aroceu's ficPran is sorting the peas out of his rice when Paa complains, “Hia says that he’ll go see the Shutter remake by himself if he has to, and he might as well, the original one was more than enough for me.”
Ink promptly gives her a sip of her boba. “Aw, are you scared?” she teases.
They had run into Pran in the canteen where he had been eating lunch by himself, Louis and Wai spending their free period in the studio working on their final projects (though Pran highly suspects they’re spending more time playing gacha games on their phone) and Safe back at home with his big sister visiting. Pran wishes he could spend his whole lunch texting Pat, except Pat is also spending the day tying up loose ends with his homework and classwork and clubs, since apparently he and his family are going to the beach this weekend, which is such a tradition that Pat couldn’t get out of it even if he wanted to. Pran’s not looking forward to three whole days without Pat, even though he knows it’s just three days—before they got together, they’d gone without seeing each other for longer.
But every day since they got together—hell, every day since that night on the rooftop–has felt like a page out of Pran’s teenage fantasies. He has to remind himself that, even though they sleep together and wake up together nearly every day now, their relationship is still, for the most part, a secret, and if Pat wants to spend the weekend with his family or at least is expected to, then he should.
He had been listening with passive interest as Paa described their beach vacation traditions, but the mention of the movie makes him falter with his chopsticks.
“Shutter? You mean the horror movie?” he asks, looking up. Ink and Paa glance over at him. “But Pat hates scary stuff.”
Ink laughs. “Aren’t you supposed to be his boyfriend?”
And Paa frowns with confusion, because she says, “Are you kidding me? Hia loves scary stuff. He drags me to scary movies with him all the time because I know he just wants to freak me out! You know how many times I’ve heard screams coming from his room and turns out he was just watching some horror movie on Netflix? He and Korn practically camped outside of the theater when The Maid came out, right before lockdown.”
Pran frowns too. “But…”
Ink pats his hand and gives him a look that says, Oh Pran, you silly forgetful boy. “And don’t you remember in Mattayom 5 when he tried to get our class to watch Pee Mak and we had to stop halfway through because Au started crying?”
Now that she mentions it, Pran does remember that. Their class had a free period and so their teacher was generous enough to let them watch a movie, and Pat was so enthusiastic about Pee Mak that it was put on until one of their classmates started crying about forty-five minutes in. Pat had been so upset with himself for inadvertently making someone cry that Pran had been more distracted by watching Pat comfort the classmate than wanting to find out how the movie ended. Now that he thinks about it, he never finished it or looked it up either.
But still, every time he and Pat have watched a horror movie since getting together, Pat would whine that he was scared and needed Pran to cuddle him and hold his hand. Although now Pran has his suspicions about that.
Paa seems to come to the same conclusion because her expression suddenly clears up. “Oh, don’t tell me hia’s been tricking you this entire time.”
“He didn’t trick me,” Pran says automatically. It doesn’t feel that way; Pran doesn’t need to be tricked to hold Pat’s hand or to cuddle him.
“He’s just being Pat,” Ink says, with a fond roll of her eyes. “Let me guess: does he hide under the blankets when a scary part comes on? Because I’m pretty sure I know where he’s getting that from.” She smirks in Paa’s direction.
She’s not wrong. And it had been a surprise, the first time Pat had whined that all his friends wanted him to watch SLR but it was scary so he wanted Pran to watch it with him. Pat loves rollercoasters (“The bigger the better,” he had said on their first amusement park date, and Pran put up with the feeling that his bones were about to fall out of his body just to experience them all with Pat) and Halloween (he and all his Engineering friends have a continuous competition every year for the scariest costume) and one time suggested for them to take a skydiving class together before Pran promptly shut him down. So for Pat to be scared of such a mediocre horror film had made Pran both confused and fond. Since then Pran has never questioned it, although now he feels kind of stupid for not doing so.
Paa says, “Ink!” and hits her girlfriend with affection.
Pran smiles at them both. “You guys are worse than me and Pat.”
“Not by a long shot,” Ink replies. “So, what are you gonna do?”
*
When Pat gets home an hour after Pran that afternoon, Pran says, without looking up from his cooking, “You lied to me.”
Pat drops his bag onto the ground immediately. “I’m so sorry baby, I didn’t mean it,” he says, coming to wrap his arms around Pran as Pran chops mushrooms. He feels Pat perch his chin onto his shoulder. “What did I lie about again?”
Pran looks at him as best as he can from this angle. “You always beg me to watch horror movies with you,” he says. “Because you’re apparently scared of them.”
Blinking, Pat pulls away.
