Work Text:
The stark crimson of blood stays vivid in Pete’s mind, etching itself into his ventricles.
Darkening gore congeals between Vegas’s teeth. It’s on his neck; his lip is split and purpling. Pete’s handiwork. He has a mean right hook - despite what his father used to say.
Then, pop, pop. The initial red spray as the bullets hit, almost too fake, surely from a blood-pack. Somebody will call: cut soon. They will wipe up the food colouring and corn starch, and step out of their roles. Move on to the next scene.
But Vegas is not laughing. He falls to the floor in a heap, uncontrolled, eyes wide initially, then rolling.
There’s no choreography. This is not one of Tankhun’s beloved dramas.
Does he die at the end? Do you think he will die at the end? Pete, does he die at the end?
The red mist descends over Pete’s eyes, as if it has floated through the air towards him. Cold gunmetal presses against his hand; he knows how to shoot. He’s got top marks in all his simulations. He is - no, was - a very competent head bodyguard. Pete bares his teeth, lips curled up like a loyal guard dog. More red spray as he opens fire. A fleshy thud across the garden, a spreading pool like melting shaved ice.
There’s blood drying on the back of his shirt, rubbing against the notches of his spine. He’s not sure if it’s his. The smell of iron mixes with chlorine from the pool, a contrast of viscera and sterility.
Then he’s on the floor, hands all up in it, pressing the red bubbling hot spring of Vegas’s abdomen. He’s been trained for this. He’s seen more blood than most. It should be like water to him. It’s usually like water to him.
But his own pulse pounds in his ears. Iron fills his mouth. Somebody screams. Good. Let them scream; maybe somebody will come. Maybe somebody will press a gun to his head and finish the job.
Training takes over. Vegas doesn’t have a radial pulse. He tears his trouser leg and feels - or rather doesn’t - the absent popliteal. Panic sets in; he grabs at Vegas’s inner thigh and finds the femoral, thready and irregular. There, but only just.
There’s too much blood. Pete shrugs his shirt off his shoulders, bundles up the white fabric and stuffs it against Vegas’s stomach, one hand pushing down, holding pressure, the other at his neck trying to locate his carotid. Vegas is still breathing, but it’s agonal, rattling in his throat. Against Pete’s hand, the pulse in Vegas’s neck flutters like a butterfly, fresh out of the chrysalis.
His knees slip in the blood, and he falls against Vegas’s chest, pressing his cheek against his sodden shirt, trying to use the weight of his body to apply pressure on the wound. One of Vegas’s hands flops against Pete’s flank, ice cold and trembling. He must be sobbing into Vegas’s wound - are tears sterile?
All Pete can think of is a stupid fucking painting. He saw it years ago, when on an international trip with Kinn and Tawan. They were somewhere really cold and hilly, a potato-obsessed city that reeked of damp leaves. Tawan had dragged them to an art gallery. Vegas was there, too, but Pete hardly noticed him back when he was young and wiry-built with braces framing his teeth. Every time he smiled, he revealed the orthodontic elastic bands wiring his incisors to his back molars, looking suspiciously like a muzzled dog. Of course, Pete was relatively young too, but he felt older, already trusted to lead Tankhun’s detail and to accompany the heirs abroad. While they wandered the galleries, Big had amused himself by pointing at paintings of gargoyles, ugly blank-faced babies, expressionless flat-faced dogs, and snickering “you” into Pete’s ear.
“It’s sad,” Tawan had said, looking up at a painting with his big, stupid, doe eyes. In the picture, a man in a blue and red tunic held a pale figure, a lamenting expression on his face. Others in similar robes gathered around them in a mournful scene. “It’s sad that man is dead. He’s so pale. Urgh, it’s giving me shivers.”
Kinn mumbled a response, pulling Tawan close to him and pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.
“It’s meant to be sad,” Vegas huffed, behind them. “It’s a tragedy. Achilles drives himself mad seeking revenge after Patroclus’s death, then dies also. They love each other. After their deaths, their ashes are mixed, and they are buried in one urn.” Vegas squints at the painting. “I think the emotion comes across well.”
“Okay, Mr Encyclopædia Britannica,” Kinn laughed. He swung Tawan’s hand. “Come on, let's not look at this depressing stuff. I want to go and see some more modern art, or even better, get a coffee, or a scotch.”
Vegas looks as pale as Patroclus in that painting now, his chest rising and falling erratically. Pete clings to him and howls against his chest. He smells smoke; he hopes the whole compound will burn down, and their ashes, too, will be mixed together. It’s all he can hope for.
Vegas’s breath gurgles in his chest. Pete just tries to hold him together, closes his eyes, and waits for oblivion.
It doesn’t come.
Strong hands clasp around his middle, pulling him away. He resists, pressing himself harder against Vegas’s prone form. More hands grasp under his armpits, pulling against his skin, trying to turn him, but he keeps twisting back. He can’t leave Vegas.
“Pete. Pete!”
He blinks; it’s blurry. His eyes hurt. Somebody slaps him hard around the face; the copper taste increases in his mouth. Pete thinks it’s Arm who has just hit him. Arm squints at him; one of the lenses of his round-framed glasses is cracked.
“Have you been shot? Are you hurt? You’re covered in blood.”
Pete shakes his head. The world spins.
“Vegas. He’s -”
“Pete. You’re in shock. Medical is here. Come with me. It’s over.”
“They’ll leave him to die,” Pete hears his voice cry out. “No. Let me.”
Arm wraps himself around Pete’s body like a straitjacket, holding him in place. “Let them do their job,” he hisses. “They aren’t going to let him die.”
Pete blinks again. Vegas is surrounded by people wearing reflective padded jackets. Somebody is at his head, tilting it back, placing a tube in his mouth. Somebody else is pressing on his stomach. Another person holds a bag of fluid up high, allowing it to drip into Vegas’s vein. Vegas doesn’t make a sound as they lift him onto a stretcher. Pete’s heart pounds in his ears as the medics lean over him, shielding Vegas from view.
“Adrenaline, please,” one of the medics says. “Blood pressure is unreadable.”
“I’ve got an airway, I’m bagging now...”
Pete’s pulse hammers in his ears. The voices are simultaneously far away but also somehow inside his head.
“Okay, prepare for transfer.”
They lift him and begin to head to the entrance of the main tower. Pete’s heart lurches in his throat at the small distance.
“I’m going.” Pete wriggles out of Arm’s grasp. “I’m going with him.”
“Pete. Have you got a head injury? Pete, you are not acting -”
Pete swings, hitting Arm directly in the jaw. He lets out a surprised oof as his glasses fly off and hit the floor with a crunch.
“What the actual fuck, Pete?” is the last thing Pete hears before he sprints after the medics. They don’t argue and let him follow back into the tower. Perhaps being topless, covered in blood, and seen throwing punches has made him appear not worth fighting. The corridors smell thick with blood; it’s on the walls, soaked into the carpet, squelching underfoot. Bulletholes pockmark the walls. They all rush into the rattling service elevator. As they ascend to the medical wing, the vibrations shake the fillings in Pete’s teeth.
Pete leans against the wall of the lift, breathing heavily, clutching at his chest. Vegas splutters and convulses on the stretcher.
