they wish they were us | conan gray

15. pandora's box

"Your boyfriend?" Hunter asks tenderly, glancing inside at someone who must be Noah.

Conan wants to shut the door and break down on the floor in tears. What is Hunter doing here? Why is always at the right place at the wrong time? Conan can't believe that he was the kind boy from ninth grade he had once known. Hunter bloomed around him, only to see Conan wilt. He'd told him he loved him last summer and then started dating Alice.

Nothing about that made sense to Conan. Why tell someone you loved them, in a monogamous fashion and then date another? What the fuck did Hunter want from him? Why tell Conan he didn't want a relationship and then expect one out of him anyways? Love wasn't supposed to hurt. And Conan felt choked every time he looked at him.

He knew when to show up, when to prick him and how to manipulate him. He did it with such innocence that Conan ended up blaming himself in the end.

"He is called none of your business," Conan says, sweetness dripping from his tone. Hunter flinches and rubs his neck, balancing the box in his one arm. Conan immediately feels a little bad for snapping at him but then realizes he has the full right to. It's another one of Hunter's ways to make him feel like he was the one at fault. Perhaps he didn't mean to hurt him but Hunter should get by now that perhaps Conan isn't interested in his crumbs anymore. The ending will always stay the same.

"Me and Alice broke up over the weekend and I was collecting her stuff to return, I saw some of yours," Hunter says. He and Alice broke up? The usual Conan would have been delighted. Ecstatic even. He would have been on his knees for Hunt. He is sour now. He doesn't need to know. They aren't friends. They aren't anything and if Hunt is hoping to get a shoulder to cry on, he is going to meet the face of discontent. "Just a jacket and earphones and-"

"Thank you for considering about me now," Conan says, taking the box of things back. His eyes browse over the contents. Half of it is useless and broken. Hunt just needed an excuse to show up. Satisfaction trickles into his chest slowly. Hunt is desperate. Like he had been. He instantly sojourns himself from going there, from even thinking about making Hunt miserable for a second. He isn't like him and he never will be. This shouldn't be a cycle of hate and testing each other. He wants out.

Hunt's blue eyes shine down on him like gem stones scattering the light. "I won't keep you for long. You're clearly more eager to be with your...friend."

"I love how you know me," Conan says at which Hunt winces, barely perceptible. "Bye."

Conan doesn't give him the chance to say bye and instead gently closes the door on his face. He doesn't look at him as he does so, scared his stupid feelings and guilt he doesn't deserve will cause him to invite him in. Not in my household, Conan thinks.

"Day seventy million of wishing I were heterosexual," Conan says out loud. Though he's mostly talking to himself, he sees Noah crack a small smile at that. "When is your mom picking you up?"

"I have an hour to kill," he replies. Conan places the box over the small cushioned seat next to the front door. He wouldn't be surprised if the box stays their till the end of time. Like Pandora's box, he has an inexplicable itch to go through the contents but at the back of his mind he knows that he'll walking down the memory lane. Or he'll end up letting Hunt back in. He doesn't know which is worse.

"I am so tired," Conan says, flopping onto the couch next to Noah. His presence made Hunter being here awkward. As of now, with Hunt gone, Conan wants to curl up on the couch next to him and drone to the pleasing aroma of him. "That was Hunt, by the way."

"Hunt," Noah merely says, as if testing the word on his tongue and that's freaking enough for Conan's tear ducts to betray him. Warm tears threaten to leak from his eyes but he wipes them on his sleeve. If there were a delete button for his life, something he could use to erase every trace of him, he would press it in a heartbeat. "You crying?"