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“I’m sorry,” Chay says, for perhaps the fifth or sixth time that evening.
Kim sighs, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
They’re in Kim’s apartment, on his expensive, slightly-uncomfortable couch. Kim’s t-shirt is slung over the arm of a chair; Chay’s shirt is unbuttoned down his chest, his jeans hastily discarded on the floor. He tries not to feel self-conscious about his bare, skinny legs, although Kim never seems to mind them.
Chay wants to have sex with his boyfriend. He very much wants to have sex with Kim, wants it so much it’s sometime all he can think about, dream about. He’s jerked off to the thought of it too many times to count. He’s even cautiously explored himself back there, which felt kind of weird but kind of good. He’s ready. He wants it.
But every time things start to go that way, something in him shuts down.
Kim was diffident with him when they first got together, so careful it made Chay want to scream. He understands why now: Kim hadn’t wanted to lead him into something he would regret later, when he found out the truth. Chay supposes he appreciates that, for all it drove him crazy at the time. But they’re past that. The kidnapping, the breakup, the thing at Yok’s bar (which Chay can still barely bring himself to think about), the songs, the yelling and the crying and the apologies — they’re past all that. They’re together. They’re good.
They’ve done stuff, of course. The first time Kim had touched his cock, Chay had come pretty much immediately. It was embarrassing, but Kim had been really cool about it, really sweet. He had patiently shown Chay how to touch him, what he likes. They’ve exchanged a number of enthusiastic handjobs at this point. Kim has even sucked him off, which is pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to Chay, and Chay has awkwardly returned the favor — he’s getting better at that, too.
Kim is older, though, and a lot more experienced. Chay knows he’s had sex with a bunch of people of various genders. He’s also seen the way Kim’s fans are at shows (he’s been the way Kim’s fans are at shows): the longing glances, the unsubtle hints. He knows Kim wants to fuck him — Kim has been very up-front about that — and while Kim swears up and down that it’s not the case, Chay can’t help thinking that sooner or later if Kim can’t get what he wants from Chay, he’ll get it elsewhere.
So Chay is ready. He wants it. It’s just…
Something about knowing that that’s where it’s going — that Kim is going to open him up and push inside — pulls him out of the haze of lust that’s his default state around Kim. Kim’s hands on him stop feeling so gentle, even though his touch hasn’t changed. It feels too intimidating. Too real. No matter how much he tries to relax and stay in the moment, Chay finds himself getting more and more tense and nervous, until he’s flinching away from Kim’s touch. Until Kim invariably stops and murmurs, “We don’t have to do this, baby.”
(Kim is always very patient and understanding, which is somehow worse than if he got mad, because it makes Chay feel like even more of an idiot child than he already does.)
“I don’t know what my problem is,” Chay says now, curling his knees to his chest and burying his face in his hands.
Kim smooths a hand up and down his back, not saying anything. When Kim doesn’t know what to say, he just doesn’t say anything. Chay, who is prone to nervous babbling, envies this quality fiercely.
“I just — maybe we should just do it,” Chay says. “Power through, you know? I know I’ll like it, once we actually do it, I just need to get out of my own head about it.”
“Mm.” Kim leans his head back against the back of the couch, turning to look into Chay’s face. His eyes are big and dark, his mouth red and puffy from kissing Chay. He’s so beautiful it hurts to look at him sometimes. “I don’t want to just ‘power through.’ I don’t want to hurt you.” He slides a hand to Chay’s knee. “I’m okay to wait. We have all the time we need.”
“I’m not okay to wait,” Chay grumbles. “I just wish I could — stop thinking so much.”
“I like that you think so much,” Kim says, smiling, leaning in to kiss him.
~
A few nights later, they try again.
Chay has been doing a lot of surreptitious and very embarrassing research on the internet. He’s changed his diet, which was easy enough living in the Theerapanyakul compound — it turns out most of the household is already eating a low-fat, high-fiber diet, and Chay’s just not going to think about that too hard. He skipped lunch today and spent an hour in the shower before coming over. It’s gonna happen.
Kim often has a drink in the evenings, but tonight he’s mixed a drink for Chay, as well, which he’s never done before.
(Kim drinks beer and wine and soju, but never whiskey; he won’t even keep it in his apartment. He says the smell reminds him of his father. Chay, who has still barely met Kim’s father despite living in his house, has come to associate the smell of whiskey with Kinn — but Kim doesn’t like to talk about Kinn, either.)
“What’s this?” Chay says, accepting the sweating glass. “I thought you don’t like it when I drink.” His friends still haven’t stopped giving him a hard time about it — If I offer you a beer, is that guy gonna crash through the wall and punch me?
“I don’t like it when you drink when I’m not there to keep an eye on you,” Kim says, with the possessive little gleam in his eye that always makes Chay shiver. “But you’re safe here with me. And I thought it might help you relax.” He clinks his own glass against Chay’s. “Come on, bottoms up.”
Thanks to his internet research, Chay knows that you’re not supposed to be drunk, especially not for your first time. At this point, though, he’s willing to try just about anything. He takes a big, awkward gulp, trying not to grimace at the bitter taste. He gives Kim a smile that he hopes reads as cool and seductive. Kim smiles back, that small, private smile he only shows to Chay, and sips his own drink.
Half an hour later, they’re making out on the couch. The liquor is hot and fleet in Chay’s veins; he feels loose, relaxed. Sexy. Kim pulls him into his lap and Chay grinds unhesitatingly down on his hard cock, relishing the way it makes Kim hiss and bite his lower lip. Kim’s hands slide down Chay’s back, leaving sparkling trails of sensation behind them. They slip lower, cupping Chay’s ass, pulling him down against Kim’s body, and Chay moans enthusiastically, his cock throbbing in his underwear.
“Should we take this to the bedroom?” Kim asks, raising an eyebrow with that sultry teen-idol pout he’s perfected.
“Mm, yes.”
When Chay stands up he feels a momentary rush, so intense that black spots swarm before his eyes. He blinks, trying to clear his vision; the spots dissipate, but everything still seems blurry, each point of light in the room swimming in a halo. His heart is beating light and rapid. His skin feels suddenly over-warm, flushed, like he’s been running.
Kim stands up as well and slips an arm around Chay’s waist to steady him. Chay’s body melts under Kim’s touch. Waves ripple and rebound through him, concentric rings spreading from Kim’s fingertips. Chay sags into him, half-expecting to float.
“I don’t…” Chay mumbles. “What… hmm…” He can’t think. He’s so warm. “Did you…?”
“I gave you a little something,” Kim says. His voice is so smooth. Chay wants to swim in it. “To help you relax.”
This seems like… something. Chay feels like he’s supposed to think something about this, but he can’t remember what. “It’s all right,” Kim says. “It’s safe. You’re safe with me.” There’s a smile in his voice, not mocking but amused and fond, and Chay loves him so much. Chay laughs out loud, brightly-colored birds bursting from his throat, at how much he loves Kim.
“Do you trust me?” Kim asks, his arms like bedrock, his body like a strong tree.
“Yes. I trust you. I love you,” Chay says, wrapping his arms around Kim’s neck. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, baby,” Kim says, bending to kiss him.
Kim lays Chay down in his soft Egyptian cotton sheets and kisses him and kisses him. He strips Chay out of his clothing with deft, confident hands; Chay tries to reach for Kim’s shirt, to undress him in turn, but he can’t quite do it. His hands are being weird. Kim laughs, kissing his fingers. “Let me,” he says, tugging his shirt off over his head.
Everywhere Kim touches him, everywhere Kim puts his mouth, is flooded with warm light. Kim’s naked body against his own feels almost overwhelmingly good, moving somehow, a thick heady feeling welling up in Chay’s chest at the sensation of skin on skin, of sweat, of humid breath. When Kim slides a slick finger into him it doesn’t hurt at all. It doesn’t even feel strange — it feels right, easy, the fullness in his body matching the fullness in his heart. He wants Kim all over him, inside him, he wants his body and Kim’s to be the same body.
Kim works his fingers into Chay for what feels like a long time, kissing his stomach, his thighs, his neck, until Chay is lifting his hips and gasping and squirming with impatience beneath him. “Want you,” he manages to make his swollen, clumsy lips say. “C’mon, I’m ready, I want you.”
Kim is flushed, sweat gleaming like stars on his perfect cheekbones. His eyes darken when Chay says I’m ready. There’s a sudden false note in the singing in Chay’s blood, a tremor of something that’s gone before he can name it. But then Kim smiles, and his eyes go soft again, and Chay forgets whatever he was about to say. Was he going to say something?
The blunt head of Kim’s cock nudges at him, pushes at him, and then with surprising ease it’s pressing into him, stretching him open, filling him to the brim with that same warm golden light. Chay cries out with it, and Kim presses his face against Chay’s neck and begins to move within him.
Kim fucks him for centuries, eons, galaxies spinning into dust, and Chay burns up and explodes and re-coalesces around him, the smell of Kim’s skin, the sound of his breath, the taste of his mouth. He hangs there, strung out at the edge of the universe where everything is beautiful and time has no meaning, and when he finally falls, Kim is there to catch him.
~
In the morning Chay wakes up with a dozen tiny hammers rapping at the inside of his skull. His mouth is thick and sour, his tongue swathed in wool. He blinks at the wall, trying to corral his thoughts into something approaching coherence.
Kim cuddles up behind him, drawing him close with an arm around his waist. He smells like sweat and cologne. Unaccountably, Chay’s stomach lurches. “You were amazing last night,” Kim says, his breath hot against Chay’s neck.
It’s not as simple as remembering. It’s not like there’s a moment when Chay doesn’t remember that they’d had sex, and then another moment when he does. It’s more like the knowledge makes itself at home in him in stages: first the bare fact of it, which he’d known when he woke up; then the memory of it, coming back in jagged fragments. Kim on top of him, inside him. His legs splayed wide around Kim’s slender hips. Kim’s shoulders flexing beneath his palms. He shifts experimentally in the bed, noting the unfamiliar ways his body is sore and tender.