“Suction, please.” The sound of hissing, like sucking the last of a drink through a straw. Pete closes his eyes, not wanting to see. He’s usually fine. He can usually look, completely unperturbed, at any gore, any evidence of violence. Today, he can’t, because it’s Vegas who is bleeding out in front of him.
“Make sure a theatre is prepared,” one of the medics says into a phone pressed to their ear.
The lift doors open into pandemonium. Pete has never seen the hospital wing so busy. Multiple people on stretchers line the foyer, and others sit on chairs in the waiting area, in various degrees of injury. The rich meaty tang of blood fills the air. They rush past all of the walking wounded, and when they get to the double doors into the theatre wing, one of the medics holds Pete back.
“You need to stay here,” he says.
“No. I... I need to.”
“Stay. Here.” It’s an order. Pete stops. He knows how to follow orders.
He’s not a bodyguard anymore, though.
Pete tries to push past the doctor, but somebody grabs his arms from behind, pulling them behind his lower back.
“You can’t go there,” says a firm female voice. “Come with me. Now.”
The double doors swing shut, and Vegas is gone. Pete wants to drop to the ground, to howl at the closed doors, to bash his fists against them until they are bloody.
“Are you injured?” the female voice asks. “You are -”
“I’m O Negative,” is all Pete can say. His voice is disembodied. “I’m O Negative. He’ll need blood. I can -”
The hands fall from around his wrists, and Pete pitches forward, his knees hitting the linoleum.
“I know,” the nurse says. “We have you down as a universal donor in the emergency file, it’s Phongsakorn Saengtham, right? Pete,” She switches to his nickname. “I think maybe you should take a moment. We are short but -”
Pete pushes himself to his feet and forces his signature disarming smile to his face, trying to prove to himself and the older woman in front of him that he’s okay. He holds his arm out to her.
“Take it,” he says, half-wild, jabbing at his antecubital fossa. “I can give it. I have good veins. Look.”
She narrows her eyes at him. Another nurse comes up behind her, looking worried.
“Blood stocks are critically low,” he whispers in her ear.
The nurse rolls her eyes, looking Pete up and down, and then sighs, “I want you to have a glass of water and something to eat.” She points to a folding chair in the corridor. “Go sit over there. Don’t you dare faint on me, I’ve got enough patients here without adding another unnecessary one.”
Pete goes and sits. A few moments later, she brings him a flimsy paper cone of water and a packet of crackers. “I’ll come back and get you sorted. Eat that.”
Pete gulps down the water and rams the dry, salty crackers into his mouth, almost choking on them. They taste faintly of iron; he only realises afterwards that his hands are covered in blood. The salt crystals from the crackers stick to them.
The nurse comes back with a venesection kit and gets him hooked up to donate. She wordlessly wipes his bloodied forearm with an antiseptic swab. Now he’s calmed a bit, he recognises her as Rose, the nurse in charge of the triage area of the major family hospital.
“If you feel faint,” she says. “Have the decency to do it where I can’t see you. Or let us know before you do.”
Numb, Pete just watches his blood flow down the tube into the bag.
“Can it go to him?” Pete asks, his voice shaking.
The nurse just stares at him. “It’ll go to whoever needs it first. I can’t decide where the blood goes.” She goes to a trolley behind her and grabs a hospital gown, throwing it over Pete’s shoulders.
It’s only then that Pete realises that he’s shaking. He leans his head back against the wall and allows the sound of alarms and rushing feet to overwhelm him. He pulls the hospital gown around himself, as if the flimsy tie is holding him together.
Pete thinks of the safehouse, of lying shoulder to shoulder with Vegas, listening to his breathing, feeling the warmth of his skin against his. The room reeked of old, coppery blood and the heavy, animal musk of their bodies. Vegas drew lazy circles around the healing wounds he made on his chest. The edge of one of them had reopened, leaking a thin trail of blood down over his nipple.
“There’s a trope in literature, you know?” Vegas said, his voice still thick from sex. “Of blood brotherhood, two people sharing their blood as a way of sealing their bond to each other.”
Pete just hummed; it went over his head. He was floating in a haze, the handcuff the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
Vegas wiped his finger across the blood from his open wound and continued: “It’s quite romantic, I think. That bond, it’s intimate.” He inspected the red streak on his finger, and for a second, Pete thought Vegas was going to put it in his mouth and lick it clean.
He didn’t. Instead, he wiped it on his forearm, leaving a red smear behind.
Pete didn’t know why that made him want to roll over, hide his face and burst into tears. Of course, he couldn’t - because of the chain and the handcuff.
He watches the bag fill up with his blood, not taking his eyes off it. He’s a good witness. He’s used to being in the shadows, not being noticed. He’s used to giving what is asked of him. That’s what he’s good at. If he is drained dry, he will have fulfilled his purpose.
He’s shaking even more when the nurse comes and removes the needle,
“What are you doing?” Pete says as she picks up the fresh bag of blood and inspects it. “I can give more.”
She looks at him and scowls. “Do you want to fucking collapse?”
Pete just looks at her and thinks actually I do. If Vegas needs it, just take it all. Just hook me up to him. I’ll give him all I can give.
She thrusts another paper cone of water into his hand, and Pete gulps it down.
“You’ll tell me -” he starts. Snot runs from his nose. Scared ten-year-old Pete, cheek bruised from a muay thai match gone wrong, threatens to force himself free of his adult shell. “When he’s out of the operating theatre, or if anything happens?”
Rose’s stern face relaxes, and she passes him a piece of her gauze to wipe his nose. She reminds him of his grandmother when she was younger, a woman forged into steel by hardship, but becoming malleable like melted sugar when having to deal with broken boys.
“We’ll tell you,” she says. “Just wait here.”
So, Pete waits.
The hospital grows quieter. The walking wounded all get seen too. The corridor empties, apart from the doctors and nurses. Someone comes in with a mop and starts cleaning the floor, smearing the leftover red around until it’s just a memory. Pete lifts his feet so she can clean underneath him. After, he tries to avoid the blood crusting on his arms from flaking onto the clean tile, like old paint, like rust.
Pete tries to pray, and fails. He tries to sleep and fails. One of the nurses, bags under his eyes, comes to him with a towel and a bar of antibacterial soap. He points him in the vague direction of a shower. Pete just sits with it on his knee. Time goes hazy; there’s no natural light in this part of the hospital, it could be any time of the day. Pete thinks it must have been a good few hours; how many, though, he can’t be sure.
He must doze at some point, as he’s awoken by a hand on his shoulder. He jolts awake, hand scrabbing for where his gun should be and isn’t. It must still be on the floor by the pool. Pete blinks, forcing himself to play-act as a human again, and looks up to see Rose, a cup of coffee in her hand. She looks exhausted; there’s blood splashed on her uniform; from the angle of the spray, it’s unmistakably arterial.
“Khun Kornwit is out of surgery,” she says.
Pete jumps up, standing to attention, rubbing his eyes.
“Where is he?” Pete gasps out, his voice strained and rough.
“ICU,” Rose replies, voice clipped and professional.
Pete stands up to go, tying the hospital gown around his waist.
“Hey, wait. You can’t go like that,” she says, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t allow cast members from low-budget slasher movies onto the unit.”
Pete looks down at himself, his arms caked in dried blood, the only clean spot being the gauze from his blood donation. His black trousers are also covered, tacky at the knees.
