you're gay /kaine + alain

My greeting is wrong.

Fuck.

I know it is, I’ve written so much that I know that a conversation is supposed to be lighter. There should be small talk, something tiny and polite but there’s no use talking about the weather and neither of us cares about how the other is.

But his mouth gets stuck open, corners pulled back like curtains at a show and I've seen Alain smile hundreds of times. I know that smile isn’t real. I know what that feels like. I hate that I do. I hope that I haven’t hurt his feelings then in the next instant feel stupid for even thinking that what I say to him matters.

I'v gotten so feral that I'm cut by my own teeth.

”Writing something interesting?”

It’s a knee jerk reaction but my hand slides beneath the cover of my journal as soon as he asks and slams the cover shut. It wasn’t anything worth looking at anyway. It’s just that there’s no one else for me to talk to and my journal’s the only thing I’ve never had to hand in.

I’ve gotten too loose with it, too clear and pointed and angry. Honest too, like a man wearing a noose, his own hand on the lever that will open the trap door beneath him.

I shake my head, try to make the movement calm, uncaring, ”J-just…, I-” but my mouth presses itself into a thin line. No more words. I just shake my head again.

He says that he and Coley had a fight, as if that’s actually news. Please, the whole school has to know at this point. It’s unnatural to see one of them without the other and it’s been days now.

Frankly, it’s sort of annoying, especially if this is what happens when one of them is miserable. I can’t be a replacement friend. I don’t want to be roped into their stupid happy mess, not that I’d ever be anyway, that's pathetic of me. I realised years ago where I belonged, back against the wall, watching everyone else live through the moments I’ll always be barred from.

I’m just the narrator after all, not the hero of the story.

That would be Alain. Perfect, golden Alain who doesn’t even know what kind of effect he has on people. To be fair, he looks like the type of unassuming boy that people would think nothing of until they found themselves on their knees at his feet, pledging themselves to his cause. It’s not his fault. There’s just something about him that’s magnetic, and even though I want to hate him for how easy everything seemingly is for him, I can’t.

It’d be like hating a tree for blocking out the sun.

Once a person becomes a story on my pages it’s hard for me to hate them anyway. Everyone's got poems at this point, all of them have wormed their way into every single piece I’ve written. Alain's no exception.

But it’s no coincidence that my best one I’ve ever done for Alain compares his gaze to a ray of sunlight. No matter where it lands, it’s a relief, it’s warmth. I can’t blame Coley for loving him just as I can’t blame myself for begrudgingly bending to his whim like a sunflower following his path across the sky.

It’s nice for a moment.

He tells me what he wants and I don’t know what to do with his gaze so I put it down between us gently, keeping mine on the pattern in the wood tabletop. It’s been a long time since I met anyone’s eye, I don’t really know what to do with the attention except for try to remove it as quickly as possible.

I’m to write an apology letter for Coley and in return I’m owed anything I want.

The abstractness of that offer halts me for a long moment.

It’s been a long time since I really wanted anything. There’s little room for desire in a life like mine. I’ve become good at tricking myself too, locked that part of myself up so I could finally stop feeling the bitter sting of disappointment.

There are things I want, yeah. Nothing Alain could give me though. No matter how much sway he holds with that warm gaze of his, my story has no hero, I’m on my own.

And if I bring Alain into it, I’d either have to watch him get hurt or watch him fail me and I don’t know which idea I hate more.

I let out a heavy sigh. What’ll happen anyway is he’ll promise me a favour back but by the morning he’ll forget about me until he needs something else. It’s just how it goes.

I bend over and pull a scrap piece of paper out of my bag, the teeth from the torn edge soft looking in the candlelight.

My pen clicks as I push the end and then I lie the tip of it against the paper, watching ink bloom slowly, feathering out like the tiniest strike of lightning into the fibres.

I raise my gaze again.

”P-p-pay pay pay m-mmm-me bac-k b-buh-by leauh leaving af-after.”

And the request feels mean but it’s not like he was going to stick around anyway. I just made it easy for both of us. It’s better if Alain isn’t running around feeling like he owes me anything, that just seems… stressful honestly. Having someone suddenly aware of you after who knows how many years is unsettling enough.

And it doesn’t occur to me of course that maybe he wants to have a reason to talk to me again, because I don’t even know how to deal with that.

Sometimes I forget that I’m part of the story too. I don’t want to be.

My pen taps against the page and I gesture at him, go on then, start talking.