He did it. He has successfully dispensed with his virginity, which he’s been trying to do for ages. He should feel smug and accomplished and sexy, but all he can manage is a sort of scraped-out confusion.
“Did you…” Chay swallows, trying to draw some moisture into his mouth. “What did you give me last night?”
Kim smiles against the back of his neck. “A friend of mine gave it to me — it’s supposed to make you feel more present in your body. I just gave you a little, only half a pill. Just enough to help you relax.”
Chay turns over to face him, the pounding in his head intensifying with the movement. They’re both completely naked. He’s been naked around Kim before, but he’s never spent all night naked with him, never woken up naked in his bed. “Why did you do that?”
Kim frowns. “You said you wanted to stop thinking so much.”
“I know, but…” Chay can’t find the words for what he means. His brain feels sluggish and stupid.
“Didn’t you like it?” Kim’s voice has taken on the cold, distant quality he gets when he’s feeling defensive, when someone questions him.
“I…”
“You certainly seemed like you were enjoying yourself.”
Chay feels his ears heat. Memories of the previous night are still drifting to the surface for him. He remembers feeling like his heart was too big for his body, like every touch was going to consume him. With an inward cringe, he remembers saying as much. He’d done a lot of talking. He’d made a lot of noise. “I did,” he says slowly. “I liked it. A lot. You could probably tell,” he adds with a sheepish smile.
Kim is still tense beside him. His jaw is set. “Then I don’t see what the big problem is.”
“It’s not a big problem.” Chay feels like a jerk. They’d had such a beautiful night together, and he can’t even appreciate it. Kim is right — this is what he’d wanted, even if Kim drugging him wasn’t exactly the solution he’d envisioned. Kim was trying to help, and now he’s hurt Kim’s feelings.
You have to remember, Porsche had told him once. Their lives have been so weird. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re not being normal.
“It’s not a big problem,” he says again, trying to mean it. “Just… tell me next time. Before you do something like that.”
Kim sighs, pulling him close again. “Okay.”
~
On the rare occasions Kim comes to the main family’s house, he’s tense. Watchful. Quiet, even for him. Chay has tried to draw him out with questions about growing up here — his favorite spots and secret hideaways — but Kim refuses to talk about it.
It had been Kinn who showed Chay the crumbling statues at the back of the garden, where Kim used to hide with a book and a bag of apples. Tankhun had been the one to tell him the story of Kim’s broken arm, pointing out the jagged broken limb of the tree he’d fallen from. Kim’s childhood bedroom is even squirreled away somewhere among the house’s labyrinthine corridors, but Kim never goes there. Chay’s never seen it. Kim may as well have sprung fully-formed into adulthood, for all he talks about his childhood.
So Chay understands what a big gesture it is that Kim is here with him now. Even if he can barely enter the room — even though he’s standing stiffly by the door with shadows in his eyes — he’s here. For Chay.
“Here, Ma,” Chay says, handing his mother a glass of water. Nampheung accepts it from him with a small frown; she stares down into the glass without drinking it.
Chay has no idea if she knows who he is, if she remembers the baby she’d left behind or if she connects that with the young man who visits her now. He doesn’t really know her, either. He has no memories of either of his parents, only the well-worn stories that Porsche has told him over the years. In some ways it makes all of this easier for him than it is for Porsche; Porsche can’t stop comparing her to the woman he remembers, looking for any small trace of the mother he’d known. Chay has no such preconceptions. Nampheung is a stranger to him, but he can’t help but sympathize with her plight, trapped in this house for all those years.
“I thought I could play you a song.” Chay unzips his guitar from its soft-sided case and settles it on his knee. “Would you like that?” Nampheung doesn’t reply, of course, but she raises her eyes to him with a placid sort of interest. “She likes music,” he explains to Kim over his shoulder. Kim is as still as a statue, hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket.
Chay plays a quiet little song he’s been working on, a lullaby about closing your eyes and forgetting your cares. When he lets the last notes fade into silence, he meets his mother’s eyes and sees a trace of sadness there.
~
Kinn closes the door behind Porsche, who is already bounding to his brother’s side. He isn’t surprised to see Chay in Nampheung’s room — he’s been spending more time with her lately — but he nearly jumps out of his skin when he realizes Kim is standing there beside the door, like an exceptionally well-moisturized mannequin.
“Hia!” Chay says, face lighting up with a grin as Porsche wraps him up in a hug. He gives Kinn a little wave over Porsche’s shoulder. “Hi, P’Kinn.”
Kinn smiles at him. “Hi, N — Chay,” he says, narrowly avoiding calling Chay nong in front of his actual little brother, who hasn’t permitted such familiarity from him in years. “Khun Nampheung,” he adds with a respectful wai to Porsche’s mother, who as usual doesn’t acknowledge him. Porsche is gripping Chay by the shoulders, squeezing and patting them, grinning into Chay’s face as he peppers him with rapid-fire questions about his day. Chay responds in that shy, earnest way he has, completely wrapped up in his brother’s affection.
Chay is a total sweetheart, but even if he wasn’t Kinn would love him anyway, because of how much Porsche loves him. Kinn loves the way Porsche loves, with his whole body and soul, like flinging himself off a cliff. So different from the wary, closed-off way Kinn and his brothers were taught to approach the world.
Reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the Kittisawasd brothers’ delight in each other, Kinn gives his own brother a cautious nod. “Hey.”
Kim returns the nod.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Well, here I am,” Kim sighs. Like talking to Kinn is some huge chore.
Kinn bites down a flare of irritation. Kim had fled at the earliest possible opportunity, leaving Kinn to shoulder all the family’s responsibilities. This is Kinn’s house, kept running with Kinn’s blood and sweat while Kim’s been off living Kinn’s childhood dream. Kim could at least show some fucking manners when he bothers to come by.
Taking a slow, steadying breath, as he often has to do around Kim, Kinn reminds himself that he’s not being fair. Kim had gotten out, or as close to it as he’ll ever have a chance of getting. It wasn’t easy to do, and Kinn respects him for it. The irritation he usually feels toward Kim is really self-protection, a thin veil over a deep and bitter well of envy. That’s not Kim’s fault. Even if he is a fucking pill all the time.
“How have you been?” Kinn asks him, because he is a good older brother and happy to model appropriate behavior to the feral cat that’s wandered into his house.
“Good.” After an excruciating pause, Kim adds: “You?”
“Good.”
Pleasantries exchanged, they watch the family tableau unfolding in front of them for a while. After some badgering from his brother, Chay sings a quiet little song, his head ducked down over his guitar. Porsche watches him, smiling the soft wondering smile he reserves only for Chay. Nampheung stares at a point somewhere above Chay’s head. When the song is over, Porsche clutches his ears and proclaims that he’s never heard such a godawful racket; Chay kicks him in the shins and they laugh at each other, beaming. Almost absently, Porsche reaches out to take their mother’s unresisting hand in his.
Kinn has never been good with words. If he were a different sort of man — and if things between him and Kim had gone differently for the last decade or so — he might say something to Kim now. Something like It’s so weird to think about how she was back here the whole time we were growing up, or maybe Does it ever scare you, how easy they are to love? But the gulf between them is too wide for words to cross, even if Kinn knew the right ones to say.
~
Chay patiently waits out Kim’s silence while they exit the grounds. In the car on the way back to his apartment, Kim finally speaks. “I don’t like you living in that house.”
I don’t like it either, Chay thinks. The house is beautiful, enormous, outfitted with every possible amenity and creature comfort, but it’s more like a prison than a home. For all he’s allowed to come and go as he pleases, Chay knows that he is there as a hostage for Porsche’s continued good behavior. But if he said that to Kim it would only agitate him. “I know,” he says. “But Porsche wants to be close to Kinn and our mother. And I’m sick of living by myself.”
Kim gives him a brooding, covetous look, one that stirs Chay’s blood. After so much time spent wondering where he and Kim stood with each other, it’s a heady thing to be the sole focus of his intensity. To be wanted this much. “You could come live with me,” Kim says.
Chay barks an astonished laugh before he can help himself.
Kim’s poreless forehead creases with a frown, and Chay instantly feels like an asshole. “Sorry,” he says, taking Kim’s hand. “But… come on, you don’t really mean that.”
Rolling his eyes, Kim turns to stare out the window, stung and trying to hide it.
Chay squeezes his hand. “You love living by yourself,” he points out. “You barely let your own bodyguards inside your apartment.” Not to mention that Kim’s father might allow it, but Porsche is still pissed about Kim lying to Chay, and would definitely have a lot to say about Chay moving in with him — but Chay’s not going to tell Kim that, either. “Besides, we just got back together. I just moved back into the main family’s house. We should let things, you know, settle down for a bit first.”
Kim hums noncommittally, still gazing out the window, but the lines of his shoulders have thawed slightly. Chay brings their clasped hands up to his mouth and kisses the back of Kim’s hand. “Thank you,” he says, perhaps belatedly. “It’s very sweet of you to ask. I would love to move in with you, someday. But… I want it to be because we want to live together, not because you don’t want me to live at your family’s house.”
This, at least, makes Kim look away from the window. He smiles down at their hands and runs his thumb back and forth across Chay’s knuckles.
They ride in silence for a few minutes, fingers intertwined.
“We could try it out,” Kim finally says.
“What?”
“You could come stay with me for a few days. Longer, if you wanted. Pack a bag, bring your toothbrush, all that.”
Chay’s breath catches. Kim’s earlier offer had clearly been an impulse, but this feels real. It’s a big step, a serious one, especially from Kim who values his privacy so highly. The dreams he’d allowed himself to cherish when he thought Kim was just his idol — of them living together and playing music and kissing all day and maybe getting a bunch of dogs and a house in the country — come flowering back to life in his heart. “Okay,” he says, hoping the grin he can’t suppress doesn’t look as dopily lovesick as he feels.