“Come with me,” she says. She’s got his grandmother’s voice on again, so Pete listens. He follows her through one of the staff exits, into a small staff room. A few nurses are asleep on the floor in the corner, curled up under their hoodies. Another sits at the table, playing a game on her phone, slurping a pot of instant noodles - the calm after the storm. Rose looks Pete up and down and then grabs some scrubs from a rack on the side, holding the top up against Pete to assess the size. She manoeuvres Pete into a bathroom area with separate shower cubicles. “Go in the shower, and get cleaned up, then I will take you up,” she says, thrusting a towel into his hand and giving him a plastic bag for his ruined clothes.
Pete strips inside the shower cubicle, turns the shower to cold, and begins scrubbing himself with the harsh medical-grade soap from the wall dispenser. He doesn’t deserve hot water today. He shivers under the spray and watches as Vegas’s blood turns to rust and flows down the drain. The fear that, if Vegas dies, this will be all he has left of him, grips Pete’s chest. Because it seems the right thing to do, Pete places his foot over the drain and allows the red-pink water to bubble up around it. Only once the water starts to encroach on his other foot, threatening to spill out of the cubicle, does he lift it.
He dries himself off, realises from the ache in his bladder that he can't remember the last time he pissed. He pulls the scrub top on, inspects the underwear he has removed to find them saturated with dried blood, so pulls on the trousers without. He heads through to the adjoining toilet. Pete pisses, doesn’t meet his gaze in the mirror, then heads out to the staff room again.
Rose waits for him, and Pete follows her upstairs. He has only been up here once before, when Rome got shot. Pete swallows back the memory, tries to forget that Rome didn’t make it. The ICU is much quieter than the triage area downstairs, a long line of closed private cubicles. The light is sterile, and it smells of industrial cleaner. The corridor seems to go on forever, bending like it is in the house of mirrors which came to the travelling fair in his home village.
“Khun Kornwit is in there,” Rose says, stopping outside one of the cubicles. “Mek is his nurse. Khun Kornwit is sedated and ventilated, as you probably expected. Mek can give you an update.”
Pete pushes the door open into the room. Mek, the nurse, looks up from where he is sitting in the corner, in front of a computer on wheels. His eyebrows furrow at Pete’s scrubs. Rose whispers something behind him, and Mek’s face relaxes. Pete looks from him to Vegas in the bed, surrounded by machines. He’s covered with a grey blanket, his head placed on a pillow. A tube comes from his mouth, fastened to the corner of his lip with tape, attaching to the ventilator sitting in the corner. Another thick tube comes out of his nose and is tucked behind his ear, draining a dark-brown liquid into a small bag. From the bump in the blanket, one of his arms is strapped across his chest. His chest rises rhythmically, mechanically. Multiple drivers, pumps and wires surround him. A bag of blood-tinged urine hangs from the side of the bed, and two chest drain canisters sit on the floor, draining more blood. A bag of blood hangs from the pole attached to the bed, dripping slowly into him. Pete peers at it, trying to see if it has his donation number on. He can’t quite see. The observation machine beeps, Vegas’s heart rate flickers on the screen above the bed. Pete would like to say he looks like he’s just sleeping, but he doesn’t; he looks like he’s dead, or has been abducted by aliens.
“I’m Pete,” Pete says to the nurse, then shakes his head, forcing a broad, disarming smile. “I’m Vegas’s...” he trails off.
Mek just nods, pushes himself up from his wheeled chair, and drags a chair over from the side of the room to next to Vegas’s bed. “The surgery was successful,” Mek says, and Pete turns back to him. The blue light from the computer screen highlights the dark circles under his eyes. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet, though. His injuries are severe. They’ve had to resect part of his stomach; his right lung was heavily damaged. They’ve had to remove his spleen, his clavicle and his shoulder was broken from the gunshot.” Pete sways on the spot, trying to take it all in. Mek points at the chair, “Sit with him.”
Pete sits. Vegas’s chest rises and falls, air hissing in and out; the machines beep and hum. The gravity is different, heavier somewhat, the air thinner. Maybe he died by that pool. Maybe he was shot, too, and he’s woken up in one of those Light Novels Pol reads, and Pete pretends not to enjoy, where businessmen get run over by vans and wake up in a video game world. Maybe he’s on a prank show, and somebody is going to jump out with a camera at any moment.
The heart monitor beeps. Vegas’s right leg twitches. Mek adjusts one of the infusions. The hard plastic chair digs into Pete’s hips.
No, this is real. Vegas is injured and unconscious. He’s no longer a bodyguard of the family he has worked for since he was sixteen. He’s unemployed and effectively homeless. Gun is dead. Pete swallows. He doesn’t know who else is dead….
Over the blanket, Pete places his hand on top of Vegas’s. He no longer feels cold, warmed by a heated blanket. His chest rises and falls. The ventilator whooshes. Pete looks down at his hand and notices he has missed a half-moon of dried blood under his ring fingernail when showering.
“I’m here,” Pete says, pulling in on himself with self-consciousness. “I’m here, Vegas. I’m not running this time.”
Vegas, of course, doesn’t respond.
Pete can’t feel his ring under the blanket; they must have removed it.
“That means you can’t run either.” Emotion rises in Pete’s throat like bile. He swallows it down. “You can’t leave me. I’m still hungry, Vegas.” Pete slips his hand inside the blanket, feeling Vegas’s warm skin under his fingers. His hand feels swollen and puffy. There’s some kind of line in the artery in his wrist, covered with a dressing. “I’ll be here, so you have to keep your side of the promise. Vegas...” Pete sniffs, not wanting to break down in front of Mek. “I’m still hungry.”
“I can try and find you some food.”
Pete whips his head around. His face pulls into a disarming smile. “No, I’m - I’m not -.”
Mek just looks at him and begins adjusting one of the infusions again.
Even so, somebody comes in around twenty minutes later with a cup of coffee and a packaged bread roll. Mek places it on the table next to Pete.
“Try and have something,” he says. “Depriving yourself isn’t going to make him heal any quicker. Don’t be a martyr.”
Pete sips a few small mouthfuls of the coffee once it gets cold. He doesn’t touch the bread.
He’ll happily be a martyr. He’ll prove his devotion to Vegas through his suffering. He thinks of Ken… poor, tragic Ken. His dad was a Catholic, although Ken wasn’t. He told Pete stories about the saints; the running theme throughout was showing love and devotion through pain. Ken tried to prove his loyalty to the minor family, but ended up with his head in a box…. That happened to one of the saints that Ken told him about, somebody called James or John or something, he ended up with his head on a plate. It was ironic, really.
Pete bites his lip, eyes fluttering closed as the pain blooms. He wishes he could be eviscerated, torn to shreds, used as a blood sacrifice to heal Vegas.
He’ll happily be a martyr. It’s what he’s trained his whole life for.
***
The next few days pass in a blur. Pete keeps track of the hours by the routine that forms around Vegas. Every two hours, they turn him, placing different pillows under his legs and hips to relieve the pressure. They suction fluids from his mouth, empty the still bloody bag of urine, peer at the chest drain canisters, and drain the brown stuff coming from the tube in his nose. He gets hooked up to IV antibiotics every six hours; the nurses’ shifts change every twelve hours. They replenish the multiple syringe drivers and IV infusions throughout the day. They change his weeping surgical dressings every twenty-four hours.
