arms and lies there for the better part of an hour afterwards, holding Pran atop sticky, sweat damp sheets, drowsy and carefree. But most of all, Pran feels it when Pat rewards him with his dazzling, 5000-baht smile every time Pran wordlessly lets his messiness be. Pran knows that Pat understands the meaning behind his inaction: I don't mind. Dirty isn't bad. Not to me, not if it's you.
Pat is messy, dirty, awful, impure. And as it turns out, they're a match, because Pran is all those things as well. And maybe, in loving Pat for all his contradictions and complexities, dirt and desire, heart and hope, Pran could learn to forgive himself a little too.
* * *
They take a shower together after that first time, at the insistence of Pran (for the shower) and then of Pat (for doing so together).
Pran is clumsy and awkward with his body in the confined space, unsure of what and where he is allowed to touch, whether he can look or if he should glance away politely. But Pat crowds his space like he was never meant to be anywhere else, as if he has done it a thousand times before. Pran supposes that that is at least partially true.
Pran feels simultaneously off-kilter and completely grounded, a contradiction in terms, the paradox of Pat. He doesn't mind. They wash, they dry, and they carry on with their evening: studying and takeout in Pran's dorm. Pran knows something inside him has shifted, but the world carries on unawares.
It's not until much later, when Pat has fallen asleep wrapped around Pran like a koala, and Pran's body is moulding to the mattress, his muscles heavy and relaxed, that he realises he forgot to scrub his palms.
He forgets every time after that, too.