Work Text:
Inspired by https://youtube.com/shorts/5HazwTCew6Y?si=PpnYrfDrN4VcJPXQ
Pran loves oranges. Versatile and diverse, sweet and sour, a fruit that thrives in the sun and virtually evergreen. Tangerines, pummelos and acid lime; eaten whole or freshly juiced, Pran loves them all.
Pran loves oranges, but he's not fond of how the pith gets under his fingernails when he peels them, or the after effects of its acidity on his fingertips. Pran loves oranges but begrudges the process.
Pran dared Pat to grow an orange tree once, way back when they were fifteen-something years old. It was over some stupid, stupid argument that Pran barely remembers.
(You’re loud, nosy, and rash. You don’t have a single nurturing bone in your body!
Hey, that’s not true! I take good care of my friends. I take good care of you!
Friend, my ass! Friends don’t steal the other’s homework sheet because they forgot theirs at home!
I said I was sorry! You broke a beaker in Chemistry class and blamed it on me!
Asshole!-
Jackass!- )
They (Well, Pat , really- while Pran watches from the sidelines, curious yet disbelieving) planted the tree on the Jindapats’ side of the boundary wall, in a sheltered but sunny spot.
It was a wee mandarin sapling, about five centimeters high. Just a baby with tender roots and a fragile life.
Pran forgot about it after a while. He assumed Pat forgot about it too. He assumed it died.
Pat didn't forget. He tended to the potted sapling all the years that Pran was gone.
In three years' time, the Jindapat family- none the wiser to its origins- grew to love the tree.
Ming waters it as he passes the garden. Kaew prunes it and lovingly showers it with rice water. Paa- despite claiming to not be good with bugs- keeps a diligent eye out for caterpillars, snails, and other perils.
And Pat? Pat fertilizes and tends to the tree religiously.
He’s near obsessive with the upkeep. Pat wishes the tree good morning and good night. It becomes the most precious thing to him inside the four borders of his house.
The tree grows and grows and grows, flourishing despite its circumstances. Day by day, month by month, the roots grow deeper and stronger, and new branches sprout from its stems.
Pat re-pots the tree twice with loving care, long hours in the sun, until the seedling becomes a shrub with roots strong enough to stand on its own. It was a hot season day, Songkran around the corner, when Pat planted the shrub in his garden. By the wall, as close as possible, almost touching but not quite.
If a poem can be written by the toils of his labour, Pat’s sweat would be the ink on that metaphorical parchment.
A sonnet, perhaps.
The moon’s lament.
The sun’s tenacity.
When Pran returned from exile, Pat did not cease nurturing the orange tree.
The plant flourishes quietly, roots traveling deep into the ground.
The orange tree; a witness and a testament of an enduring love between two people who cannot be just friends.
Pat thinks of the(ir) tree when he brings a bag of oranges home from the store to their shared flat. He dreams of the tree yielding a stable crop as he peels a mandarin and pops the sweet fruit between Pran's parted lips.
Large, heavy bunches and evergreen leaves.
Pat spends a few minutes of respite around the tree on nights when he must stay at home, with Nong Nao far in his bachelor pad and his faen far, far away.
As the mandarin tree grows older, its strengthened roots upheave the foundations of the brick wall separating the two houses. Rain season after rain season, and the grace of the Sun’s eternal shine, gradually weathering down the wall.
And well, it's just a matter of time, isn't it?
For the orange tree to bear fruit