Pete doesn’t sleep. They bring him a recliner, and he reclines it back at night to keep up appearances. He barely eats, only forcing down water when his head begins to pound too much. He only leaves the room to piss, but he’s not drinking enough to need to do that with any frequency. The nurses look at him like he’s a ghost. He knows they are talking about him, whispering in the corridors. But then, hypoglycaemia and exhaustion might be making him shaky and paranoid.
He stares at Vegas’s prone form. His eyes keep watering as if he’s crying. Sometimes his face screws up as if he’s in pain. Pete wracks his brain, trying to think what Vegas might want. He tries to talk to him like the nurse says... but finds it hard. Pete thinks of the safehouse. He thinks of the smell of food coming from the kitchen, the dim lighting, the mattress under his back. He holds his thumb and forefinger around his own wrist, creating a facsimile of the handcuff.
Then it hits him. Macau. Vegas’s brother is nowhere to be seen.
He tries to ask the nurses whether they can contact him, but is met with only silence. Pete doesn't have a phone. He doesn’t even have underwear. He stares at Vegas, asleep and unmoving, and his heart aches at not being able to provide the person Vegas probably wants to be here the most.
After eight nursing shift changes have passed, Arm comes to Vegas’s hospital room. He knocks on the door and steps inside, dressed in his bodyguard suit. One of his glasses' legs is fixed together with white medical tape, the lens remains cracked, and his cheek is slightly discoloured and swollen. He looks over at Vegas, at Pete, and then to the floor, not knowing where to put himself.
“I heard you quit,” Arm says. He looks Pete up and down, taking in the scrubs. “Have you decided to take up nursing?”
Pete just laughs, low, bitter, and slightly maniacal.
“I’m a bit low on bodyguards,” Arm continues. “If you want to reconsider.”
Pete just shakes his head.
“How low?” he asks. His stomach plummets to the floor.
“Low,” Arm replies. “Chan is dead… So, I’ve - I’m doing what he used to.”
Pete’s stomach drops. Chan. He can’t quite comprehend it - that a solid base of the last fourteen years of his life is now gone. Chan showed him what a father could be… Now he’s -
“Pol has a broken leg,” Arm continues, “Tankhun is busy bedazzling his cast, so he’s out of action. Due to the cast, not the bedazzling. Somebody shot Bas by the pool. Too many more to count, really. Most of the minor family guards are dead. It was...” Arm’s eyes go distant, then focus again. “I just don’t want you to make the wrong choice, Pete. I care about you.” His eyes flick to Vegas, like he’s watching a sleeping lion, waiting for him to attack. “Is this what you really want? When you came back... You were... We’ve all seen what he’s capable of.”
“Arm,” Pete starts. “Don’t -”
“I know he did that to you. I know he hurt you. It was obvious, Pete. Did he threaten you? Are you being forced?”
Pete crosses his arms, bile rising to his throat.
“I can make a choice, Arm. I have free will. I’m not so easily swayed.”
Arm looks down. “Okay, okay.” He doesn’t push it, only shuffles closer to Pete. “Can I get you anything? You look like shit. Do you want a razor, a toothbrush?” Arm sniffs and wrinkles his nose. “Some deodorant?”
Pete shakes his head; Arm just sighs.
“I’ll go to your room, bring you some things.”
Vegas’s monitor beeps, the nurse moves through the room, and adjusts some settings on the ventilator. A silence falls between Pete and Arm.
“Can you find out where Macau is?” Pete says, eventually. “Can you do that for me? They are so close, Macau should be here.”
Arm scuffs his toe across the linoleum. “I can see what I can do. I’ve not... I’ve not heard anything. But, things have been pretty chaotic in the wake of the coup.”
Pete looks over to watch Vegas’s chest rising and falling. He’s so pale that the blue veins at his temples are visible.
“Please,” he says. “It’s what he would want.”
***
Three more nurse shift changes pass. Pete doesn’t clean his teeth. He doesn’t put on the deodorant that Arm brings him. He doesn’t open the duffel bag that Arm places in the corner. He eats half a bread roll. He reclines the chair when the night shift comes in. He pisses, he watches, he waits.
Then, during the fourth shift change, the doors fly open. They hit the wall with a crash as a soaked, multi-coloured bundle rushes into the room. Pete tries to get to the visitor before he throws himself across Vegas’s chest, but he just misses. The alarms beep and flash, bathing the room in red.
“Hia,” a familiar voice sobs. The high-pitched wail unmistakably belongs to the youngest of the Theerapanyakun cousins. “What happened to you?”
Pete manages to grab one of Macau’s arms, the nurse grabs the other one, and with difficulty, they extract him from Vegas’s chest. Macau fights them, reaching out for Vegas, still crying, as Pete drags him away so the nurse can make sure the delicate balance of Vegas’s tubes and wires haven’t been disturbed.
“Macau,” Pete soothes, as the boy tries to wiggle out of his grasp. He writhes in Pete’s arms, breaths getting closer to hyperventilation. He sinks to his knees, dragging Pete down to the floor with him. Macau presses his forehead to the linoleum, taking in huge gasping drags of air. “Macau?” Pete says again, holding his shoulder.
He’s alright at emotional support. Being in Tankhun's detail means he’s adept at calming somebody in intense emotional distress. He’s calmed Khun through enough panic attacks, enough paranoid dissociative episodes, enough periods of depressive catatonia. But most people aren’t comforted in the same way that Tankhun is. Offering to watch a favourite drama, or look through fashion magazines as a distraction won’t work for the distraught sixteen year old, kneeling on the floor of the hospital room. Tankhun’s trauma stems from the past, so it’s easier to try and reorient him, assure him he’s safe, that nothing can harm the princess in the safety of the tower.
Macau’s whole world is shattering around him.
So, Pete says all he knows to say. He puts his hand on Macau’s back, between the wings of his shoulder blades, and asks:
“Are you hungry?”
It at least snaps Macau out of it. He lifts his head from the ground and stares at Pete like he’s from outer space. It’s only now that Pete sees the yellowing bruise under Macau’s eye, and the graze on his lip.
“What the fuck?” Macau snaps through tears, his cheeks reddening, spit flying from his mouth. “Why the fuck would you even ask that, you absolute freak? Hungry? What the fuck are you doing here anyway? Did my uncle send you to spy on us? What happened to my brother? Where is my dad?”
Pete’s heart freezes in his chest. Vegas’s alarms start wailing again, setting Pete’s teeth on edge.
“You need to go outside if you are going to shout like that,” the nurse says, voice sharp, adjusting the ventilator tubing and jabbing at the settings on the screen.
“No,” Macau snaps. He’s snotted down his face, his eyes are wild and wet. “No, I’m not going anywhere. Not until somebody tells me what is going on.”
“Come on,” Pete says, placing a hand on Macau’s shoulder. “Shall we step outside for a moment?”
Macau throws him off. “Get off me! Get the fuck away!” He stands, wipes his eyes, looks at Vegas again, clasps his hand over his mouth as if he’s going to vomit and then flees the room. The door slams behind him.
Pete looks from the nurse, then to Vegas’s prone form, then to the closed door.
“Sorry,” he mouths and follows Macau. Pete’s eyes water as they adjust to the brighter light in the corridor. He can’t see Macau. Smashing echoes from around the curved corridor, followed by a raised voice. Pete speeds up, turns the corner to see Macau kicking the absolute shit out of a clinical waste bin.
