Where the Wind Blows

5

The blaring of Rains morning alarm woke him with the added headache it brought on top of the nausea he felt already. On top of the cocktails he'd had at the bar, three beers for someone who hadn't ever touched alcohol before was a bit too much for a lightweight like Rain to handle. He couldn't quite remember how he'd gotten to bed or at what time, but what he did remember in a flash of recollection was what Phayu had told him. 'I think you're cute. Can I hit on you?'

Grabbing the pillow beside him, Rain hid his burning hot face and quietly begged for it all to be a dream. How was he supposed to ever look Phayu in the eye after he said something like that so blatantly? And after his response to it?

"Yahhhhhh" Rain whined loudly I the pillow as he kicked his feet about frantically to expell as much emotion as he could. The more he could recall the more he wanted to crawl into a dark pit and die.

"I think you're cute. Can I hit on you?"

Rain could feel his own heartbeat in his throat virtually choking him and stealing every word that could possibly come to mind right out of his mouth. He couldn't break eyecontact with the man staring so deeply into his eyes with a serious expression- not faltering even for a second and leading the boy to suspect that this was indeed not a joke. How the fuck was he supposed to reply to that? What could he possibly say that wouldn't ruin the moment and that wouldn't ruin his chance at getting to be flirted on by someone as hot as Phayu?! Was this something he should take a chance on? What did that even mean?

Before Rains brain could muster up with anything else, his mouth took action, blurting out one word in a way so matter of factly he felt part of his soul leave his body after having heard himself say it. "Yes."

Phayu stifled a laugh seeing how tense Rain was, an expression as if he were either constipated or on the verge of breaking a sweat, but himself relieved when the boy had finally said something. To his dismay, however, when he'd leaned only a centimeter closer, the boy beside him had grabbed his can of beer so tightly it dented, chugging the rest of its contents before opening another and doing the same again.

Rain shot up from his bed, though his headache quickly made him regret the swiftness of his panicked movements when he shuffled out of bed and decided to distract himself. He just needed to sleep it off, that was all. He wouldn't be shy like this forever, it was only because they didn't know each other well yet that he felt weird about it.  If they kept talking like friends then Rain would regain his comfort the way he had last night before... well... that. It was all really fast and while he admired Phayu for not wasting a second in opportunity to flirt, he wasn't sure how to deal with that information quite yet.

Phayu was four years older than himself, the other no doubtedly had experience in the field and he would use that to his advantage, but Phayu was also insightful enough to realize that Rain wasn't quite ready for full on flirting yet right?

Letting his Hand fling to his forehead, Rain kneeled down on the floor of his kitchen as he waited for his coffee to brew and tried to decipher what to do now. Was the answer as simple as pretending nothing had happened and acting like he did with anyone else while around Phayu? Maybe that was it. They had to get comfortable first. It wasn't like phayu had confessed his undying love for him, just that he wanted to hit on him... casually. So there was no need to stress. Absolutely none, nope, zero.

"Come on Rain" he said to himself, pulling himself together and standing up straight. "You can do it, na. You're a grown up, you can handle it!"

"... You cant handle it." Sitting himself back down on the floor, Rain let out a long sigh, ruffling his bleach blonde hair and letting it fall in front of his face with a dramatic sigh. "I'm going to have to get Sky's advice, won't I? No- he'll only bully me" he muttered, ruffling his hair again before his hands fell limply to the floor and his head bounced back up to look at the plain ceiling above him. "Its not that big of a deal." He recited to himself once again, this time deciding to stick to its meaning and continuing to recite it to himself over and over well into the day until he'd forgotten why he was saying it in the first place.

Rain wasn't a complicated person. He enjoyed simple things, had simple humor and a rather simple life all together, but he happened to be very good at complicating things beyond what they needed to be. His looks, his outfit, his passion for art, and, of course, the slightest disturbance of simplicity in his life instantly turning into a flaming ball of destruction heading straight for him on a collision course that couldn't be altered if the world depended on it. Like that time he got a pimple on his chin right before a class presentation in middleschool or when his grandma commented on his gaining of weight over the holidays when he was in elementary school and he feared being bullied every day until he had lost it again attending gym class.

His mother had always said he was a drama queen and liked to exaggerate, but really Rain knew he was just sensitive to things that made him uncomfortable or self conscious. He'd spent most of his life trying so hard to get on a good level of social ranking in his surroundings and anything that might knock him down to bottom was horrifying to him. Why? Because it meant that 19 years worth of effort and risk taking could go down the drain with as little as a distasteful comment in a public setting or the outing of a dirty secret he'd hoped to take to the grave.

To be fair, the latter of the two was a hypothetical as the only secret he'd been keeping was that of his sexuality and that wasn't as much of a secret as it was not blurting it out at any given opportunity. But the point still stood. And his point now was that he would seize the chance to be hit on by a hot guy while being in the prime of his young adulthood and still being relatively well accepted in the new social environment that was university. That didn't sound so bad, right? Now all he needed to do was find a way to follow through with that...