Kim raises an eyebrow at him, an answering smile curving his perfect mouth upward. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
~
That night Kim sucks Chay’s cock, fingers stroking into him. When Chay is loose-limbed and breathless with anticipation, Kim turns him over onto his hands and knees. He says it will be easier this way. Maybe he’s right, but Chay can’t help feeling self-conscious about how he must look, his ass on display, his hard cock bobbing ridiculously between his legs. Kim smooths his palms up Chay’s thighs, squeezing and spreading Chay’s ass. Chay focuses on keeping his breathing deep and even.
It’s not as easy this time; Kim can only get it about halfway in before he has to stop. “It’s all right,” he says, stroking Chay’s thigh. “Just relax.” Chay gulps and pants, staring down at the sheets, as Kim pushes deeper by small, insistent increments. It feels good, the same nerve-shivering pleasure he’d felt before, but it hurts, too. More than he remembers it hurting. Maybe the drugs really had made him less tense before — or maybe they had just numbed the pain, or made him not care. He has no way of knowing.
Thinking about how out of control he’d been sends a weird, self-conscious feeling through him. He shivers, and Kim groans behind him. “That’s it, baby,” he breathes. “Fuck, you feel so good.” His hands are like brands on Chay’s hips. His cock is rock-hard and impossibly hot inside him.
Chay closes his eyes. He needs to forget what happened last time. He arches his back and pushes back against Kim, trying to keep his mind on his own pleasure. Kim groans again. He’s fully seated within Chay’s body now, rocking into him with slow, steady thrusts. The overwhelming pressure of it is underlain by that constant dull ache.
He just needs to get used to it. It’ll stop hurting so much in a minute, and then it will probably feel really good.
At some point Chay’s cock has gone soft. He reaches for it and almost falls over, too unsteady braced on one arm. He lowers himself to his elbow instead, pressing his face against his forearm to stifle the whimpering sounds being driven out of him.
Touching himself helps — Chay can feel the edges of real pleasure just beyond his grasp. He reaches for the swooning euphoria he’d felt before, the giddy joy in Kim’s body joined with his, but he can’t see Kim’s face. He can’t kiss him. He can’t shut his stupid brain off.
Despite his best efforts, Chay’s cock stubbornly refuses to get more than half hard. The thready arousal in his gut reaches a low plateau and starts to taper off. Chay resigns himself to the fact that he’s not going to come from this. Maybe when Kim is done, he’ll go back to sucking Chay’s dick, or at least give him a handjob or something. He must be close to finishing by now, Chay tells himself. But the minutes wear on, Kim panting and grunting behind him with no end in sight, and the pain and discomfort of it only grows.
Is Chay that bad at this? Is Kim bored? Is he thinking about what a lousy fuck Chay is? No, Kim loves him. Kim sang him serenades night after night to get him back, a whole album’s worth of love and longing and contrition. Kim saved his life, not once but twice.
(But he shouldn’t think about that, about the bodies and the stink of blood, broken bones jutting through torn flesh, broken glass and bullet holes. He shouldn’t —)
“I’m sorry,” Chay says. “Can we stop?”
Kim can’t quite hide his disappointment this time. He’s understanding — he always is — and he accepts an apologetic handjob from Chay to finish him off, but it’s clear that his heart isn’t really in it. It’s almost a relief for Chay when Kim doesn’t offer to reciprocate; Chay’s dick appears to have closed up shop for the night anyway, which is so embarrassing he doesn’t really want to call attention to it.
~
Mornings are definitely the best part of spending the night at Kim’s: the weight of his arms, the sun teasing gold highlights from his perfect skin, the adorable scrunch to his eyes when he’s still sleepy.
Determined to make up for his abysmal performance the night before, Chay twines his bare legs with Kim’s and snuggles into his chest. Kim makes a drowsy little sound and pulls him close, his t-shirt smelling of detergent and warm skin.
“Mmm,” Chay says. “Let’s just stay in bed all day.”
Kim smiles and kisses his forehead. “Got studio time today,” he says. “And you’re supposed to be working on your portfolio.”
Porsche might feel some discomfort over his new role supervising the minor family’s dealings, but he’d certainly wasted no time using his newfound connections to get Chay another interview at the university (privately, Chay suspects that Kim might have pulled a few strings as well). The upshot is that Chay will be starting in the music faculty in the fall, which means he needs to produce an entire portfolio of compositions between now and then, a task that makes him exhausted just thinking about it.
“Working.” Chay makes a face. “Why would anyone work when they could be in bed with you?” Kim doesn’t answer. His hand is stroking up and down Chay’s arm. Chay props his head up on his elbow, peering up into Kim’s face with an exaggerated puppy-eyes face. “Come onnn, P’Kim. We can just lie around all day, and watch TV, and order takeout, and just…” he leans in and kisses Kim’s mouth, lingering.
Kim returns the kiss with interest, pulling Chay flush against him. His mouth is warm and slightly stale with sleep, his limbs loose and languid. Chay loves him like this, relaxed, unguarded. He slips a hand down between their bodies to where Kim’s cock is beginning to poke into his hip; Kim gasps, laughs, kisses him deeper. He takes Chay in hand as well, guitar-string calluses rough against his skin, a feeling Chay is quite sure he will never, ever get tired of. They bring each other off like that, kissing lazily, feet intertwined, sunlight pouring through the curtains directly into Chay’s heart.
“See?” Chay says afterward, flush with post-orgasmic haze and suffused with love down to his fingertips. “We should just do this all day.” He burrows himself down among the pillows to emphasize his point. “It’s my first day of staying here, we should spend it together.”
“If you actually lived here, I would still need to go to the studio sometimes,” Kim points out, pulling a clean shirt over his head. He hands Chay the tissues from his bedside table so Chay can wipe off his hand, his stomach. The simple domesticity of the gesture glows in Chay’s chest like a tiny star. “And you would still have school.”
“Nooo,” Chay groans, stretching. “If I lived here I would just lie around in your bed all day and wait for you. No school, no job, just your full-time live-in mistress.”
Kim stops and looks at him for a long moment, his eyes on Chay’s face, on Chay stretched out in his bed. Long enough that Chay can see he likes that idea, likes the thought of Chay as his mistress. Maybe that’s something Chay can tease him with later in, like, a sexy way. “I was thinking,” Chay says while he’s still feeling bold and sexy. “Maybe we should try the drugs again.”
“Really?” Kim raises an eyebrow at him.
“Yeah, I mean… it was fun, before. And I’m, you know… still getting the hang of it. Maybe it would help.” If he knows he’s on drugs, maybe Chay can keep from talking too much and embarrassing himself. Maybe if they do it enough times with the drugs, his body will figure out how to have a good time without them.
“Okay, if that’s what you want. I’ll ask my friend if he can get more. Now I really do have to go,” Kim says, hoisting his guitar over his shoulder. “Don’t sleep all day.”
“No promises,” Chay calls after him.
~
The pills are small and round and white. They could be aspirin, or antibiotics, or anything really. Kim puts one on the tip of his tongue, holding it out; taking the hint, Chay touches his tongue to Kim’s and licks the pill into his own mouth, feeling like someone from a TV series. He washes it down with a swig of his beer. Kim grins and puts another pill on his own tongue, swallowing this one himself. Immediately, some of the trepidation in Chay’s stomach starts to ease. It will be better if they’re both high. This is something they’re doing together.
~
“I love you,” Chay mumbles against Kim’s open mouth. “I love you, you’re so amazing.”
“I love you, too,” Kim breathes. His hands are everywhere. Chay’s skin is covered in his sweat, in his saliva, bathing in him like a warm sea. “I want to keep you.”
“I’m right here,” Chay says. “I’m right here, I’m with you. I want to be with you always.” Time is stretching out again. He’s on fire, but his body feels cold somehow. Kim is pushing on the backs of his thighs, pressing Chay’s knees to his chest.
“Yes,” Kim breathes. His cock is breaching him now, splitting Chay open, laying the core of him bare. It burns, it sings within him like a string being plucked, it carves a channel through him. “Yes, baby, be mine, don’t ever leave me.”
“Yours,” Chay whispers, or possibly says very loudly. “All yours, forever.”
~
Chay wakes up in the night, his blood still sparkling. The room pitches like a ship at sea, but somewhere in the welter of feeling Chay recognizes that he has to pee.
It feels like it takes a long time to get to the bathroom. His legs aren’t working right; he weaves and stumbles and has to stop to lean his cheek against the cool wood of the door frame and catch his breath. Finally, he reaches the toilet. He empties his bladder, but the walk back to bed seems insurmountable. Slowly, he sinks down on the tile floor and leans his face against the wall. It feels nice.
Some time later, Kim’s hands are gripping his arms. “Come on,” he says gently. “Stand up.” Chay allows himself to be hauled upright, to lean against Kim’s solid chest. A glass is pushed into his hand. “Here, drink this,” Kim tells him.
The water is cool, but tastes bitter going down, with an odd metallic aftertaste. “I’m right here,” Kim says, taking the glass from him and setting it on the counter. “I’m gonna take care of you.”
~
Chay sleeps.
He wakes up, but dragging his eyes open is so hard that he’s asleep again before he can quite manage it. He sinks, heavy, dreamless.
He wakes up again and takes a long time to understand where he is. It’s Kim’s bed, but Kim isn’t there. The room looks all wrong — the sun is at the wrong angle, like it’s early afternoon and not morning. What time is it? He reaches for his phone, but the bedside table is bare. He must have forgotten to plug it in last night.
Through a great deal of effort, he manages to sit up. His head is spinning, spinning, spin spin spin with nothing to grab onto. Now that he’s sitting up, he can’t remember what he was doing. He stares dumbly at the blankets for what feels like a long time. His ass hurts. His jaw is sore, like he’s been grinding his teeth. His eyes feel parched and sandy.
He’s still sitting there when Kim comes in, holding a glass of water. “Hey,” Kim says, moving quickly to him. “How are you doing?”