“Why are you following me?” Macau shouts, trying to sound menacing. He reminds Pete of a wolf puppy trying to howl, a high squeak, more cute than aggressive. His voice cracks, and he starts to sob again. “Why are you even here?”
“Macau -” Pete starts, “Can we talk, please?”
Macau kicks the bin again, denting the metal. He’s turned away from Pete, shoulders tight with tension, hands balled into fists.
“What is there to talk about? Everything is fucked. I’m…” he takes in a great heaving sob of air and sways on the spot. “I’m feeling a bit dizzy. I’m feeling really dizzy, actually.” He reaches out and steadies himself on the wall.
“Sit down,” Pete says. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Macau collapses on him. “I’ll get you some water.”
Macau slides down the wall into a sitting position, like a puppet with its strings cut. Pete goes to the water dispenser by the unit entrance and fills one of the paper cups. When he comes back around the corner, Macau has his head between his knees, taking in big gulping breaths. Pete passes him the water and joins him on the floor.
“Thanks,” Macau sniffs, taking small sips. A nurse passes them, pushing a portable X-ray machine. She looks at them, then continues walking.
“Take a moment,” Pete says.
Macau just rolls his eyes.
“What do you know?” Pete asks, once Macau’s breathing has settled a little.
Macau just shakes his head, sniffing again. “Nothing,” he starts. “Nobody tells me anything. Hia, he wants to protect me but -”
“Vegas was shot,” Pete starts.
“I can fucking see that,” Macau snaps. “He didn’t just end up half-dead for no reason, did he?”
Pete looks down at his shoes. The scrubs he is wearing have ridden up around his ankles, showing the light tan of his leg underneath.
“He had surgery,” Pete continues, just focusing on the facts. “He’s got pretty extensive internal injuries... They can’t wake him up yet; he’s too unstable at the moment.”
Macau sniffs again. His face twists; he fiddles with the cuff of his sweatshirt.
“Okay, but what happened? Hia just said I had to go to one of our safehouses. I went in the middle of the night... I just - I had no idea what was going on. He treats me like a baby sometimes. I’m sixteen, I’m basically an adult, Hia worked loads with Dad when he was my age. I’m just expected to go to school, shut up, and let the grown-ups get on with it. I’m never told anything. Nobody ever includes me. I’m sick of -”
“Macau,” Pete interrupts. “What happened to your face?”
Macau presses his thumb to the bruise under his eye. “Some of Uncle’s guys came to get me, I don’t mean get as in kill, but I may have thought they were going to do that. I tried to fight them. They had to drag me back kicking and screaming. Days had passed; I couldn’t contact anybody, so I knew something was wrong.”
“I’m sorry, Macau,” Pete says. “That must have been scary.” He has his comforting Tankhun voice on, and it makes him cringe, draw in on himself.
“Don’t patronise me,” Macau snaps again. “Don’t treat me like a fucking baby, like my crazy-ass cousin. I’m not crazy.”
“I’m sorry,” Pete says again.
A silence falls between them, heavy as an oncoming storm. The faint sound of what Pete now knows as a ventilator alarm drifts out from one of the rooms.
“My dad is dead, isn’t he?” Macau asks, voice small and wavering. “He did something, and it went wrong.”
Pete just nods. “He is.”
Macau curls in on himself. “Okay,” he replies, voice steady. “That’s okay. That’s okay.”
Pete looks over at him, at the drawn expression on his face, the blankness, but also how his shoulders relax slightly. He sees himself at sixteen, the week after his father’s funeral. Back home, he had stood and held his grandmother’s hand as they watched the smoke from the temple crematorium rise to the sky. Inside, he stood too close to the incense to make his eyes water, not to upset his grandmother with his apathy. She always had a soft spot for his father, choosing to ignore the monster behind the mask. Not able to see him as anything other than her baby boy, her only son. Two days after the funeral, Pete got on a train to the capital to offer his services in exchange for his grandmother’s protection from the gang that had killed his father over an unpaid debt. He never mourned his father. Only now does he sometimes mourn the child beaten out of him at home and against the ropes. Macau looks the same, not breaking down, just numb, maybe secretly relieved.
“Are you alright?” Pete asks.
“I will be,” Macau says. “I want to see my brother.”
“We can go back to the room,”
“Why are you even here?” Macau asks.
Pete swallows; he doesn’t have a straight answer to that question. He doesn’t even know himself. How can he say that, when Vegas fucked him in the safehouse, he carved out his heart, and now it belongs to him, that he’s just a loyal lap dog, following his owner? He’s like the dog at the station in Shibuya, the dog at the graveyard in Edinburgh, waiting and waiting for his master to return.
“Because he needed somebody,” is how Pete manages to sum it up. But really, he needs Vegas as much as Vegas needs him, maybe even more so.
Macau pushes himself up to standing. “I’m here now. So you can go and do whatever you want. Did Uncle send you?”
“I can’t... I mean. I quit, I’m not a bodyguard anymore. Also, I don’t want to. Vegas he -”
Macau rolls his eyes.
“I’m going back to see him.”
Macau pushes himself to his feet, and Pete follows him back to the room. While they have been out, the nurses have adjusted Vegas’s blanket and moved the pillows under him. Macau stops in the entranceway of the room, frozen in place, now that the initial shock has worn off.
“You can go and hold his hand,” Pete says. “They say he can still hear you, even if he is asleep.”
Macau walks gingerly across the room like a newborn foal. He stops next to the bed and hovers his hand above Vegas’s.
“Hia,” Macau says. “I’m here. I’ll look after you like you look after me. You’ll get better, I know you will.” Macau starts sobbing again. “Please, hia I -“ Macau turns and looks at Pete, eyes like ice. “You can go now. I’m his brother, you’re just... staff.”
Pete keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground, swallowing the muscle memory to follow orders from the family.
“I’m not going anywhere. We, we’re close. We -”
Macau’s eyes widen. “Did what? What the fuck?” His lip curls, showing his teeth. “Whatever!”
He flops down in what has become Pete’s recliner chair and pulls his knees up to his chest.
“I can try to find somewhere more comfortable for you to stay?” Pete suggests. “So you can get some sleep?”
“And where the fuck am I going to go? I’m staying here. You fucking go somewhere else.”
Pete sits down in the hard plastic chair and folds his arms, staking his claim.
“Well, I’m staying too. Where else am I going to go?”
Neither of them has the energy to argue, so they fall into an uneasy truce. Both of them sit in silence, staring at Vegas in the bed, in a stalemate.
Macau only leaves the room when, a few hours later, he says he’s going to the bathroom. He’s been gone a while, and Pete almost goes and looks for him, until he stumbles back in, looking pale and sweaty.
“You alright?” Pete asks.
Macau nods. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
Macau sighs and presses the heel of his hand to his left eye. “I just have a migraine. I’m okay. I get them a lot. I just don’t have my medicine with me. I left it at the safehouse.”
He goes and sits back on the recliner, curls up on his side, and holds the thin pillow over his head to block out the light.
“What is it you take? I can maybe speak to one of the doctors?”
Macau makes a sad little noise under the pillow. “No, I don’t want it. Just let me sleep. Just let me be.”
