InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Turn the bass down!"

Diego moves with nervous energy, his arm linked with Ravi’s. They’re not dressed for the cold, but he doesn’t care. His heart is beating hard, and he can’t stop grinning even though his cheeks ache with overuse. As they stumble through the trampled snow to the little clearing out back by the artificing shed, Diego lets his shoulder bump into Ravi’s when one of his shoes slips on the slush. He feels that need to be closer, and this time he relishes in it. He lets himself really look at Ravi. Soft eyes, full lips, unbelievably well-coiffed hair. He’s not going to feel guilty about it tonight.

“Did you recognize my song?” Diego asks, voice dripping obnoxiously with confidence. Of course Ravi recognized it. Diego picked it out specifically for him. As Diego sang, fingers plucking out every note, Ravi must have been thinking about that night they stayed up until 3:00 AM (3:21 AM specifically; Ravi had apparently kept track of every minute) and just talked. Talked and talked and talked.

“Diego…” Ravi laughs, half-embarrassment, half-delight. He’d been helpless to resist when Diego had linked his arm with Ravi’s and pulled him away from the crowd… especially while still floating on the feeling of listening to Diego sing “Llorando” with such devastating feeling. That night when he’d stayed over at the Morales ranch, Ravi had spent literally an hour talking about the Club Silencio scene. Of course he recognized the song.

He bites his lower lip for a second, before mustering the courage to speak. “It was… beautiful.” Ravi can talk endlessly about what a song means in the context of a story, but he could never do what Diego just did. Get up on stage, and make the whole audience feel the enormity of his heartbreak. He wants to touch Diego’s cheek, just to see whether or not he can still feel the tears from when Diego was singing. Ravi resists the urge. “You sounded wonderful… and your band too!” Ravi shakes his head. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and see if you’ve won?”

“I don’t care,” Diego says, and means it. Well, he cares a little; Levi and Zoey have their eyes on that broom and Diego had done his best to help them get it. But when he decided to do a stripped, slow acoustic love song for his solo, he knew there was no winning with that entry. It was too simple, and then too unexpectedly uncomfortable when Diego had begun to cry. Ugh. He still feels raw, but he should have been prepared. He’d spent hours listening to that song, perfecting the arrangement, and he hadn’t missed the parallels. It’s a good thing Cecil doesn’t speak Spanish.

Whatever, it doesn’t matter, he’s not thinking about Cecil right now. That hadn’t been about Cecil.

Diego stops them, and moves his hold on Ravi to the other boy’s arms as they face one another. The only real source of light is from the lamps around the artificing shed, and Ravi’s still dressed up as some kind of medieval adventurer. He looks silly and beautiful and like he stepped right off the pages of a fantasy novel. “I sang it for you.”

Ravi laughs again, this time with more embarrassment than anything else. It’s difficult to meet Diego’s eyes when he says things like that in such a sweetly earnest voice, but Ravi has to look back eventually. He loves looking at Diego’s face too much not to. “I’m not sure that I deserve such an honour, but you chose an exceedingly appreciative audience, I promise. There was applause and cheers, and… perhaps, just perhaps, someone had to get the handkerchief out of his pocket to keep from making a scene.”

He’s exaggerating, but only a little. Ravi’s never been the type for ugly crying fits, not even in the days when he was a little boy in a brand new country where no one spoke like him, but he can’t claim to have stayed dry-eyed either. Music has a way of getting under his skin, in a way that defies understanding by his hopelessly analytical brain. Diego’s voice can do things to him which he can’t quantify.

Diego’s heart jumps into his throat. He’d been watching Ravi whenever he looked up, catching his reactions in tiny fragmented pieces. It had been hard to refocus, to just think about the music and not worry about whether or not one particular person in the audience was enjoying it.

“Oh, okay, just perhaps,” he echoes teasingly—no, flirtatiously. Diego steps in closer to Ravi. They’re just about the same height, which is going to make this easy. “It wasn’t my plan to upset you.” Diego speaks more quietly now, and he’s smiling softly. In preparation for the next few minutes, Diego lets go of Ravi momentarily to push his glasses back up his nose. If Ravi asks ‘Then what was your plan?’ this is going to be perfect. Diego’s not counting on it, but he’s hoping just a little.

“No?” Ravi teases back. He doesn’t step away when Diego draws closer, although he does primly fold his hands behind his back, in an effort to calm his nerves. It’s been such a strange evening. He doesn’t feel like himself. “Diego Morales, if your intent was not to astonish me to the point of tears with the most stunning live performance I’ve ever heard, and of my absolute favourite song no less… then what, pray tell, was your plan?”