Chay lifts his heavy eyes to Kim’s face. “Wh…” He finally remembers what he had been trying to do. “Whuh… time’sit?”
Kim smooths the hair back from Chay’s forehead. His hand is smooth and cool; it feels good. “Here,” he says, holding the water glass to Chay’s lips.
Chay gulps it down gratefully, suddenly overcome with thirst. But when he swallows there’s that bitter, almost chalky taste again. He makes a face and tries to push the glass away.
“Shhh,” Kim says. He puts a hand on the back of Chay’s neck to steady him. “Drink the whole thing, you need to stay hydrated.” He holds the glass to Chay’s lips again. Obediently, Chay drinks the rest of it down.
“My…” phone, he was going to say. But the dark sleep is already creeping back over his mind. He’s dimly aware of Kim’s hands lowering him gently back down to the pillow. A soft kiss is pressed against his cheek.
~
When he opens his eyes again it’s dark, a low yellow light from Kim’s reading lamp throwing black shadows in the corners. He’s lying on his stomach, his cheek mashed against the mattress. There’s a heavy weight on his back. Something hard and slippery is being shoved between his legs.
Confused, Chay tries to push himself up; the weight collapses onto him, pushing his shoulders back down against the mattress. Hot breath on his neck. Kim’s voice in his ear, soft, urgent exhalations of sound. The hard thing inside him is sliding in and out, raking into him. Chay tries to say something but can only manage a sort of inarticulate, wounded cry; Kim moans against his ear and pounds into him faster, harder. The motion of it pushes Chay’s cheek back and forth against the mattress. It will be over soon. Chay falls back into unconsciousness before it is.
~
The room is full of sunlight. Kim helps him sit up in bed. He’s got a paper bag of pa thong ko, and a to-go cup of tea. He must have gone out. The dough is room-temperature and slightly greasy, but Chay eats it from Kim’s fingers without complaint. He’s cold and sweaty. He can tell that his body is ravenously hungry, even though he can’t really feel it — all he feels is a dull nausea. His hands and feet seem very far away.
He was going to say something. There’s something he was supposed to say, or do, somewhere he’s supposed to go. He can’t think what it was. He can’t think at all, really. It’s all he can do just to sit here, passively accepting the food as Kim gives it to him. The tea is tepid and sweet. It’s a relief this time, falling back into the blackness.
~
Chay’s legs feel like a newborn foal’s, wobbly and unprepared to bear his weight. Kim helps him to the bathroom, which Chay manages a detached sort of embarrassment about, but he can’t deny he needs the help.
They sit on the couch and watch Strangers From Hell, Chay curled up against Kim’s body with his head resting on his shoulder, half-dozing. Somebody — somebody else Chay knows likes this show, but he can’t think who. He can’t follow it. He keeps falling asleep, or zoning out. It doesn’t matter. He’s seen it before.
Kim tidies up around the apartment, humming to himself. He plays Chay a bit of the new song he’s been working on. Chay follows him with his eyes; it’s too much work to lift his head. “You haven’t been feeling well,” Kim tells him, “but I’m taking care of you now. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” His eyes are soft with affection.
Chay was going to — he was looking for something, earlier. His phone. Where is his phone? He taps his hip but he doesn’t have any pockets: he’s wearing a pair of joggers and a sleeveless t-shirt, both of which he recognizes as Kim’s. That’s nice, to be wearing his boyfriend’s clothes. They smell like Kim.
Something happened, or something is happening. He keeps trying to figure it out, a shadow in his peripheral vision that’s gone when he tries to look right at it. He was going to… message someone? It can’t be Kim, Kim is right there. It must be Porsche, that’s the only other person he really messages with. The thought of Porsche abruptly makes him feel very sad, but he can’t think why. He doesn’t need to check in with Porsche. Porsche knows where he is. He’s here, with Kim.
“Are you getting sleepy?” Kim asks.
Chay wants to say no, even though he is. “Mmm.”
Kim scoops him up in his arms bridal-style. Chay wouldn’t have thought Kim could carry him like this, it’s not like Kim is that much bigger than him.
But then, Kim is very strong.
“You killed them all,” he mumbles into the warm soft skin on the side of Kim’s neck, but Kim doesn’t hear him.
Tenderly, Kim lays him down on the bed. Chay’s eyes drift closed. His mouth opens softly for Kim’s tongue. He lets Kim undress him, lets Kim move his unresisting limbs where they want. It hurts less, this time.
~
The next morning (it feels like morning, but it’s hard to tell — time isn’t working properly anymore), Kim cooks jok for breakfast, with an egg cracked in the middle the way Chay likes. He brings it to Chay in bed on a tray with a flower in a vase on it. So romantic. It’s hard to move the spoon to his mouth; on the third bite, Chay spills the porridge down his front. Kim takes the spoon and feeds him after that, and maybe that’s romantic too. The jok is rich and savory and comforting, and Chay finishes the entire bowl.
Kim removes the tray and kisses him, soft and sweet. “I need to go run some errands today,” he says. Looking at his face is like looking down a long hallway. “You should sleep until I get back.”
Chay wants to ask him where he’s going, but the dark takes him before he can.
~
Porsche is frowning at his phone.
He’s been doing that a lot, lately, trying to get up to speed on all of the minor family’s dealings. Kinn can hardly criticize him for it when he himself spends all day frowning at his tablet, but they don’t get a lot of opportunities to have lunch together. It’s a beautiful day, the staff have laid out a lovely little meal on one of the lower terraces, and Kinn had been looking forward to some quality time with his beloved (and possibly a quickie in Kinn’s office afterward, time permitting). Instead, Porsche has barely spoken, barely touched his food, and is frowning at his phone like it’s a puzzle he can’t solve.
“Porsche?” Kinn asks, poking his calf with one foot. “What happened to ‘no phones while we’re eating’?”
Porsche darts him a distracted, apologetic glance. “Sorry, it’s just…” he sighs, attention already drawn back to his phone. “Chay isn’t answering my messages.”
“He’s staying at Kim’s, right? Maybe he just hasn’t been looking at his phone.”
“Maybe,” Porsche says, but he’s still frowning. “He usually doesn’t go this long without responding, though.”
Kinn sighs, taking a bite of his noodles. It doesn’t seem that weird to him that Kim and Chay have gone a little radio silent while they’re playing house. He would have done the same at that age — but then, Porsche has never been in a serious relationship before. “Maybe they’re… busy.”
“Busy?” Porsche raises an eyebrow at him.
He’s not going to come out and say they’re probably having so much sex neither of them has had time to check their phones, but he’s not going to miss an opportunity to tease Porsche, either. Kinn grins, leaning in and raising an eyebrow of his own. “Maybe Chay took Kim out for scones and tea, and then refused to let Kim actually eat the scones until he took one million Instagram pictures, and they both starved to death.”
That gets a laugh out of Porsche, a real one. His eyes crinkle up at the corners; he doesn’t have crow’s feet there yet, but he will someday. Porsche is going to be an incredibly handsome older man, and if Kinn manages not to fuck this up or get murdered first, he’ll get to see it.
“That was an incredibly romantic first date, and you know it,” Porsche says, pointing a scolding finger at him.
“I do.” Kinn catches his hand and presses a quick kiss to his knuckles before letting go. “So let them have their romance, too. I think it’s cute they’re having a little honeymoon.” It’s weird to think about Kim expressing any kind of emotion that isn’t anger or boredom, but it is cute.
“Yeah.” Porsche makes a face at his phone. “I just…” He sighs.
“Porsche?”
“Nothing. You’re right, he’s probably fine. I’m just used to knowing what’s going on with him.” Porsche says this with the casual, tossed-off air he so often uses to talk about things that are important to him. “I don’t think I’ll ever fully stop worrying about him, but he’s still just a kid, you know?”
“He’s nineteen.”
“Exactly,” Porsche says from the lofty age of twenty-four.
At nineteen, Kinn had used a pair of brass knuckles to beat a man to death; his father had chided him for ruining the suit he’d been wearing at the time. From things Porsche has said, Kinn gathers that by nineteen Porsche had been working two jobs, picking up extra cash at underground fights, and fucking every pretty girl who looked his way.
He also knows what Porsche means.
“If you’re getting worried, we can always check on them,” Kinn says, pulling out his own phone.
A quick conversation with Arm confirms what Kinn had already expected. “According to their security teams, the two of them have barely left the house since Friday,” he tells Porsche once he’s off the phone. “Kim’s gone out for supplies a couple times, and he had some studio time he’d already booked, but other than that they’ve been staying in. Som’s going to tell Chay to call you, the next time he pokes his head outside.”
“Thanks,” Porsche says. He doesn’t look entirely at ease, but he does finally put his phone back in his pocket and pick up his fork. He holds it poised over his plate for a moment, then looks back up at Kinn, eyes narrowed. “Your brother better be behaving himself,” he says, pointing his fork at Kinn with mock severity.
Kinn laughs. “Sorry, if you’re looking for a set of brothers who behave themselves, you’re definitely in the wrong house.”
~
It’s nighttime again. Kim is looming over him, frowning. Chay’s body is cold. It’s shaking.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Kim sighs. “I shouldn’t have left you so long.” He pulls Chay up to sitting, then throws Chay’s arm over his shoulder to help him stand up.
Chay is wet. He’s wet the bed, like a child. Tears prick his eyes. “M’sorry,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Kim says in a smooth gentle voice. “I should have come back sooner. Here, let’s get you out of these wet things, and I’ll strip the bed.” He helps Chay out of the sleep clothes he was wearing, but doesn’t give him new ones; he wraps a thick blanket around Chay instead and deposits him in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom.
Even with the blanket, Chay is shivering. He feels like he can’t get warm. Something is happening to him.
Kim changes the bedding with efficient, practiced moves; he bundles the damp sheets and Chay’s wet pajamas into a laundry bag to be sent out to the service he uses. “There,” he says, crouching down to look into Chay’s face. “No problem.” He reaches out to caress Chay’s cheek. “How about a shower?”
