color me in gold (lips like petals on my throat)

scherzando.

How do you go on living with an ache in your chest that won't subside? How do you keep on moving forward with your life when everything within you wants to stay in the past, live in the contours of memories that aren't even your own? Brett doesn't know how anyone could do it, living with this kind of yearning. Maybe he really had fucked himself over with the whole reading-the-letters shtick in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time, really.

He's becoming more of a mess as days go by. Scatterbrained. Distracted. His excuse is the upcoming move to Singapore, but even that reason doesn't carry enough weight to be believable in the long run.

It's only a matter of time, he worries, before Eddy figures him out.

(Brett prays to every god out there who can hear him that it doesn't have come to that. Wishful thinking isn't always rational, but it at least lets him sleep at night.)

*

It's almost like an out-of-body experience, reading through the letters.

Brett knows the events Eddy's mentioned on paper. He knows the time period of the letters; he knows what it must've felt like in the moments his best friend is describing, and it's made all the more visceral because he had been there. But reading the letters gives him a different perspective, gives him insight into the mind of Eddy Chen circa Uni Days, and it's like an alternate reality entirely.

Who could've thought his best friend could love someone this much and for so long—since uni, for fuck's sake!—without him realizing it? Without getting a single whiff of it at all? It's a fucking travesty, is what it is. He thinks he's probably the only person on earth jealous of someone he's never seen and has only ever read about on paper.

(It would all probably make more sense if the subject were—him. But it can't be him, can it?)

(Wishful thinking isn't just irrational; it can also be an utter bitch. He doesn't want to hurt even more when he's inevitably proven wrong. So: no.)

Steadying his breath is a chore, but it's one he knows he'll need later on. When he feels well enough to withstand the ache clawing up the walls of his lungs, Brett opens his eyes and begins to read.

We're going out clubbing again today at the Valley, you said. If it were only up to me, I wouldn't be out there rubbing elbows with strangers and drinking cheap shots of liquor on a school night, but - well. At this point, you know I'd do anything for you.

You do know that, don't you? It's why you're always asking. Or maybe you don't know, and I've spoiled you enough to think that this is normal, that this treatment isn't special to you alone.

I don't know which one is worse.

Still, I've got my dancing shoes on and my hair slicked back, because I'm not going to half-ass things, not with you. If anyone's going with you to go clubbing, then it might as well be me.

Look, we've already established the fact that I'm a selfish bastard. The way you move on the dancefloor is pornographic; it's a show I'll never stop watching. Ever. I could handle a hundred 3am walks home if it meant watching you be loose and free any day.

But. There's a but here.

I'm getting tired.

I'm tired of sitting here by the sidelines, seeing the way you pursue strangers out there for a saucy dance or a quick fuck. They're people who won't ever treasure you the way I do. Who won't love you the way you're meant to be loved, who won't touch you the way you should be touched: like worship, like breathing. Intimate and necessary.