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Phichit leaves his dirty pajamas on the bathroom floor. Sometimes he uses them like a bathmat while he brushes his teeth after a shower, and they get wet. He wears them again that night. The smell is horrific.
Seung-gil puts them in the laundry before he can wear them again.
Phichit doesn’t know how to load the dish drying rack. Pan handles and knives jut out at all angles. Things fall on the floor. Phichit has to stop to unload the rack three times while he’s washing dishes. It’s so inefficient. And sometimes there’s food stuck to the plates.
Seung-gil rewashes them later. But sometimes he just picks the food off.
Phichit makes the bed a weird way, too. He puts the sheet on wrong. “So the softer side is facing you,” he explains.
Both sides feel exactly the same, so Seung-gil lives with it.
Phichit spot vacuums the carpet. He leaves haphazard lines like asphalt cracks. Some areas would never get touched if Seung-gil didn’t vacuum weekly.
Seung-gil used to rub the lines away. He forgot once and they faded on their own. He leaves them now.
Phichit is forever losing belts, shoes, and hats because he doesn’t always put them in the same place. Some days, the clutter rubs Seung-gil’s nerves raw and he can’t relax until he picks everything up. But not always.
Seung-gil used to put Phichit’s things away. Lately, he just points Phichit in the right direction.
Phichit always thanks him.
Phichit doesn’t dust, he doesn’t separate laundry, and he puts empty egg cartons back in the fridge. He doesn’t make shopping lists. He forgets to buy things even when he has a list. He doesn’t fold his underwear. Sometimes he wears Seung-gil’s and he honestly doesn’t seem to notice.
He looks cute in them.
It used to bother Seung-gil. All of it. He’s not proud, but he used to complain. “Maybe I should just stop doing dishes, then,” Phichit would grumble. Or, even worse, he would get sad and silent.
Making Phichit sad is so much worse than stepping on a wet sock.
Cleaning it up himself feels better than grumbling. But he can’t kill the irrational need to tell Phichit what he’s done, and that makes Phichit feel guilty.
Seung-gil doesn’t know what to do, but he has two weeks of intensive training to think about it. Two weeks in a hotel. No clothes on the floor, no upside-down sheets, no wrinkled underwear. The closest he can get to Phichit is a phone call.
There’s no tangible proof Phichit exists. No physical evidence that they share a space. It amplifies the distance. Feels like a loss.
If he ever loses Phichit, it’ll be like this all the time.
When Seung-gil comes home, he tries something new. He takes deep breaths. Tells himself not to react.
It’s not easy. It feels wrong. Some days it doesn’t work at all. But Phichit is patient. Seung-gil keeps trying. And the world goes on, whether he cleans up after Phichit or not.
He usually does.
But Phichit doesn’t leave as many messes as he used to. He apologizes more. Unprompted. Keeps saying thank you.
So does Seung-gil. He’s not easy to live with and he knows it, but Phichit doesn’t ask him to change. The least Seung-gil can do is the same.
He can’t pinpoint the moment when living with Phichit becomes easy. But one morning, he steps on a wet sock and smiles.
That’s how he knows he’s ready.
“Phichit!” He calls it from the bathroom. “Do you want to get married?”
Phichit barrels in from the bedroom. Hooks him around the middle. His hug knocks the wind out of Seung-gil, but it’s nothing compared to his smile.