Chay has always loved Kim’s shower. The tankless water heater means the hot water never runs out, and Kim has one of those touch-screen controlled shower systems, making the shower experience one of endless variety. The hot water hitting him feels like a hundred loving fingers running down his scalp. He realizes with faint surprise that he doesn’t know the last time he took a shower. No wonder he’s been feeling so weird and gross.
Kim lathers him up, massaging his skin, pressing soft kisses to his neck, his shoulders. He washes Chay’s hair with the utmost tenderness, using the fancy hair products he special-orders from Korea. Chay lets his neck go loose and his mind go simply, blissfully blank, lost in the sensation of water running down his body, of Kim’s hands slick and gentle on his skin.
The bathroom is filled with steam by the time Kim switches from the overhead showerhead to the sprayer, carefully rinsing the shampoo from Chay’s hair without so much as a drop running down into Chay’s eyes. Chay leans back against him, savoring the feeling of being held, cherished, cared for. He felt bad before, but he doesn’t want to feel bad. He’s been sick, and Kim is taking care of him. That’s what boyfriends do.
When he’s finished washing Chay’s hair, Kim turns the overhead water back on. He nudges Chay forward until Chay is standing right in the middle, water sluicing down his body and directly down the drain. Chay drifts, unthinking, while Kim pushes buttons on the shower controls display and fiddles with the attachments for the sprayer. Finally he steps back into Chay, running a hand down his back, over his ass, coming to rest with a firm grip on Chay’s hip. He kisses Chay’s neck.
Chay knows what the attachment is the moment before Kim starts to push it into him. “Wait,” he says, trying to turn to look at Kim, but Kim holds him in place.
“Shh,” Kim says. “You’ll feel better once you’re nice and clean.”
It’s hard metal, but it’s not cold, and it’s narrow — much narrower than Kim’s cock. It goes in easily, and Kim doesn’t push it very deep. The warm water flowing into him feels the same as the warm water running down his skin, as the warm tears that have started, at some point, to stream down his face.
When he’s done Kim dries Chay off with a big fluffy towel and dresses him in a fresh pair of underwear and some sweatpants — Chay’s own, this time, from the bag he’d packed in another life.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” Kim says, sliding into the freshly-made bed next to him.
Chay can’t answer. There are still tears running down his face, even though he doesn’t feel like he’s crying.
“Don’t cry, Chay.” Kim wipes beneath his eye with a thumb. “You’re okay. I’m here. I love you.”
“I love you,” Chay whispers. “Please, please, please…” but Kim is kissing him, and whatever he was going to say gets lost.
~
It probably shouldn’t, but the question of Chay not responding to Porsche’s texts sticks in the back of Kinn’s mind for the rest of the day.
Porsche and his brother are constantly messaging each other. Most of it is entirely incomprehensible to Kinn: a string of memes and videos and bizarre stickers, inside jokes so inscrutable they might as well be another language known only to the two of them. It must have been torture for Porsche not to be able to contact Chay when he started working for Kinn, which is something Kinn doesn’t know how to begin to apologize for (especially since he has no intention of changing his bodyguards’ security protocols, which are there for a reason).
Kinn remembers being nineteen years old and in love for the first time, the way the outside world seemed to drop away, the way he and Tawan had been so wrapped up in each other they could barely stand to be apart. Chay and Kim are probably just playing video games and sleeping until noon and otherwise doing things he’d rather not think about either of them doing, the same way he was at that age.
It’s just.
Last time he felt like this — a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, even after his due diligence turned up no problems — had been with Pete.
Pete is fine now. He’s alive, and whole, and other than being in love with Vegas for some reason he’s in perfect health — but Kinn had sent him to his death, and the fact that he hadn’t died doesn’t change that. He’s lost to Kinn now, lost just as completely and irrevocably as if he had died.
Kim would never hurt Chay, Kinn tells himself, and is surprised by the degree to which he does not believe that at all.
It’s still bothering him when they go to bed that night. Nothing is wrong, nothing could possibly be wrong, but if something is wrong…
“I was thinking,” he says out loud.
“Hmm?” Porsche murmurs, curled up on his side and already half asleep.
“I’ve got a meeting downtown tomorrow morning. Maybe afterward, I’ll go by Kim’s. Check in on them.” He’ll have to move some things around, but he can make it work.
Porsche‘s whole body slumps slightly, his relief clear even with his back turned. “Would you?” he says. “That would be amazing, thank you. I’d offer to go with you, but I have that thing with the Russians.”
His skin is glowing amber in the lamplight. Kinn can’t help but touch him, to trace the line from his broad shoulder down to the dip of his narrow waist, up and over the lush curve of his hip. Kinn dreams sometimes that he is running his palm along that line, up and down, up and down. “Yeah, you go to your meeting,” he says. “Kim and Chay are probably going to be pissed that we’re checking up on them anyway. I’m happy to be the bad guy.”
Porsche snuggles back into him, pulling Kinn’s arm over him like a blanket. “I love you,” he says, kissing Kinn’s palm.
Kinn smiles against the back of his neck. “I love you, too.”
~
Kim isn’t in the bed when Chay wakes up.
He’s going to… he needs to…
His phone.
If he can just find his phone, he can call Porsche. Maybe Porsche can come take care of him, like he did when Chay got sick when he was little. He thinks of Porsche’s broad, cool palm on his feverish forehead and his eyes start to sting. He’s sick, and he wants his brother to come take care of him, and Kim can’t be mad about that, because Porsche always takes care of him.
He hauls his legs out of bed. When he tries to stand, they buckle underneath him, but that’s okay. He can crawl, and being lower to the ground makes him feel less dizzy anyway.
His phone isn’t on either of the bedside tables. It’s not in his overnight bag, still abandoned at the foot of Kim’s bed. With a great deal of concentration, Chay pulls himself up Kim’s dresser, but his phone isn’t in any of the drawers either. He folds back in on himself to sit on the floor. The bed is close, but he doesn’t — he doesn’t want to be in the bed right now. He’s so tired. He can feel the darkness waiting to take him, and it’s tempting to just sink back down, but it feels terribly important that he find his phone before he does.
Setting his jaw, Chay uses the wall to push himself up to standing again. He leans there for a minute or five minutes or an hour, until his head stops whirling and his stomach settles back down into his body. Slowly, leaning on the wall for support, he makes his way to the bedroom door.
Walking gets easier as he does it. The sore place between his legs pulls and twinges with every step. His skin is still slightly tacky from Kim putting his mouth there last night.
The living room feels foreign and enormous. Chay sags in the doorway, despairing at the thought of getting across it. His phone isn’t on the end table or the kitchen counter or anywhere else he usually leaves it. He can’t see it. It’s not anywhere.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, at a loss for what to do.
Kim’s laptop is on the breakfast bar. He could email Porsche — Porsche is terrible about checking his email but he might — he could.
Each step takes an enormous amount of effort, but Chay is able to begin slowly shuffling across the floor. Step. Step. Breathe. Step.
He’s only about a third of the way across when Kim comes out of the bathroom and sees him.
“Chay?” he asks with alarm, rushing to Chay’s side. “What are you doing up? You’re still sick, you need to rest.” He hustles Chay into the living room, away from the kitchen and the laptop, and gently pushes him down into an armchair. A deep sob of frustration wrenches itself out of Chay’s throat.
“You’re all turned around,” Kim says. His hands are soft on Chay’s face, smelling of the hand lotion he always uses. “You have a fever.”
“My phone.” Chay’s voice sounds thick and stupid in his ears. “I was… I want my phone.”
“You don’t need it. I’ve got you. I can take care of everything.”
“No,” Chay says, but Kim is already talking again.
“Did you know I have a beach house? It’s down in Koh Samui. I thought we could take a trip out there.”
Chay’s eyes are stinging again. “I want to go home,” he says plaintively. He means his old home, his real home, the house where he grew up, the bed he slept in every night before Porsche went away and everything got so complicated.
“I’ll make us a new home,” Kim says. “Just you and me.” He strokes the hair back from Chay’s face. “You’re burning up. Let me get you some water.”
The sight of the water glass makes Chay’s stomach tighten up. “No,” he says, turning his face away when Kim tries to hold it to his lips.
“You’re sick, you need fluids,” Kim says with a touch of exasperation. “Come on, Chay, stop acting like such a child.”
Chay clamps his mouth shut. He waves a clumsy hand at Kim, trying to push the water away, and in the process knocks the bottom of the glass. Water splashes out into Kim’s face, soaking the front of his t-shirt; Kim curses and jumps back.
He drops the glass and stands there, dripping, breathing hard, eyes blazing with fury, for a long moment. Abruptly, he hauls back and slaps Chay across the face, hard enough to knock him to one side.
The slap seems to untether the headache that’s been lurking at the edges of Chay’s brain; it is suddenly, throbbingly present. His face stings. It burns. Up close the chair’s deep blue velvet upholstery has a pattern of tiny green squares in it, like little buried treasures. He breathes in and out through his mouth. Tears have started to well up and spill soundlessly down his face but that has nothing to do with him.
“Honestly, Chay,” Kim says, tugging at the hem of his soaking-wet shirt to straighten it. “I’m trying to help you.”
He walks away. Chay doesn’t see where. It’s okay. Chay has gone away, too. He’s somewhere else. This is happening to someone else.
Kim comes back. Chay doesn’t look at him. There is a bright sharp prick in the side of Chay’s neck, and everything slides out of view again.
~
Kinn’s morning meeting is with the head of the import/export company that handles most of the family’s luxury automotive business. The elements of his job that don’t involve any criminal activity often seem to go smoother these days; the car importer doesn’t care that Kinn is young and gay and not his father, or that Kinn’s family has weathered a recent attack on their stronghold, as long as everyone’s paychecks keep clearing. It’s a good meeting, and it puts Kinn in a good mood.
