Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Miles
Jun_iper: Hey, it’s Jun
you’re sweet to have messaged. Thnx for caring. Looks like I maybe went overboard with oversharing during that stream sorry to make you worry. I promise I’m okay. Just never been hung up on a guy like this before, and it’s messing with my head.
Sorry to hear you’re going thru it, too. I hope things get better for you. What’s the situation between you and your guy, if you don’t mind sharing? No big deal if you’re not comfortable bringing it up. I get it.
(I don’t check msgs often so if I don’t reply right away, it’s me, not you)
M iles stared at the screen, eyes roving over the lines of text over and over until they were etched into his brain. He didn’t think he was even reading anymore, not really; instead, it was like he was tracing the lines and curves of each letter, trying to make new sense out of them after the words themselves left him aching with disbelief.
He had not expected Jun to actually reply to his DM. He’d assumed that his inbox was so overflowing with fans trying to get his attention that he probably had a PR rep scouring through it constantly, just to make sure he didn’t miss anything important—but how could anyone, even a totally new hire, have deemed his silly little “woe is me, let’s commiserate” message as worthy of Jun’s time?
It seemed impossible.
But just as Jun had shocked him to his core by showing up at his doorstep, looking all ethereal and delicious, here were his words on Miles’s screen, composed in a message made specifically for him. No PR rep had written that response, he was sure of that much. Miles could read between the lines enough to feel the underlying thread of desperation that wove itself throughout Jun’s request for more information about Miles’s “guy.” Sure, it was possible he was just being polite, feigning interest, but he didn’t think that was the case. To him, it seemed that Jun wanted to talk to someone who understood what he was going through.
Miles, of course, understood even better than Jun knew. But there was no way he could tell him that. Especially not now, since he had already presented himself as a stranger who just happened to relate.
Christ, why had he even sent that message in the first place? What was he hoping to gain from digging this cavernous hole even deeper than it already was? Maybe there was a part of him that hoped that Jun would be able to magically tell who was on the other side of the message and would know exactly what to say to calm Miles’s unrelenting anxiety. Maybe he was hoping that Jun would make it all okay.
But it wasn’t okay, because here he was, sitting in the same place on his bed as he had the night before, when the plus sign on that godforsaken test had glared up at him so menacingly, and there was no way he could reveal himself to Jun now. He couldn’t lay this burden on his shoulders. He wouldn’t.
However, leaving him on read felt equally wrong.
This game he was playing felt as dangerous as pulling the trigger during a round of Russian Roulette, but he hadn’t been using his common sense since this whole thing began, so he didn’t see much point in starting now.
He let himself give the message one last read-through, the words already committed to memory, then clicked to reply.
x_kilometers_x: Oh wow, I sent that message hoping you’d reply, but I must not have expected you to because now I’m all tongue tied lol. Is it called tongue tied if it’s via chat? What would you even call it? Typing tied? Fingertip frozen? Keyboard stalled? Whatever, that’s probably not important, huh? Oh dear, I’m rambling. Can you tell I’m the most awkward person alive?? And I wonder why I have trouble with my love life…
I don’t mind you asking, tho! I mean, I’m the one who brought it up, right? There’s not a whole lot to tell, anyway. Similar to you, I guess, in that it was supposed to just be a hookup, but I had to go and get invested. It’s so stupid, bc I am totally not the hookup type usually, but I was… well, let’s just say, I wasn’t exactly thinking with my upstairs brain. The only reason I did it was bc I was dying to get off (tmi, sorry), but then the guy was so sweet and gentle and GORGEOUS omg, and now he’s in my head 24/7 like a brain parasite, even though I’ll probably never see him again. So. That’s great haha.
Agonizing over every part of his reply, down to the last comma, Miles finally decided that he wasn’t going to do much better than that. He had made himself seem more pathetic and anxious than he probably needed to, but with the shield of anonymity at his disposal it wasn’t like he had to pretend to be well put together. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he had enough imagination to pull that off convincingly, anyway.