“Pran,” he says slowly. “Did you actually believe that?”
“Well!” Pran splutters. He puts his knife down. “That’s what you always say, and you always beg, so how am I supposed to know that you’re pretending? I had to find out when I was getting lunch with Paa and Ink today and Paa said that you wanted to watch that old movie remake!”
“But don’t you remember in Mattayom 5—”
“Yes, well, Ink reminded me today,” Pran says with a huff. He goes back to his mushrooms. His cheeks are warm, but feeling embarrassed about Pat is a regular occurrence. He likes it maybe a bit too much, actually.
“And since when have you seen me actually scared of anything?”
Pran opens his mouth to retort, but the more he thinks about it, aside from the scary movie nights, it’s like Pat doesn’t have an ounce of fear in his body. Pran thinks so much that he has anxiety from his eyebrows to his toenails, but Pat has never backed down from a challenge, or anything potentially life-threatening, and one time they had been watching a drama with a particularly gruesome part that Pran had to look away but Pat hadn’t even batted an eyelash.
In fact, Pat’s not even scared of his mother.
After a moment, Pran raises his chin defiantly. “That time we ran away and you didn’t want to go home when I wanted to call my mom.”
Pat stares at him. Then he breaks into giggles.
“You’re saying that I was scared then?” he says when he stops, then starts giggling again. “Fine, fine, I was scared. And fine, yes I lied to you about being scared of horror movies too. I’m not scared of them at all. I actually love them. Why else do you think I keep suggesting for us to watch them?”
“Because you want an excuse for me to hold your hand?”
“That too,” Pat amends.
“But you don’t need an excuse for me to hold your hand,” Pran says. “We’re boyfriends. You can just ask. Or do it yourself.”
Pat pouts. “But I want to feel like my cute and sexy boyfriend is protecting me from all the scary stuff. Especially since I know you’re not scared of them either.”
This is mostly true, though maybe one day Pran will tell him that the ones with the haunted dolls freak him out a little. Something about the eyes and the voice boxes is just unsettling.
“Can’t we watch them without either of us being scared?” he asks Pat.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Pat says. “You’re supposed to be my boyfriend. Don’t you want to protect me?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” Pran says, returning to his mushrooms. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“And don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say that you didn’t want to either.” Pat starts walking towards the bedroom, stripping his shirt off in the process. Pran wishes he had a wardrobe out in the living room so he could watch. As it is, all he can see is Pat’s strong and bare back as Pat continues, “Or do you want to pretend you’re scared so I can protect you?”
“In your dreams,” Pran calls back, because Pat does enough protecting him as it is.
Pat pokes his head back out. He hasn’t put a shirt on yet.
“What’s for dinner, by the way?”
*
The weekend is as long and boring as Pran had predicted, the severe lack of Pat meaning that he does far more schoolwork than he would like. Pat does text him every moment he can, sharing pictures of the beach and silly selfies with him and Paa, and Paa’s annoyed expression when they walked out of the theater after seeing the Shutter remake, because apparently she had been goaded into going along and deeply regrets it. Pran sends Pat, You’re a bad older brother, and Pat replies back with three crying-with-laughter emojis.
When they come back, Pat’s not even at his family’s house for two hours before he shows up at Pran’s dorm, sealing his mouth over Pran’s and shoving his tongue down his throat, Pran kissing back just as eagerly. They make love on the living room couch even with the windows wide open, and Pran thinks to himself that he’ll never tire of this, having Pat in his arms again.
They fall back into their usual rhythm as exams approach, spending all their time out of class together, whether eating or studying or getting bored of studying and making out for two hours on the floor instead. So it’s not so much prepared as it is spur of the moment when one evening, after long days for both of them that they’re just sitting in bed together, Pran says, “I want to watch a movie.”
“Sure.” Pat grabs Pran’s laptop from his bedroom desk on his side of the bed and opens it up, putting the password in. “What do you want to watch?”
Pran leans his head on Pat’s shoulder. “Can we watch Pee Mak?” he asks, as Pat opens up a new browser window.
Pat eyes him briefly. Pran pretends not to notice.
“Yeah,” Pat says, searching up a stream for it.
“It’s scary though,” Pran tells him, and takes one of his hands out from under the blankets. “I’m going to need you to hold my hand for it.”
He can hear the amusement in Pat’s voice when he says, “Alright,” and covers Pran’s hand with his own. “There you go. Feel better?”
Pran smiles up at him. “I do,” he says, and by the time they finish the movie, all Pran really remembers is the feeling of Pat’s fingers entangled with his.
Art by Quel