Diego beams brightly enough to make the nearby lights look dim by comparison. He knows it’s ridiculous, but this feels like proof. This feels like a sign.

“I’ll show you,” he says under his breath, like it’s a secret. Then, with the practiced grace of someone who’s done this countless times, he closes the distance between them. One hand is at Ravi’s jaw, the other is feather-light on his arm, and his lips press against Ravi’s mouth in an unmistakable kiss.

Ravi knows what Diego’s doing before he does it. He’s been there before, standing under a starry sky with a handsome boy who talks to him like he’s special, who touches his face so gently that it feels like it means something. It’s only a second—the space between one breath and another—but Ravi knows in an instant that Diego means to kiss him. All he needs to do is stand still and let it happen.

He waits too long. Diego’s lips touch his, and it’s just like the last time, in September, when he’d been caught off-guard after 7 Minutes in Heaven. The same feeling of Diego’s mouth on his, warm and confident and rough with stubble. Ravi puts a hand against Diego’s chest and steps back, breaking his hold. “Diego… stop.”

Diego follows Ravi’s direction without a fight. He stands still as Ravi pulls away, and he’s still smiling even though he can feel the familiar twisting, churning fear in his gut. It was like the adrenaline of the performance had thrown a sheet over it, but it had been there all along just out of sight. His hand carefully withdraws from Ravi’s face, but remains open like it’s waiting for Ravi to put his own in it.

“Sorry,” Diego says breathlessly. His lopsided smile is tenuous, embarrassed. “I’ve been thinking about doing that for a while. As in, I mean, basically any time I’ve been with you for the last month.”

“What?” Ravi feels disbelief rising in him like hysteria. This could be a dream. He could wake up right now and realize it never happened, that Diego didn’t just say what Ravi heard him say. Diego Morales, notorious even among Azurcrests, ex to more of Ravi’s friends than he can count on one hand, and object of his most horribly ill-advised straight boy crush, he couldn’t really be— “No, no, no, no. You can’t want… No. Please don’t make fun of me, Diego.”

Ravi sounds admirably calm to his own ears. Or maybe that’s only “calm” when compared the alarms blaring one by one in his head as he stares back at Diego and realizes how utterly serious he’s being right now.

Diego’s smile softens, and his eyebrows spell out his pleading insistence. The nerves still claw at the back of his mind (something’s wrong, something’s wrong) but he ignores them. He’s eager to dismiss Ravi’s disbelief and explain himself. He’ll explain the depth of his affection to Ravi all night long if that’s what he wants.

“I’d never make fun of you,” he promises. “Tease you? Yes. Every day. But this isn’t a joke. I really feel something for you that I’ve never felt before.” Boldly, he reaches out to take Ravi’s hand.

Ravi takes another step back, pulling his hand out of Diego’s grasp. “You can’t,” he repeats, as though simply saying it should make it true. “I mean, you’re—” obviously not straight, Ravi, as you could tell from his tongue in your mouth, and Ravi prays to God that the night is dark enough is hide his growing blush. “I… I’m not… Diego, I’ve told you that I don’t date. And even besides that, we both know this is impossible because of—”

He cuts himself off before finishing that sentence.

Diego pulls his hands back and anxiously clasps them in front of himself. He takes a deep breath, and tries to think of an argument.

“I know. I know, we’ve talked about that. But I also know that you and I, we have this thing.” Diego presses his interwoven fingers to his own chest, dramatically placed over his heart. “What’s so impossible about it?”

Ravi looks away when Diego mentions the thing between them. Has he really been so naive as to believe that this was one-sided? Can he really be faulted for not taking it seriously when he’s experienced this before? Diego isn’t the first boy to smile at him like they’re sharing a secret, and not mean anything by it. Ricardo Ramirez would talk with him for hours and tease him in Spanish, and that was fine, because Ravi knew nothing would ever come from it. Had it really been a big deal that Ravi stopped being so careful all the time because Diego could make his heart skip just from the way he said “Ravinder”? He didn’t know.

(Yes, you were naive. Yes, it’s your fault. Yes, you knew you weren’t being careful. You knew.)

“Diego…” Please don’t do this. Ravi wishes he could just beg him to drop it, but already he knows Diego won’t. Diego always wants to know what he’s thinking. Ravi takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Please don’t misunderstand. You’ve become a very dear friend to me in a very short time. As dear to me as someone I’ve known for years and years… like Tabitha.”