Of course, the second he hit send, he panicked, because despite the tedious and detailed way he’d crafted his message, he had already found a flaw. He’d depicted himself in such a way that Jun was going to see him as a bumbling fanboy, which hadn’t been Miles’s intention. Hadn’t Jun said in his stream that it was nice to have been with someone who didn’t know who he was? (Or, rather, who had pretended not to know who he was.)
Miles quickly typed up and sent a brief addendum:
x_kilometers_x: (Oh, and btw, I don’t mean I’m all tongue tied/fingertip frozen/whatever bc you’re famous. Like, that doesn’t HELP obviously, but rest assured, I would be just as awkward and embarrassing no matter who you were. I’m all about equality, you know.)
Grimacing, he closed his laptop a little harder than intended. Pathetic and anxious indeed, but it would have to do.
Miles managed to leave his laptop alone for a whole day before temptation took over. Twitchy from nerves, he opened it back up that evening and refreshed the page only to see that somehow, miraculously, Jun had replied.
Jun_iper: Brain parasite is such a good way to put it. It’s been about a month now and I can’t shake him, and it’s not like I haven’t hooked up with guys and moved on without issue before. There was just… something about him, you know? We didn’t even talk for all that long, but I still feel like I know him. Like I want to get to know him better. Like somehow, our souls already knew each other, and when we got together and got down to business, it was like coming home. It’s messed up, especially knowing he doesn’t feel the same way about me.
You have any tips for how to extract a parasite like this? Because I can’t keep simping forever, and rn it feels like I’m going to without some kind of intervention
Maybe Jun wasn’t talking about Miles. That was entirely possible, right? Probable, even, right? If you thought about it? Despite all evidence to the contrary? That had to be the case, because the alternative was that Jun—gorgeous, talented, funny, sex god Jun—was “simping” over a man whose personality essentially amounted to a sad and scared wet puppy shoved inside a human body.
God, he really needed to work on his self-esteem. What was it his therapist kept telling him to do? Rephrase. He needed to rephrase his thoughts to be more positive.
Miles, sitting cross-legged on his bed with his computer balanced on his lap, stared off into the middle distance for a moment, trying to think of a way to describe himself that wasn’t “a sad and scared wet puppy shoved inside a human body,” but he was coming up blank.
He’d worry about rephrasing tomorrow.
Right now he had bigger concerns, anyway. Like the fact that Jun had replied to him again, which meant that he now had to send a reply back. Again. Weren’t humans supposed to be fundamentally social creatures? Hadn’t he heard that in his Sociology 101 class back in college? If that were true, then you’d think that being able to have a simple conversation—one that wasn’t even in person, for fuck’s sake—would be considerably more intuitive to him than it was.
This wasn’t exactly a “simple” conversation, though, was it? This was a balancing act, and one slip off the tightrope would send him barreling down toward a series of confessions he did not want to make.
Yes, I am the guy you slept with.
Yes, I do know who you are and have since the start.
Yes, I have been longing for you like a wife standing on a pier staring out at the horizon after her husband has been lost at sea.
Oh, and while we’re at it, I should probably also tell you that we accidentally made a… Well, actually, maybe I’ll still keep that one to myself for now.
That last one made the back of his throat taste acidic, and he knew it was a warning to tread carefully. His nausea had gotten bad enough that it took a hair trigger to send him flying to the bathroom with his head over the toilet. Work at the bakery had been hell. Usually the process of making pastries and cakes calmed him. The act of kneading dough, measuring ingredients, decorating the finished products—all of it was soothingly predictable and routine. It had been something stable and consistent his overactive, anxious mind could cling to, but now he dreaded it, because the smell of yeast and flour and sugar and the rest all made his stomach churn dangerously. More than once, he’d come much too close to not making it to the bathroom in time, and god, the amount of bleach it would take to sterilize that whole kitchen if next time he wasn’t quick enough? It would not be a good time.
