Toxic [2gether]

Part 25

Tine jumped out of the car excitedly, instantly starting to stretch and jog a little on the spot, right there out on the parking lot while Sarawat slammed the door on his side of the car, dragging his sneaker clad feet around the vehicle.

"Come on, it was your idea to go for a run," Tine chided, stretching his arms. "What happened with those football skills that you had in college?" He wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis. Sarawat just shook his head, rolling his big eyes fondly. A slight breeze swept through the trees around the parking lot, ruffling their hair silly as both men locked gazes, trapped in an unexpectedly sweet moment. Tine was finally smiling, his round eyes sparkling in the sun, brandishing his white teeth. Sarawat's heart palpitated in his chest at the stunning sight of his boyfriend.

They had been lounging inside his apartment, Sarawat tinkling soft melodies on his guitar while Tine had been curled up in a ball on the leather couch, legs close to his body and knees tugged under his chin, scrolling through his phone. The musician had noticed how his face had been getting paler and all the more pinched by the minute at what he was seeing on the screen, puffy lips parting in disbelief. Since Tine had made his instagram account private his twitter had been overflowing with all sorts of notifications instead. Companies were suddenly interested in doing collaborations with him, trying to lure him in with badly concealed schemes, as if he was some kind of money and fame crazed fool. And that damned hashtag, urging him to leave Sarawat. Ugh. All of this just made him feel nauseous. They made him out to be some kind of dirt on the sole of Sarawat's fancy shoe.

Tine felt so exposed, the phone trembling in his white knuckled grip. Everyone had already made their own opinion about him. People were not even interested in getting to know the real him. Any attempt at clarifying anything was futile. Denied. And it was slowly dawning on him, sinking down to his very core, how serious this situation actually was. No one had treated it as a joke, not even his friends and they, they always found something to make fun of. So how had he managed to fall into this rabbit hole? Did he have to accept this now as his new everyday life? Then what would happen to Tine if Sarawat choose to cut him off? Just blipping out of existence on Tine's radar, like he had done during university. Tine sniffled, trying to compose himself, trembling slightly, but was pretty bad at it.

And Sarawat had been on the front row to see all of that, now vividly recalling how Tine had bitten hard onto his lower lip anxiously, so the musician had decided to intervene before Tine fell apart in front of his eyes from overthinking.

"Well," Sarawat drawled, lips askance. "Honestly, I just wanted to see you in a pair of short jogging shorts." He inclined his head coyly, dark eyes trailing the length of Tine's sturdy pair of legs. Tine squeaked and flushed, making an aborted motion as if to cover his creamy thighs. Sarawat smirked then, grazing his fingers against the exposed, hot flesh as he walked past him, making the other man jolt and freeze at the contact.

"Let's go, a run is the best way to clear your head," he prompted and started to jog in the direction of a worn running path winding deeper into the park, as if he was not the one stalling just mere seconds ago.

"Hey," Tine yelled, coming alive and hustling after his boyfriend. "Shouldn't you, I don't know, have bodyguards with you out here?"

Sarawat slowed down, he turned around and started walking backwards instead, brows raised. A breeze pulled at his soft hair, making him look much younger for a teeny, tiny instant. Blink and the teenager was gone. Then slowly, very deliberately Sarawat took out a pair of sunglasses out of his shorts' pocket, sliding them over his eyes and slotting them on his high nose bridge, only his arched brows and the infuriating smirk visible. Pretty satisfied with his crafty disguise. Tine's expression deflated, getting all pinched instead. Yeah. That would surely be enough to wad off the most hardcore of fans, that could recognize the musician even from the back of his head.