That name hits Diego like an arrow. He can’t breathe for a second, and the resulting silence drags on until it’s almost physically painful. He’s always known Ravi and Tabitha were close friends, but Diego and Tabitha share all their friends. Diego doesn’t have anyone who isn’t also Tabitha’s. In fact, he’s lucky any of these people still consider themselves Diego’s at all. He knows it’s fair, he knows it’s what he deserves. Why, then, is he suddenly frustrated?

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Tabitha.” Diego wants to sound confident, but instead his voice is small and desperate. “I’d... I’d never do that again. I swear.”

“I believe you,” says Ravi, because he wants to, and because the Diego Morales he’s come to know over the past few months is kind and considerate, and has never done anything to hurt him. Ravi wants to believe it’s possible for everyone to become better than who they were yesterday. “I know you regret it, and I’m not upset with you, Diego. I don’t blame you. It’s just… This year, everything’s been complicated enough for my friends without me adding to it.”

It’s killing him to watch Diego’s crumbling expression, but Ravi forces himself to keep looking. He forces himself to keep his voice steady, and not falter in the face of Diego’s obvious pain, even when Ravi says, very softly, “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Diego, meanwhile, feels his composure begin to buckle. Ravi’s lack of emotion just makes him more frazzled, and he can’t keep his voice steady or his hands still. He sees the oncoming train, but he doesn’t know how to get out of the way.

“They’ll understand,” he pleads, “if we’re in love they’ll understand. Ravi, please—”

Ravi inhales sharp winter air, and holds the breath in his lungs like a knife against his own heart. Yes, you should’ve been more careful. But there’s an easy way to resolve this. All the messiness, the confusion, the dreamy what-if’s and ambiguous will-he-or-won’t-he’s. He’s only really been friends with Diego for, what, two months? Maybe three? That’s not nearly long enough to fall in love with someone… is it?

No. It’s better this way. Diego’s too complicated, Ravi’s too inflexible, and graduation is coming at them like a freight train. Whatever this is, it would’ve never worked out.

“I’m sorry,” Ravi says, still in his quiet but firm voice. “I don’t feel the same way. I only see you as a friend, Diego.”

Diego doesn’t know what to do with his hands anymore, so he wraps his arms tightly around his chest as he tries to brace himself against the agonizing truth. Ravi doesn’t feel the same. He never did. Not when they stayed up all night talking about a movie Diego watched just to impress him, not when they were snowed in and learned about one another’s names, not when Diego walked him home drunkenly and Ravi said he had a beautiful voice. A gray haze is immediately cast over all those memories, and paranoia seeps into the cracks. Had Ravi been enjoying himself at all? Did he feel uncomfortable every time Diego smiled too fondly or sat too close?

Diego must have been desperate for attention, or maybe he’s just arrogant. Vain. Stupid. He’d thought for a while that Cecil had feelings for him too, only to learn how astoundingly wrong he’d been there. Now he’d done it again, mistaken someone’s overtures of genuine friendship for signs of love. Diego takes an uneasy step back in the snow, staring at Ravi the whole time. How did he get it so wrong?

Listening to the platitudes and apologies is going to be unbearable. Diego knows his face is broadcasting every emotion that crosses his mind. His nose stings. “I’m… I don’t know, uh, what to… what to say.”

Ravi’s composure slips. Just for a second, when Diego steps back, and Ravi starts to follow him, before he remembers that he shouldn’t. He can’t. He folds his hands behind his back again, squeezing his fingers nearly hard enough to cut off circulation. He forbids himself from moving any closer.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, helplessly. “I… I still care about you. I still want us to be friends.”

“It’s… okay. It’s… I need some time,” Diego says too quickly, and turns away from Ravi in case he can’t stop himself from crying. “I’m just going to, um, going to go.” His unsteady retreat first points him towards the lodge, but then he thinks about what he’ll say when someone asks him what’s wrong. Diego redirects abruptly, and he sets his mind to cutting through the snow and brush to Jay Trail and eventually a long shower, the alcohol he still has that wasn’t confiscated, and his bed.

“Diego—” What is there to say? “…Alright. I understand.” Ravi watches him, waiting until Diego leaves his sight, waiting for the possibility that maybe he’ll look back, waiting for a sign that Ravi’s done the right thing, because he has to have done the right thing.

Diego disappears into the woods leading back to Azurcrest, and doesn’t look back once. Only when he’s gone does Ravi press his hands to his face, holding them there until he can stop shaking. It’s fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine. His hands are freezing when Ravi finally lets them drop. Dry-eyed, his breathing calm and even, he turns and heads back into the lodge.