Don't Leave Me

1. Missed Connections

There is silence that is manmade — the clattering whir of the air conditioning that rattles and croaks like a stage four lung cancer patient. The soft tick-and-tock of the clock that he can't see, but can definitely hear. It's a loud thing, seems almost taunting.

Hah, another second in here. Hah, there, another. A whole minute has gone by, do you feel yourself getting older?

Sarawat sits in his driveway and stares outwards. His own house looks empty as though nobody's home.

Interesting.

At nights like this when he can't seem to get a case solved or his life in order, he drinks.

At first, it was to drown out his mundane days. But that proceeded to wanting to dull the pain of his wounded heart, then it became numbing the pain of everything else. His wife disapproves, he can tell, but she doesn't stop him from doing it. She merely stocks up their pantry with more bottles of whisky, brands far more expensive than anything he would have bought for himself.

He's not an alcoholic. He's not like his father. He's not an addict and he sure as fuck doesn't have a problem. He just chooses to drink, you see. He can stop if he wants to and it wouldn't be difficult; he just doesn't want to, that's the thing. Why would he? His life is not exactly falling apart. He never gets plastered. His job is not failing. The alcohol isn't destroying his professional life and it definitely can't be destroying his personal life any more than it already has been with trouble on its own. He wouldn't dare drink at work, though. Au contraire, he might just be a better detective with a glass of whiskey in him.

The air is thick and empty in his car, the space behind his eyes is empty, too. Until it is not, until something shifts and prowls from the shadows, horned and fanged, and white-hot with anger like a Spanish bull about to charge at him.

His fingers curl around the steering wheel until his knuckles turn bone-white, his nostrils flare; the only giveaway.

He didn't know how good he had it until it was all gone.

Tine.

He'd tried, at first, to just not think about him. Kept himself busy, took his wife anywhere she wanted to go, worked extra hours — anything to keep from being alone in that house, that house where, he thinks, it might have all started falling apart.

He thinks about Tine tangled up with that woman and he gets a fire inside him, wants to jump in his car, make that drive to wherever he is and thrash Tine to within an inch of his life, then haul him back to Nakhon Phatom and fuck him until neither one of them can walk, and never let Tine out of his sight ever again. He wants to take a can of gasoline and a handful of matches to his house, watch it go up in flames that aren't half as hot as the burning hatred rolling around inside his gut.

He tries not to think about it, and manages to get through most of his days without putting his fist through a wall. But the nights are different, somehow longer, and Sarawat couldn't fill them with anything. He hadn't dreamed in years, figured he'd given up dreams the day Tine turned his back on them and walked the other way, but he started dreaming again, things so bright they hurt his eyes.

When Sarawat wakes up these days, he is always wet. Face stained with tears, t-shirt soaked in sweat, his cold, shivering body sticking to the damp, tangled sheets. Sometimes, even his boxers are wet, for different reasons which are almost equally embarrassing, but not entirely. At times, he feels like his body is trying to escape him, seeping slowly out of his pores. Other times, it feels like it's trying to drown him.

Technicolour nightmares of Tine and that woman, that woman whose name he couldn't even bring himself to say. Tine, moaning deep and hot like some wild thing, those crazy, half-mad cries that always sent him spiraling into nothingness, Tine's body stretched tight as a bow string, arched back like liquid fire, white and gold in the flame and moonlight, eyes dark as a punch to the gut, that fucked-out expression and his dick rising flushed and hot. And that woman who isn't Sarawat is there to see it all.