But even though he had, over the years, grown close to Miriam, the shop’s owner—to the point that she had mentioned on more than one occasion the possibility of offering him a co-ownership deal, to lighten her load and give him a chance at his dream of having his own bakery—he still hadn’t found the words to tell her what was going on.
Miles hadn’t told Enrique, the other baker, either, even though he always felt guilty brushing off his looks of concern when he’d disappear in a rush to the bathroom, or the few occasions he’d felt sick enough to ask him to cover the rest of his shift.
He hadn’t told Astrid, the freshman undergraduate student who worked the cash register, even though he tutored her in writing composition and had bailed on her twice now. He’d just given vague excuses.
He hadn’t told his little sister, or either of his older brothers. He hadn’t told his auntie, and hadn’t told his mom.
Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d even thought the actual words to himself yet. Not really. He knew the… “condition” he currently found himself in, but instead of a thought he dwelled over constantly, it was more like a buzzing mosquito following him everywhere—something that he could hear at all times but could mostly ignore, until he was so itchy he had no choice but to stop and address the situation at hand.
But that would be a problem for future Miles.
The Miles of today wasn’t nearly itchy enough to face reality.
Right now, all he cared about was somehow finding words and putting them in the correct order to create some semblance of an adequate reply. It hadn’t occurred to him that Jun might feel jilted. He was so charismatic and beautiful, Miles had just assumed he would know that he was being ghosted because his hookup was the one who was inadequate, not because he was. But he couldn’t very well up and say, “Well, you’re wrong and I know that as a fact, but don’t ask me how.”
He typed, deleted, typed, deleted, typed, typed, typed, deleted, and typed some more, until he finally decided on what he was going to say.
x_kilometers_x: If I had any tips, trust me, I’d be using them myself. Do you think they make some kind of antidote for this sort of thing? You’re always doing those charity streams. Maybe you should find whoever is funding research into brain parasites and toss them some cash. See if they can fix us. I’ll chip in what I can spare, but unfortunately I’ve got a lot of big expenses coming up soon. The fate of our brains is on your shoulders, I’m afraid…
On a more serious note, can I ask you why you think your feelings are unrequited? I mean, I know you said you left your number, but speaking on behalf of all socially anxious weirdos in the world, I could see it being entirely possible that he was just… Idk. Afraid, mb?
Just a thought.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. With an early shift at the bakery on the horizon, Miles closed his laptop and sank into bed. He slept, but fitfully, and dreamed of Jun all night.
Jun replied two days later.
Jun_iper: Genius. I’ll call up the boys and we’ll get something going. Maybe I’ll put out another tasteful nudes calendar, too. Really kick things off. We raised mad cash for charity with the last one.
And…
Idk. I guess you could be right, but it’s not like I’ll ever know. I don’t have his number, his socials, anything. Not even his last name. I guess I could hire a detective to track his info down, but that’s high-key stalker behavior and I’m not about that. I left him my number and figured if he was interested, he’d text. But he hasn’t. I get being anxious, but he’s had time to sit with it, build up courage, find a friend to text me on his behalf… seems pretty black and white to me.
I also don’t want to put pressure on him or make him think I’m obsessed, which, yeah, I guess I am, but it’s not like that gives me a right to go full psycho and demand he stay in touch with me. Even if he doesn’t want me, I don’t want him to think I’m a bad guy, you know? Someone who can’t take no for an answer. His silence is his answer, and I need to respect that, even though I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anybody else in my entire life.
Ugh. I’ve got it bad. I should probably see a therapist and stop dumping on you. Which, btw, thanks for listening. I don’t really have people to fall back on when it comes to things like this. It’s a weird place to be in, esp in my position, when you have to pretend you’re fine and everything is great all the time even when it’s not.
I’ve just gotta… chill, I guess. Let it settle. Wallow. Get over it. Like you would with a typical breakup, only there was nothing there to break.