Pete doesn’t push it. He wishes he had a phone so he could text Arm and have him look for the kid’s medication. Macau makes little whimpering noises as he tries to sleep, shifting back and forth on the recliner. Eventually, Macau’s little sob breaths, and the whoosh of Vegas’s ventilator, become too much for Pete. He slips out of the room, not entirely sure what his aim is.
One of the doctors is in the corridor, looking at a clipboard. He wrinkles his nose as Pete wobbles towards him, slightly dizzy from lack of food and sleep.
“Can I ask something?” Pete asks.
The doctor nods.
“Macau is not well. He has a migraine. He doesn’t have his medication. Can you look, see what he’s prescribed?”
The doctor doesn’t look at Pete and continues scanning the clipboard, but says, “I’ll ring the general practice downstairs and try and find out, and get somebody to bring some tablets up.”
Pete thanks him and turns to head back to Vegas’s room.
“Pete,” the doctor says. “Please try to look after yourself. I don’t need another patient.”
“I am,” Pete huffs and heads back, not staying long enough to hear the man’s response.
Somebody knocks on the door of Vegas’s room a couple of hours later, and the nurse answers it. Macau has finally slipped into an uneasy sleep and snores in the recliner, jaw tense, molars grinding. He shifts at the sound. Pete sits next to Vegas, his hand resting over his, his head dropping down towards the bed. The nurse comes and puts the bag of medication down on the table.
“Thanks,” Pete says. Respecting Macau’s privacy, he doesn’t open the bag. As Pete stands, the world swims, darkening at the edges. He looks at Vegas lying in the bed, one of his eyelids has flickered slightly open, revealing the bloodshot white of his eye. His chest rises and falls in that unnerving mechanical fashion.
Pete looks over to Macau. Previously, Pete never thought they looked alike, but now he sees the resemblance in the furrow of their brows and the downward curve of their lips.
“I’ll look after him,” Pete whispers, mostly to himself. “Vegas, I promise I’ll look after him.”
With that, Pete slips out of the room. He’s not sure of his plan as he heads into the main corridor. His stomach aches, his legs hurt from sitting, and a headache claws at the edges of his consciousness. In the sterility of the corridor, he can smell his musky, unwashed skin. He runs his fingers through his fringe, hanging limp and greasy over his eyes. On the way here, Pete vaguely remembers seeing the glow of a vending machine outside the unit. As he exits the doors, he realises this is the first time he’s stepped outside the ICU in nearly a week.
The main foyer of the upper level of the hospital wing is overwhelming after being in the same room for so long. Multiple doors lead off to the ward and private rooms beyond, another to an area designated for clinics. Pete stands in front of the vending machine. Everybody here is either staff or family, so there are a few items - still water and an unbranded electrolyte drink - that don’t have a charge. Pete has no money on him; he assumes his wallet is in the duffel that Arm brought, so he presses the button for a bottle of water for himself, and then one of the electrolyte drinks for Macau.
He heads back to the room with the drinks. Macau stirs as Pete enters. He groans as he forces his eyes open. Vegas, as expected, hasn’t moved. The ventilator whooshes, his chest rises and falls.
“What time is it?” Macau says, bleary, pressing the heel of his hand against his left eye.
“Dunno,” Pete replies. He holds out the drink to Macau. “Are you still in pain?”
Macau doesn’t respond and takes the bottle. “This is the shit one,” he huffs, but opens the cap anyway and takes a drink. He looks over to the bag on the table. “What’s that?” he asks.
“Your medication,” Pete replies. “I got one of the doctors to sort it.”
“I said, I didn’t -” Macau’s brows furrow. “Have you been snooping? Go on, you can laugh at me?”
“What?” Pete goes to stand next to him. “No, Macau. I haven’t opened it. It’s yours.”
Macau snatches the bag, rips open the top and looks inside. His expression relaxes. He takes one of the bottles out and puts two pills into his hand, tossing them back with the drink.
“Thanks,” Macau says, reluctantly.
“I wouldn’t laugh at you,” Pete says. “It’s just medication.” When he still worked for Tankhun, he used to sort all his tablets, multiple mood stabilisers, painkillers, things to make him sleep, things to wake him up. He knows people take medication; there’s no shame in it.
Macau rolls over on the recliner so he’s facing away from Pete; the plastic under him squeaks. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispers. “I’m tired. I still don’t feel well.”
Pete lets him be.
***
Over the next six nurse shift changes, they don’t talk much. They both hold their own silent vigil like two distant moons, flung together by their shared planet tumbling out of orbit. Pete watches as Vegas’s chest rises and falls. The ventilator whooshes. When Pete closes his eyes, it almost sounds like the ocean back home, but twisted into something monstrous, like he’s drowning in it. The alarms beep. Every conversation is laden with medical jargon. The room is too cold, the air conditioning dries out his nose. Macau sits, stares and pretends he isn't crying.
After the next shift change, Vegas’s breathing becomes rattly, and he starts shivering from head to toe, almost vibrating out of the bed. The observation monitor above the bed alarms more often than it doesn’t, showing his heart rate at 160. Pete doesn’t know much about why that is bad, but knows it is. Vegas sweats profusely, his skin an unnatural grey colour. A red crash cart appears in the corner of the room. Macau nervously paces, chewing at his fingernails, tapping his feet on the floor. All day, the room is full of the medical team, taking bloods, increasing Vegas’s oxygen and changing his antibiotics. The main doctor tells them he suspects he has pneumonia complicated by sepsis, very common in intubated patients, apparently.
Both of them stay awake for two nurse shift changes, watching for any changes. Pete thinks of the safehouse, thinks of the delirium, the ache in the wounds on his chest, the calm before he slipped into unconsciousness. He’s pleased that Vegas is asleep. He wasn’t afraid, but he is concerned that Vegas would be. Macau watches him like a hawk, jumping at every noise, shaking as much as Vegas.
At the end of the third shift, Vegas’s fever breaks, and he stops shivering. Both Pete and Macau exhale fully for the first time in days. Macau curls up in the recliner, closes his eyes, but doesn’t sleep.
***
“You stink,” Macau says on the next shift change. He has dark bags under his eyes. “You are making me feel sick. That nurse also thought you stank. I could see it in her face; she kept sniffing her inhaler.”
Pete is still wearing the same scrubs; he hasn’t opened the bag Arm brought him, and his teeth are fuzzy. Macau is also in the same clothes he arrived in. Pete is half-minded to tell him that he, too, stinks. Can’t they both just stink together? He looks to Vegas, prone in the bed, and then to Macau, looking small and sullen in the recliner. If Vegas was awake, he would probably scold him for neglecting his little brother, or at the very least, offending him with his stench. Pete clenches his fist, opens the bag from Arm to throw a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt over to Macau.
He grabs his wash bag and a change of clothes. Pete looks to Vegas lying prone in the bed. He’s so vulnerable. Pete can protect Vegas, if not from the battle happening inside his own body, but from any external threats. If anybody storms into the room and tries to harm him, Pete will rip their throat out with his teeth, strangle them with his bare hands, and fight like a cornered beast. He looks over to Macau and taps his foot on the ground. He trusts if anything happens while he’s in the shower, Macau will scream loud enough to alert him, the boy may seem harmless, but Pete knows he’s got claws underneath. He looks at Vegas again, how his chest rises and falls. Pete exhales out a long breath, it’s okay, he can take a shower. He’ll only be five minutes, after all.