He debates calling ahead, but ultimately decides that doing so will just put Kim on the defensive. He and Chay would have plenty of time to work up a proper righteous indignation by the time Kinn got there, and he’d rather not deal with the combined brattiness of two baby brothers at once. His shock-and-awe “Don’t scare your brother like that” campaign will be more effective with the element of surprise.
Kim and Chay’s security teams flutter all over themselves when Kinn arrives, flustered by a visit from the boss and clearly worried that they’re in trouble for something. Kinn spends a few minutes reassuring them that he’s just dropping in on his brother, no cause for alarm, and by the way are Kim and Chay both here? The bodyguards are happy to inform him that they are. They might be more unsettled if they knew just how unprecedented this social call really was, but they’re new. They’re all new, a fact that Kinn still can’t think about without a twinge of grief and anger.
“I’ll radio up and let Khun Kim know you’re here,” one of them — Som? Kinn is pretty sure it’s Som — says, and Kinn acquiesces. The element of surprise is all well and good, but he’d rather not get shot in the face by his own brother at one in the afternoon.
Predictably, Kim answers the door with a mistrustful scowl on his face. “What are you doing here?” he asks, making no move to invite Kinn in.
Kinn pushes past him into the apartment, strolling in like he owns the place (which he does, or Theerapanyakun Group does, anyway). “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d come by.” His bodyguards stream in after him; Kim reluctantly steps back to allow them to enter as well.
“You could have called,” Kim says. “Now isn’t a good time.”
Kim’s apartment is cozy and tastefully furnished. It’s surprisingly tidy, given that Kim refuses to allow a cleaning service in. Kinn is begrudgingly impressed. He’s never actually been here. “Where’s Chay?”
“He’s sleeping. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“He hasn’t been answering Porsche’s texts,” Kinn says. “We were just getting a little worried — it’s not like him not to check in.”
“He’s been sick. I’ve been taking care of him.”
Kinn raises his eyebrows at him, as if to say, You, taking care of someone? Kim flushes.
“Is he all right?” Kinn asks. “You know we have a full medical staff at the house, if he —“
“He’s fine. It’s just a bug. He’ll be okay in another couple of days. I’ll make sure he texts Porsche when he wakes up, okay? You didn’t have to come all the way over here.” Kim moves forward, attempting to herd Kinn out the door.
Kinn doesn’t budge. “I’d like to talk to him.” He mostly says it just because Kim is pissing him off, but that nagging something’s wrong feeling has been growing stronger from the moment he walked in.
“Like I said, he’s asleep.” Kim folds his arms across his chest; he has his jaw set in the way that means he’s planning on being particularly intractable. He had that look shortly before biting Kinn until he drew blood, when they were kids — Kinn still has the scar on his shoulder. But they’re not children anymore.
“I’ll still feel better if I can tell Porsche I actually spoke to him,” Kinn says. “He can go right back to sleep again once I have.”
He takes a step toward the closed door he assumes is the bedroom. Kim steps in front of him, blocking his way. Kinn moves to go around him, and Kim blocks him again. “Knock it off, Kinn,” Kim says. “He needs to rest. You don’t have to pry into every area of my life.”
“I’m not prying,” Kinn retorts, annoyed. “If you weren’t throwing a tantrum, I’d already be gone by now.” He can see Kim bristle at that; Kim hates any implication that he’s anything less than grown up, but he should have thought of that before he started acting like an eight-year-old caught hoarding cookies in his room. He tries to go around Kim again, and is blocked once more. “Move, Kim.”
“You have NO RIGHT to barge in here like this!” Kim yells, getting right up in Kinn’s face. “This is fucking ridiculous, get out of my house.”
And it is that, more than anything, that convinces Kinn that something is seriously wrong here.
There is a very short list of people who are allowed to shout at Kinn, let alone get up in his personal space like this. His father. Tankhun. Porsche. End of list. Kimhan Theerapanyakun, who might like to pretend he’s the soulful boy pop star but who still wears the family ring, should really know better.
Kinn drops into the cold, ruthless detachment that has become a hallmark of his tenure as head of the family business. He looks Kim in the eye and raises one eyebrow slightly. “Kim,” he says, his voice calm and soft.
Kim at least has the good sense to take a step back. “Sorry,” he mutters, looking at the floor.
Still with that same icy calm, Kinn holds out his hand, palm up. Kim glances at it, his scowl intensifying, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. When he isn’t immediately forthcoming, Kinn flexes his fingers in an impatient give it to me gesture. Kim glances around at Kinn’s assembled bodyguards. He’s actually doing the math, the little shit, but even Kim isn’t crazy enough to try something with Kinn. Even if he somehow won, the world of hurt that would come crashing down on him as a result would never be worth it. Reluctantly, Kim pulls the gun out of the back of the waistband of his sweatpants and puts it in Kinn’s outstretched hand.
“Go and sit over there,” Kinn says, gesturing with his chin toward the couch and tucking the gun into his own waistband. “I’m going to check on Chay, and when I come back out here, you and I are going to have a conversation about appropriate ways to address me.” Over his shoulder, he says, “Make sure Khun Kim doesn’t leave until I’ve had a chance to speak with him.”
“Yes, sir,” the assembled bodyguards say in unison, even Kim’s detail. These men work for him, not his brother.
Kim stalks ungraciously to the couch and flops down on it. “He might say some weird shit, he’s been pretty out of it lately. The fever gives him bad dreams. Don’t blame me if he’s pissed you woke him up.”
Kinn doesn’t bother responding to him, but he does knock on the bedroom door. No sound from within. He opens the door a crack and slips inside, shutting it behind him.
The air in the bedroom is close and stuffy. In the light streaming in from between the blinds, Kinn can see Chay as an undifferentiated lump on the far side of the bed.
“Chay?” Kinn asks, stepping toward the bed. Chay doesn’t stir.
Walking softly, Kinn comes around the side of the bed and turns on the bedside lamp. The light does nothing to wake Chay up; he’s so still that for a horrible moment, Kinn thinks he’s dead. He puts a hand on Chay’s bony shoulder, which is warm and alive — thank fuck — and shakes him gently.
“Chay?” Chay sighs and mutters in his sleep, but doesn’t wake. Kinn shakes him harder. “Chay? Porchay. Wake up.”
Finally, Chay’s eyes blink open, wincing at the light from the lamp.
“Hey,” Kinn says, managing to smile at him. “I’m sorry to interrupt your nap.”
Chay stares up at him with a look of total uncomprehension. His eyes are glassy and unfocused. There’s an enormous bite mark on his neck. He blinks at Kinn a couple of times, then starts shaking his head. “No,” he mumbles. “Not you.”
“Chay? Are you all right? We were starting to get worried —”
Chay is shaking his head harder, emphatic. Tears are starting to well up in his eyes. Kinn notes with a cold, sinking sensation the vivid red handprint across his cheek. “Not you,” Chay says again, the consonants blurring to softness in his mouth. “Not you, please, I don’t… don’t want…”
Kinn puts his hand back on Chay’s shoulder, patting him soothingly, trying to keep his mounting horror out of his face. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says. “What’s happening here, nong? Can you tell me what’s going on?”
His words don’t seem to register with Chay, who suddenly goes limp under his palm. His eyes are drooping closed, like it’s too much work to keep them open. “Okay,” he sighs. “Just… be fast, okay? It hurts.” He rolls over onto his stomach and buries his face in his arms, drawing his legs up toward his body and lifting his hips.
It’s a posture that would be hard to mistake for anything other than what it is.
Kinn’s stomach drops and twists. He puts a hand over his mouth, swallowing the bile that’s rising in his throat. “Don’t do that,” he whispers. “You don’t have to do that.” But Chay is unresponsive; his breathing is already evening back out into sleep.
When Kim was five, he had a kitten that ran away; he’d cried in their mother’s arms. When he was nine, he and Kinn had mapped out all the CCTV blind spots in the house and used them to carry out several successful ice cream raids on the kitchen before they were found out. When he was fifteen, he’d stolen Kinn’s brand-new Maserati and promptly crashed it. He’d apologized — but only to Tankhun, for worrying him.
Kinn stands up and smooths his hands down the front of his trousers, a gesture borne of long habit. He cracks his neck. He runs his tongue along the front of his teeth. He takes his horror and guilt and sadness and wraps them in a protective blanket of cold anger, breathing it in and out until the anger is all he feels, all he is.
“Stay here, okay?” Kinn says to Porchay’s back. “I need to take care of something really quick, and then we’ll go home.”
Kinn bursts out of the bedroom with his gun drawn and is halfway across the room before Kim can jump to his feet. Taking their cues from him, the assembled bodyguards draw their weapons as well. Kim stops short, facing down the barrels of seven different guns all aimed directly at him. He doesn’t raise his hands, exactly, but he holds them out from his sides.
“What did you do!?” Kinn demands. “What the fuck did you do, Kim?”
“Nothing,” Kim says evenly. “I told you, he’s been sick.”
“What did you give him?” Chay has clearly been drugged; it will be easier for the family’s medical staff if they know with what.
Kim’s face is a smooth, expressionless blank. “Cold medicine.”
“KIM!” Kinn shouts, his voice bouncing back against the walls of the apartment. He’s shaking, but his gun hand doesn’t waver.
Kim scoffs, affecting the bored superiority that has been making Kinn want to throttle him since Kim was thirteen or so. “You won’t shoot me,” he says, his lip curling into a sneer.
“No?” Kinn asks softly. He reaches deep inside himself for any remaining shred of love or affection for his brother: the baby his mother had coddled, the silent child hanging onto Tankhun’s leg, the angry young man who had clawed his way out of the family business. He finds nothing but icy, howling wind. Be fast. It hurts. “Who do you think I love more, Kim?” He cocks the gun, keeping the barrel aimed right between Kim’s eyes. “You, or Porsche?”
The sneer drops off of Kim’s face like he’s been slapped. He swallows.
“What did you give him?” Kinn asks again.
“It’s just a sedative. To help him sleep.”