I am like three seconds away from deleting this whole message bc it sounds unhinged, so I’m sending it now before I shut down and just never reply. Lmk how you’re doing. I know it’s been a couple days but I’ve been thinking about you and hoping everything is going well
Everything had not been going well. He’d been as sick as ever during the day, to the point where Miriam had threatened to send him home despite the bakery being understaffed, and he still hadn’t found the courage to admit to himself what was going on, let alone to anyone else. But Jun didn’t need to know that.
x_kilometers_x: Fwiw, I’m glad you didn’t delete the message and am flattered that you felt comfortable enough to share that with me. I had been thinking about you, too, and wondering how you’d been doing. You’ve seemed a little down in your streams lately. Is that creepy to say? That’s probably creepy to say. I’m not like, psychoanalyzing you through the screen. Idk, maybe I’m just projecting my own depression onto you just to make myself feel less alone, which as I’m saying it, really isn’t less creepy, huh? Guess I should book another appointment with my therapist, too…
I’m sorry this guy did that to you. It sounds like he really messed with your head. I don’t know if it would help, but I think I could probably provide a little insight to what his thought process might have been. Without knowing him I obviously can only guess, but… okay, you might think I am insane for this… the guy I hooked up with? The one who I’ve been hung up on this whole time? He gave me his number, like you gave your guy yours.
AND I DIDN’T CALL IT!!!
I know what you’re going to say, so let me say it for you: “You know, Kilometers, if the guy didn’t like you back then he wouldn’t have left his phone number.” I knowwww, okay?? But it’s not that simple.
It’s like… even though I “know” it still doesn’t feel true, bc he was so incredibly out of my league, and even if for some reason he decided he didn’t care about that, I still have no idea what I have to offer him. I don’t have an interesting job, I have nerdy hobbies, I have low self-esteem (in case you didn’t notice). Why would he want to put up with that?? So I guess the reason I haven’t called him is bc it feels like the charitable thing to do. Like I’m saving him from the mistake of being with me. God that sounds so pathetic typed out like that, but it’s true.
And then I guess I’m saving myself, too, bc if I never talk to him, then there’s no chance for him to get my hopes up only for him to decide he doesn’t want to be with me. I’m preemptively preventing heartbreak. Bc that’s normal and rational, right?
Now which one of us is unhinged? (Hint: It’s me. Definitely me.)
And it gets even more complicated than that, too, but we don’t need to get into that right now (or ever).
Ugh. Whatever. The point of that whole rant was to tell you that I hope you know that it’s not because of you. At least that’s what my assumption is. I think that whatever happened between you and this guy, it’s bc of his hangups and baggage, and not bc you did anything wrong, or even bc the feelings are unrequited. It’s hard out here for a scaredy cat!
Pressing send bc I apparently have no shame anymore. Hope you’re having a good day!
(Oh, and fwiw? Totally would buy one of those calendars…)
Miles wished he could blame his hormones for the tears in his eyes as he sent his message through whatever magic internet portal allowed it to reach Jun’s inbox, but he couldn’t do that for two reasons. The first one was because he was still in denial, and the second was… well, that it just wasn’t true. It wasn’t his hormones that had made a mess of things— he was the one who’d screwed everything up, and pretending to be Kilometers was only making everything screwier. He felt bad about the word vomit he’d just shoved into Jun’s inbox (vomit was just part of every facet of his life these days, it seemed), but judging by the substantial lightening of weight on his chest, he had really needed to get that out into the open. Even if Jun didn’t know he was talking about him, at least he had told him some version of the truth and finally acknowledged why he had done what he’d done. It didn’t erase his actions, didn’t fix the problem, but it did make him breathe a little easier, and that wasn’t nothing.
Now if he could just figure out how to get the rest of that weight off his chest, he’d be golden, but accomplishing that would be a bit more complicated than anything he could achieve through a single DM.