“Come and get me if anything changes,” he says, and finally stalks off to the visitors' shower.
Under the cold water, Pete allows himself to cry, finally letting all the tension from the last few weeks out. His tears are hot on his face under the cold water. He cries until he’s hoarse and tastes copper in his mouth. He scrubs himself with the medical-grade soap until his skin feels raw. Even though it isn’t, he feels like Vegas’s blood is still clinging to him like a ghostly film. He brushes his finger over his tattoo on his hip, which looks dull from lack of moisturiser. Pete shivers, imagining it is Vegas’s finger stroking over his skin.
When he pulls the sweatpants on afterwards, he has to pull the cord as tight as it will go so they stay up. He brushes his teeth, spits blood-tinged toothpaste into his sink, his gums protesting against being ignored for the last however long. He brushes his wet hair back with his fingers. His fringe is starting to encroach on his eyes. For the first time in a week, he looks at himself in the mirror above the sink. Dark circles frame under his eyes, his skin is paler and more sallow, and his lips are dry and cracked.
“What the fuck are you doing, Pete?” he asks the ghost in the mirror wearing his face.
He turns on his heels and leaves the bathroom.
Feeling around ten percent more human, he goes back to Vegas’s room. Macau lies curled up on his side in the recliner, tears streaking down his face. The nurse has her back to them, busy replenishing Vegas’s infusions in the stack of pumps.
“You alright?” Pete asks.
Macau nods, but from his posture alone, Pete can tell that he isn’t.
“Do you want to shower?”
“Not really. But I will. I don’t want to stink like you, it’s embarrassing,” Macau huffs, grabs the clothes, and leaves the room.
His bag of medications has split open on the table. Pete begins to tidy up, moving some of the used tissues and protein bar wrappers. He glances at the pill bottles: Naproxen, Amitriptyline, Escitalopram, Diazepam. Pete swallows. He looks at the closed door Macau left through and sighs, blowing out a deep breath. He sits back down next to Vegas’s bed.
“I’ll try to look after him,” Pete says. “Like how you used to. I’m not you, though. I can’t - I struggle to comfort him.”
Vegas, of course, doesn’t respond. The ventilator whooshes, his chest rises and falls. Pete reaches over and squeezes Vegas’s limp hand, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles.
Macau returns around twenty minutes later, hair wet and fluffy, looking suspiciously like a drowned kitten. Pete’s clothes swamp him, making him look younger. He stalks back to the recliner, looks at Pete, the organised table, then swipes his medication bottles back into the paper bag. He flops down and begins to scroll on his phone, playing TikTok out loud. Pete grinds his teeth at hearing the same thirty seconds of a song over and over again. He allows his brain to switch over, his sensory torture training activating.
***
Mostly out of necessity, Pete tries to eat more. In the morning, he attempts to at least force down one of the long-life cartons of protein shake Arm had put in his bag. He has no appetite, but when he does manage to sleep, he dreams of instant noodles, the smell of pad kra pao, and chicken jok. Then he wakes, his stomach growls, but the thought of eating makes him feel like throwing up. Pete insists that the kitchen sends a meal tray up for Macau three times a day. Macau picks at it, maybe having a small amount of soup, a bite of plain rice, some pureed fruit, then twisting his face and shoving the tray table away from him.
“Are you not hungry?” Pete asks him.
Macau looks at the plate below him and moves some light curry around with his spoon. His bottom lip quivers.
“I don’t like it,” Macau sniffs. “But I am hungry.”
The alarm goes off. They’ve been trying to decrease Vegas’s sedation over the last few days, so he’s moving more. Both of them pause, watching as Vegas clenches his hand into a fist, then relaxes it. His face furrows in a grimace of pain. The nurse adjusts one of the drivers, and Vegas becomes slack again.
“What do you want?” Pete asks. “I can see if we can get something brought up?”
Macau sniffs again. He pouts, looking younger than his years.
“I just want McDonald's,” he whispers. “That’s stupid of me.” He pushes the tray table away with force. Pete places his hand on it before it crashes into Vegas’s bed; it skids to a halt.
Pete looks from Vegas to Macau.
“I can...” Pete is not sure exactly how he will be able to provide this. “We can...”
“I want to go out,” Macau sniffs. “I’m going crazy in this room. I’m going crazy from the sounds. I’m going crazy from watching him. I just want to go out for half an hour and eat a burger, and feel like... feel like a person again.”
“Okay,” Pete says. The thought of both of them leaving Vegas’s side fills him with dread. If nobody is watching him, somebody could easily come in and slit his throat. The nurse could overdose him, inject him with all his pain medication, and they could come back and just be told Vegas had died peacefully and what a shame it was. Khun Korn could come in, pull out the ventilator plug; Khun Kinn could rip one of the syringes out of the driver, pump Vegas full of propofol, full of fentanyl... No. Both of them not being here is too great a risk. “I can get somebody to take you,” Pete says to Macau. He’s not sure how he can do this, but he can try. Maybe he can bribe a nurse to take Macau out on their break.
Macau takes in a big, heaving breath. “I’m just going fucking crazy!” he shouts. The ventilator whooshes, the machine beeps. “I can’t hear that fucking noise anymore.” The anger breaks on his face, and his chest starts heaving. Macau clutches his ribs, as if trying to keep his emotions inside, then he breaks down into hysterical sobs and flees the room.
Silence fills the room, other than the whooshing of Vegas’s ventilator.
“You should go after him,” Mek, the nurse, says. “He’s struggling. Take the kid out for a burger. We’re all good here. It’ll do you both good to get out of the room.”
Pete just stares at him. He doesn’t fully trust Mek, but he’s been one the the more familiar faces since the start, so that’s at least something. Pete slips his shoes on, picks up Macau’s from the floor, and grabs his wallet.
“We’ll be back soon,” he tells Mek. “You have Macau’s number if anything changes, right?”
Mek nods. “It’ll all be okay. Everything is stable here. Trust me, I’m a professional.”
Pete goes to the head of the bed and leans over Vegas, pushing his hair back. Mek is turned away, focused on the machines. Pete dips down and presses a kiss to Vegas’s forehead. He smells of starved breath and anti-septic body wash, mixed with the sweet-iron of healing flesh.
“I’m taking your brother out,” Pete says. “He’s... I’m trying to look after him.” Pete presses another kiss to Vegas’s forehead, then leaves the room.
Macau has only made it halfway along the corridor. He is curled up, head between his knees, leaning against the wall. He reminds Pete of a hedgehog, the small creature in a cage in the safehouse, all spikes to protect his soft belly underneath.
“Fuck off!” Macau shouts. His voice is muffled against the sweatpants. “Don’t come and gloat.”
“Macau...” Pete tries to hide the annoyance in his voice. Even with the situation, the kid is being a fucking brat.
“I should be able to deal with this,” Macau sobs. “I should be like hia. I’m the man of the house now. I -”
Pete slides down the wall next to Macau. He thinks of Porsche sitting on the edge of the sink after the diamond auction, not meeting his gaze. He thinks of himself sitting in the empty bathtub, smiling at Porsche like everything was alright. Something hard and crystallised inside him softens.
“Come on,” Pete says. “I’ll take you out for McDonald’s.”
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Macau sniffs. “I don’t want to go.”