Kinn nods. “Dae,” he says, not taking his eyes off of Kim.
“Sir?” Dae says from somewhere behind him.
“Get the first-aid kit from downstairs.” There are smelling salts in there, which should hopefully wake Chay up enough for them to get him to the car without carrying him out. They need to be discreet about this. They need — fuck.
This is going to destroy Porsche.
“Take Khun Kim into custody,” he tells the rest of them.
“Kinn!” Kim protests. “Look, I don’t know what he told you —“
“You’re going to stay put until I can figure out what’s going on,” Kinn says firmly. “If I were you, I’d think very carefully about what to do and say next.”
Kim opens his mouth on a retort, and then snaps it shut. There are two spots of color standing out high in his cheeks. His eyes glitter. He purses his lips as the bodyguards seize his arms and zip-tie his hands behind him.
“Don’t take your eye off of him,” Kinn says. “He’s a deadly little fucker, cuffs or no cuffs.”
“Kinn.” Kim’s voice trembles with something that might be stress and might be rage, but certainly isn’t fear. “Kinn, listen —“
“Kim, I swear if you don’t shut up I will kill you myself.” Kinn runs a hand through his hair, trying to collect his racing thoughts. This situation has the potential to go wrong a thousand different ways.
Word of this is definitely going to get back to his father before Kinn can speak to him about it; there’s nothing he can do about that but accept it and move on.
He can’t radio the house. He maybe shouldn’t even take Kim and Chay back there. Arm and Pol are good men, and he trusts them with his life, but their allegiance is to Khun first, and somewhere along the way they’ve pledged themselves to Porsche over him as well. Ordinarily he approves of this priority order, since it closely resembles his own, but it’s inconvenient right now. If — Porsche shouldn’t hear about this from anyone else. Neither should Tankhun, if Kinn wants to avoid sending him down a long and very dark spiral.
He scans his bodyguards’ faces, weighing which of them he can trust, and how much. Not for the first time in recent months, he wishes for Pete. All those years he’d said he didn’t trust anyone, but Kinn had trusted Pete. Pete would have handled this well and never told a soul.
Dae returns with the first-aid kit, which he hands over to Kinn with a deep bow; Kinn eyes him appraisingly. He’s not one of Chan’s men, but he’s not one of Korn’s recruits, either — Porsche had found him. He was a Black Beret in Korea before moving here. He has no close family for a rival gang to threaten, and (probably) hasn’t been working for Kinn long enough for Kinn’s father to find a hook to slide into him. He’ll do.
“Dae, you’re with me,” Kinn says decisively. “Everyone else will escort Khun Kim to his new temporary quarters.” He gives them the address of a townhome the family owns in Bang Kapi District — there’s a secure, soundproof cell in the basement that they’ve occasionally used for interrogations.
“Try not to kill him,” he adds, looking Kim in the eye. “But feel free to shoot him if he tries anything.” Kim gives him a haughty stare down the bridge of his nose and remains silent. Kinn stares around the room at his bodyguards, whose facial expressions range from confusion to discomfort to grim determination. “I shouldn’t have to say this,” Kinn tells them, “but I’ll say it anyway. This is a private matter for my family. It should be handled with the utmost discretion. I will be informing my father, my older brother, and my partner of this situation personally. If I discover that anyone in this room has chosen to speak of this private matter to anyone, including the rest of the main family, without my permission, the consequences will be severe.”
“Yes, sir,” they chorus, bowing.
They’re going to talk anyway. Someone will. At least they might think twice about it — long enough for Kinn to somehow get out in front of this.
~
Chay breathes in the familiar scent of his childhood bedroom. The lead weight is gone from his limbs. The fog is gone from his brain. He feels empty, dried-up, like he could blow away.
He had torn down most of his WiK photos in the wake of Kim’s first betrayal. Someone has come in and taken down the rest of them, and the things he’d hung up since: pictures of the two of them together, little notes Kim had written him, the ticket stubs from a concert they’d attended together. The wall is blank. Chay is glad, because he doesn’t have to see all that stuff, and sorry too, because it means that whoever took it down knows what happened to him.
A broad, cool palm comes down on his forehead, smoothing the hair back from his face. Chay closes his eyes. “Hia,” he says.
“I’m here,” Porsche says. There are tears in his voice. He swallows audibly. “I’ve got you.”
They don’t go back to the main family’s house right away. It’s like old times: Porsche cooks, Chay cleans, they watch movies and listen to music, sometimes Porsche leaves for hours and comes back bruised and exhausted. Just like old times.
They don’t talk about what happened. Porsche tries at first, but Chay shuts him down with a finality that Porsche doesn’t question. There are words for what Kim did to him, but Chay has a hard time thinking of it like that — it doesn’t seem to apply to him. He feels more like he spent a week in a bad dream, and woke up to find the world slightly but permanently altered.
Kinn is there in the evenings, teasing Porsche and giving Chay sad, worried looks when he thinks Chay isn’t looking. He tries to help Porsche in the kitchen until Porsche chases him out, then sits on their couch looking besotted and abashed. Chay wonders how long Kinn’s father will let them stay here. How long can the leash get, before it snaps tight and pulls them all back in again?
Chay wakes up in the night and feels Kim’s weight on his back. He pours a glass of water and halfway through it he tastes metal at the back of his throat; he ends up vomiting in the sink. He wets the bed again, and hides the sheets in his closet until Porsche leaves the house. He doesn’t work on his portfolio for school, and no one remarks on it.
One morning he comes downstairs for breakfast and finds Tankhun sitting at the table, a riot of turquoise and sunset orange against the soft neutrals of their kitchen. Chay glances around and sees Pol standing guard just outside the window, his back to them.
“Finally, you’re awake,” Tankhun says. “I’m starving.”
Chay blinks at him, trying to process Tankhun’s presence. “Porsche didn’t give you breakfast before he left?” he asks, for lack of anything better to say.
Tankhun makes a derisive sound through his nose. “Kinn tried to make breakfast, and I threw it in the garbage.”
Chay nods slowly. That is an appropriate response to Kinn’s cooking. Tankhun fixes him with an imperious stare. “Well?”
In spite of himself, Chay smiles at him. “I’ll make us something.”
He fries them some eggs, glad for something to do with his hands. Tankhun chatters to him as he cooks, about the new series he’s watching and the new food he’s trying out for his fish. As Chay slides the eggs onto a plate, he remembers cooking eggs for Kim, just like this. He’d drawn a smiling face on them. That had been the day he’d been abducted, right out his own front door. Kim had come and rescued him. Kim had —
I’ll make us a new home. Just you and me.
Chay is standing at the counter looking down at a plate of eggs, but Chay is also somewhere else — a part of him slides sideways and disappears, closing a door behind it.
“What do you have on your feet?” someone eventually asks, near his right shoulder. Tankhun. He’s gotten up from the table while Chay wasn’t looking and is standing beside him, close but not touching.
“Um.” It shouldn’t be a difficult question, but Chay can’t remember. Sometimes it’s hard for him to look at his own body, but it’s easier with clothes on; he looks down at his feet and sees the same house shoes he always wears. “Slides.”
“Can you feel them? With your toes?”
Chay flexes his toes against the soles of his shoes. They’re rubbery, with a slight give to them. His toes fit into the small grooves they’ve worn down there over time.
“What’s in your hand?” Tankhun asks. His voice is soft and level.
There’s a spatula in his hand. How long has he been holding it?
“Squeeze it. As hard as you can.”
He does. The wooden handle of the spatula is rough and solid in his palm; he squeezes it until his wrist creaks in faint protest. He’s breathing easier. He hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t breathing well until the weight in his chest started to ease.
Tankhun nods. “Let’s eat,” he says, taking both plates to the table.
They eat in relative silence. Tankhun takes small, quick bites, like an ibis dipping its beak into the water again and again. Chay doesn’t really taste the eggs, but he feels better as he eats them.
When he’s finished, Tankhun pushes back his plate and fixes Chay with a speculative look.
“When it happened to me,” he says, “I thought I would die.”
Chay doesn’t know if he means being kidnapped, or the other thing. Maybe all of it. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “Mm?” he mumbles around a mouthful of food, keeping his eyes on his plate.
“It’s very rude,” Tankhun says, “for life to keep going after everything gets fucked up. Everything should stop, whenever I want it to stop! And only go again when I say. Rude! Rude, rude, rude. But..” he sighs. “You have to just… find a way to keep living.”
“Like you did?” Chay says, thinking of the bright colors of Tankhun’s room, the candy-colored womb he rarely ventures out of.
“Like ME?” Tankhun hoots, his voice echoing loudly off of the kitchen cabinets. “No one can do it like me. Who’s out here doing it like me? No one. They wish.” He tosses his hair out of his eyes. “I am Tankhun Theerapanyakun, and I’m one of a kind, baby.”
Chay laughs, as he’s clearly intended to.
“You’ll do it like yourself. Better than me, probably. It’s gonna be hard, but it won’t always be this hard.”
“I feel so stupid,” Chay says, before he knows he’s going to say it.
“I know, darling, it’s not your best haircut ever, but Hia Khun can fix it for you. Maybe we can go back to the blue? The blue was fierce.”
“No, I — my hair is fine,” Chay says, swatting Tankhun’s hands away from his head. “I mean…” He draws a slow, shaky breath. “I knew how he was. What he was capable of. And I took him back anyway.” This is not something he’s been able to say out loud, even to Porsche, although he’s sure Porsche and Kinn and everyone else are all thinking it.
Tankhun grabs Chay’s hand and bangs it softly against the table. His fingers are cold and bony. “Listen. Hey.” He glowers sternly into Chay’s eyes. “Are you psychic? Because if you’re psychic I want to know if they’re ever going to make Drag Race Thailand season 3.”
Chay shakes his head. “No, I’m not psychic. But I don’t think they are.”
“Me either,” Tankhun says glumly. “But if you’re not psychic, then you couldn’t have possibly known this would happen. None of us knew. I didn’t know, and I know everything that goes on in this family.”
The thing about him is, he’s nosy, Tankhun had said of Kim, the day they met. The nosiest one! But actually, he got that from me.
Chay looks down at his hand, still clutched in Tankhun’s. “I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I know he’s your brother.”
“Oh, my dear.” Tankhun takes his hand back and touches the corners of his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that, okay?” He looks up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, then back at Chay with a wide, false smile. “Now you sit right there, and I’m going to call my stylist for a house call. Your haircut is depressing me.”
~
Kinn has the bodyguards on duty bring in a chair, so he doesn’t have to sit on the floor to talk to Kim, and a small folding table, to give him a place to set his coffee cup. He doesn’t really need another cup of coffee this late in the afternoon, but he learned a long time ago that a cup or glass gives him something to do with his hands besides fidget.
Kim is sitting on the floor of the basement cell, his hands cuffed together. He watches the table setup with a complete lack of expression. Kinn sits down in the chair and waves the guards away; he and Kim watch each other in silence until Kinn’s men have trooped up the stairs and shut the door behind them.
“Took you long enough,” Kim finally says. “Can I go now?” His hair is lank against his forehead. There’s a bruise high on his cheek. Apparently he’d tried to stage a jailbreak a couple of days ago; he’d broken a man’s nose and put another in traction before the security team could tase him back into submission.
“I would have come sooner,” Kinn says. “But there was the question of what to do with you.”
Kim knocks his head back against the wall and sneers at him. “We both know Pa won’t let you do anything to me. Why don’t you skip the empty threats and just tell me what he wants?”
Swallowing his rage, Kinn adjusts his cuffs before responding. It’s a transparent stalling tactic, one that Kim will see right through, but he needs a moment. “As you are aware, this is a delicate time for us. The attack by the minor family weakened the organization, and Gun’s death further complicated several of our business relationships for which he was the main point of contact. We need to present a united front; any sign of weakness or conflict within the family could have disastrous consequences.”
Kim makes a get on with it gesture.
“Pa and I both agree that your behavior shows a shocking lapse in judgment, not to mention a total lack of self-control on your part. Given the current situation, we can’t risk that you’ll further endanger us. You’re too erratic, you can’t be allowed to wander around on your own.”
“So he’s getting me out of the way,” Kim says sourly. “Fucking typical. Where is he sending me? Siem Reap? Singapore? New York? Do we still own the condo Vegas stayed in after that thing with Ishikawa-san’s son?”
Their father had suggested exile, but Kinn couldn’t bear the thought of Kim strolling around Manhattan for a couple of years and then coming back like nothing happened. It had been hard enough to stomach with Vegas, and Kinn hadn’t even known that boy. It hadn’t been difficult to convince Korn to consider an alternative proposal. “No,” Kinn says. “As I said, we can’t have you wandering around. You’re too much of a liability.”
Kim scowls at him. “I’m not moving back home.”
“No, of course not.” He means because Chay lives there, but Kim gives him a satisfied little nod like he means something else, like they understand each other.
Kinn stares at him, really taking him in for the first time in a long time. Kim takes after their mother: pretty, delicate-boned, angry. He’d been there when she was killed. His eyes are dark and still and cold. The guards have taken all of his jewelry except the family ring, which Kim is spinning around his finger with his thumb, a nervous habit their father deplores. His fingernails are smooth and rounded, cut short on his left hand and longer on his right: a guitarist’s hands. Kinn’s hands had looked like that, once.
Chay has bitten his nails to ragged shreds. He hasn’t touched his guitar since he came home. He’s lost weight, his elbows and wrists protruding alarmingly, his cheeks sunken hollows. Kinn should never have run into that back alley where Porsche was smoking. He should have let the Italians kill him. If he’d never fallen in love with Porsche, he never would have pulled Porsche and Chay into the black hole of his family, which destroys everything it touches, and which has swallowed them both alive.
Kinn takes a long sip of coffee and swallows the lump in his throat. When he speaks, his voice is steady. Matter-of-fact. “We’re outfitting an apartment for you in a building Theerapanyakun Group owns, close to the house. Pa is using the same contractors he used for Khun Nampheung’s rooms. They’re very good. Discreet. And they work fast.”
Kim sits up straight, a hint of alarm creeping into his eyes. “What —“
“You’ll be quite comfortable,” Kinn continues, as though Kim hadn’t spoken. “You’ll have a full complement of bodyguards, a private chef preparing your meals, a cleaning staff — and, of course, a nurse. To keep you calm.”
“Kinn,” Kim says, scrambling to his feet. “Wait.”
“Pa sends his regrets for not being able to deliver this message himself, but he had another appointment today. I know he’s planning to visit you regularly, though. He’s looking forward to spending more time with you.”
“You can’t do this.” Kim’s lips are white. “You can’t. Khun won’t let you.”
Kinn laughs, a brittle, mirthless sound. Kim has some nerve, invoking their brother at a time like this. “Kim, you kidnapped someone. A young person Khun cares about. Drugged him, raped him, kept him there for days.” Kim opens his mouth angrily at the word rape, but Kinn continues speaking. “You couldn’t have picked a better way to lose Khun’s support. He never wants to see you again.”
This takes the wind out of Kim’s sails completely. He sags in on himself. His eyes scan the walls of his cell, back and forth, back and forth. “Don’t you even want to hear my side of the story?” he mutters.
“Not particularly, no.” The doctors had said minor injuries consistent with sexual trauma. They had found a whole pharmacy’s worth of drugs in Kim’s apartment, and in Chay’s blood. Sedatives. Barbiturates. Muscle relaxants. “You’re lucky I’m here, and not Porsche, after what you did.”
“So that’s it,” Kim spits. “You’re just gonna lock me up for however long, without even letting me explain, all because your boyfriend —“
“Allow me to be clear,” Kinn says, taking another sip of coffee to avoid punching Kim in the face. “Porsche wants you dead. As head of the minor family, he would be well within his rights to demand it. It would sadden Pa, but I’m reasonably certain he could be convinced that you’re not worth the risk you pose to the organization.” With Kinn more firmly on the hook than ever, thanks to the situation with Porsche’s mother, their father doesn’t really need a third son. “The only reason I am not pursuing this course of action is because Tankhun asked me not to kill you.” He pauses, debating whether to say the next part out loud. “And so did Chay.”
Kim’s face lights up at that, a strange, eerie light. “Let me talk to him,” he says. “Please, just let me talk to him, I know I can make him understand if I can just explain —“
“Absolutely not,” Kinn says crisply, and Kim’s face falls once more. “You’re not to speak to him or try to contact him. Ever. For the rest of your life. If I find out you have — I don’t care if it’s thirty years from now — I will kill you. Do you understand?”
Kim has never wanted to kill him — if nothing else, Kinn’s death would make Kim the heir, which is the last thing Kim wants. The look in his eyes says he’s certainly plotting Kinn’s murder now, though. Not that it matters. “Yes.”
“Good.” He wants to say something else, something like What were you thinking? or How could you do this? But those are the questions a man might ask his brother, not those a mob boss asks an unruly subordinate, and that’s all Kinn can afford to be right now. He stands up and sets his coffee cup down on its saucer, glad of the excuse to look away from Kim. “We’ll start with four years, and see how you do. If you’re behaving yourself, we can look at expanding your privileges then.”
Korn had balked at the idea of sealing Kim away indefinitely. They’d settled on four years, which would give Chay time to graduate from university; ostensibly, Kim could return to school at that time and finish his degree without violating Kinn’s terms. But Kinn knows his father, and has seen how he is with Nampheung. In four years’ time Korn will be too used to having Kim where he can get to him whenever he wants. It’s likely that the topic of Kim’s release won’t come up again, especially if Kinn can go the next four years without giving his father a reason to want another pawn back on the board.
“Four years,” Kim says faintly. “Kinn.”
Kinn straightens his shirt. He forces himself to look Kim in the eye again. They’re going to start the drugs in his food and water tonight, so he’ll be nice and docile by the time they transfer him; Kinn may never see his brother this lucid again. He gives Kim a dismissive nod. “Four years,” he repeats. “I’ll see you then.”
“Kinn,” Kim says again. “Hia.” But Kinn is already turning his back, already walking away.
~
Chay tunes his guitar slowly. It’s his old one, with the laminate soundboard and the worn-down tuning pegs. He’d asked Porsche to get rid of the one Kim had given him; he doesn’t know what Porsche did with it, but it was gone the next day.
“I’m sorry it’s been so long since I came to see you, Ma,” he says as he works. “I was… away, for a while. But I’m back now.”
(The answer to “how long before the leash snaps back?” turns out to have been about three weeks. Chay gets the sense that at least part of that time was spent dealing with Kim. Kinn had promised not to kill him, and he swears that Kim will never bother Chay again; Chay doesn’t know anything beyond that, and he doesn’t want to know.)
“I hope you weren’t too lonely when I was gone,” he says. “That’s a pretty dress.” The dresses Korn provides for her are always brightly colored, elaborate confections, like she’s about to attend a doll’s tea party.
His mother’s face doesn’t change. Her hands sit heavy and forgotten in her lap.
He plays through a simple chord progression, not really playing any specific song, just strumming idly. Korn allows Chay and Porsche to leave their bodyguards outside when they visit, but the CCTV cameras are easy to spot, and Chay has to assume there are listening devices as well.
“Do you like jazz?” he asks, strumming louder. “My first guitar teacher was a jazz guitarist.” He moves into the beginning of “Midnight Blue,” adding some little flourishes just for fun. It feels good to be playing jazz guitar again, after so much time spent playing poppier stuff. “Here, watch this.” He leans in closer and plays a blues riff, directing her attention to his fingers on the frets. Under his breath, as he plays, he says, “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Nampheung keeps watching his fingers, but her eyes widen. She puts a soft hand on his knee and squeezes it, just once.
“Did you like that, Ma?” Chay asks, beaming at her. “I can play it again.”