“Well, we can just get some fresh air then. Here, I brought your shoes.”
He stands, holds a hand out to Macau, and pulls him up. Macau pushes his feet into the shoes that probably cost more than Pete’s yearly wage.
They head out of the ICU and take the lift down to the main entrance. For a moment, Pete worries they won’t be able to get back into the tower once they leave, that they’ll be locked out forever.
To his surprise, Pol sits in the main entrance, apparently working as a door guard now while he’s healing. One of his trouser legs is rolled up, revealing a cast below, onto which tiny rhinestones have been applied. A crutch is propped up next to him. Maintenance workers fill the entranceway, replacing the floor, fixing shattered panes of glass. Pol sits reading a book and doesn’t seem too worried that somebody is going to come in with a machine gun and fill them all full of lead.
Macau just stalks off to the main entrance. Pete follows behind him.
“Oh, hi, Pete,” Pol says, looking up from his novel. He’s probably reading some fucking isekai again.
“I’m taking Macau out for McDonald's,” Pete says, not looking fully in his direction.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pete sees Pol’s eyebrows furrow. “Why?”
“Because I am. Make sure we can get back in afterwards.”
“Aye, Aye, Captain,” Pol jokes. “Do you like my cast?” He wiggles his leg as much as he can.
“It looks like shit,” Pete huffs. “You look like a glam-rock pirate.”
Macau taps his foot on the ground by the door.
“Are we fucking going or what, Pete?” he shouts over.
“Khun said diamond art is very therapeutic,” Pol continues. Pete huffs and starts walking across the foyer, towards the sulking teenager. “Maybe you should try it!” Pol shouts after him.
The heat hits Pete straightaway as they head outside; he’s been so used to the air-conditioned coolness of the ICU that it feels like stepping straight into a furnace. His eyes water at the brightness of the sun, stinging with the air pollution.
“It’s just one street away,” Macau says, heading off at a brisk walk.
“Stay close,” Pete demands, almost running after him. He’s panting when he catches him, weak as a kitten from lack of sustenance and immobility.
The restaurant is quiet when they go in. Pete doesn’t know what time it is, but it mustn’t be the breakfast or lunch rush. It’s mostly students and office workers inside, a few families and tourists. The bright, primary colours fill his eyes, and the smell of grease causes his mouth to water. Behind the counter, the ovens beep, sounding suspiciously like the alarms in Vegas’s room. Macau goes to one of the ordering screens and begins scrolling through, picking his food. Once he is done, he turns to Pete.
“What do you want?”
It’s been years since Pete had McDonald’s; he’d only ever had it on long drives with the family, from a drive-through at a particular motorway service area. He steps up to the screen behind Macau and picks some chicken nuggets with a side of curly fries and an iced coffee. He pays at the booth, and Macau goes to find a table while he waits in the collection area for their food. Once it arrives, he takes the tray over to where Macau sits.
“We shouldn’t sit so close to the window,” Pete tells Macau. Old training comes into play. He wouldn’t really mind if a bullet came shattering through the window, if Vegas wasn’t still asleep and ill upstairs in the tower. The possibility of him waking up without them there fills Pete with dread.
Macau rolls his eyes, but moves with Pete to a covered booth in the corner, where Pete can see the exit. He places the food down on the table. Macau picks it up, ripping the wrapping open. He sniffs his burger and then takes a bite, his eyes rolling back in ecstasy.
“This is what I needed,” he says, mouth half full. “Samurai burger, you can’t go wrong.” He takes a big slurp from his Coke, exhales and burps.
Pete picks at his food, dipping one nugget into some mayonnaise and trying to eat it. It’s bland, a bit tasteless, reformed meat. His stomach growls, protesting at being given something greasy after so long without.
“Thanks, Pete,” Macau says, starting to pick at his fries. “I’m... I’m sorry I shouted at you.”
“It’s okay,” Pete replies. The kid looks down at his food, eyes wet and sad. “Macau?”
Macau looks up, a single tear runs down his face.
“Yes.”
“There’s been a lot going on. Do you? Do you want to talk about anything?”
Macau takes another fry and dips it in BBQ sauce.
“What is talking going to do?” He puts the fry in his mouth.
Pete looks down at his own food. Takes a sip of his iced coffee. “I don’t know, just thought you might want to talk.”
A silence falls between them. Macau takes another bite of his burger. Recently he has been oscillating between a scared younger child and older than his sixteen years, a boy turned into a man overnight but betraying the fragile core underneath.
Pete thinks of his own father, the feeling of his thick fingers colliding with his cheek, a roundhouse kick to the ribs. His father’s beatings always spurred him on in the next match, but he lost anyway. He thinks of how Vegas turned to anger after his cheek was reddened by his father’s hand. Pete saw Gun and his own father, reflected in Vegas’s eyes as he wrapped his hand around Pete’s neck and squeezed. It felt comforting. Pete wishes he were bruised. He wishes he had bruises to press against, so the pain could ground him, show him that he’s real.
That was the sad thing about it, really; he came to associate the beatings with his father showing him love. Somehow, it became twisted in his mind that it was his way of showing care, that he wanted Pete to succeed. Even at a young age, he saw that his father needed an outlet for his frustration. Pete was happy to be that. It didn’t mean he was useless; it meant that his father was weak.
That didn’t mean that his father wasn’t cruel. It didn’t mean it was right. It just meant Pete learned how to take it.
“Your Dad was cruel,” Pete says, eventually. “I know how that feels.”
Macau just rolls his eyes.
“Other people have it worse. Hia has it worse. He’s always tried to protect me.”
“Vegas did that because he cares about you,” Pete says after a while. “He doesn’t want to see you hurt.”
“Maybe,” Macau replies. He takes another sip of Coke. “Or maybe it’s because I'm weak, hia knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“You aren’t weak, Macau.”
Macau folds up the wrappers from his food into neat little squares on his tray.
“I am, Pete,” Macau says. “I know I am.” He looks at Pete's half-finished food. “Are you nearly done? I want to go back. I’m worried about hia.”
Pete nods and takes their rubbish to the bin.
They head back to the hospital room and continue their vigil. Vegas’s ventilator whooshes, the alarm beeps, they sit, they watch, they wait.
***
After five more nursing shift changes, the medical team makes the decision that Vegas has improved enough to consider extubating him. They wean his sedation gradually over the next day, reducing the settings on the ventilator so he is basically breathing on his own. Pete sits and holds one of his hands. Macau has his hand on Vegas’s immobilised shoulder. Vegas’s eyes flutter open occasionally, wide and rolling and scared.
His observations hold. They decide it is time.
“He’s likely to be a bit confused and disoriented at first; he’s still on a lot of pain medication and has been ventilated for a while,” the senior medic says, standing at the head of Vegas’s bed, gowned up and ready.
Vegas’s eyes flick open, his fingers twitch.
Pete and Macau stand at the foot of the bed. Pete clasps one of his hands around Vegas’s thin ankle, rubbing gently over the bone. Macau stands half behind Pete, almost hiding behind his frame.
“Do you want to be here?” Pete asks.
“Yeah,” Macau whispers. “Hia needs me.”
The medical team prepares, tilting Vegas’s head back, removing the tapes. Somebody stands by with a thick-looking nasal device. Another with an oxygen mask attached to an ambu bag.
“We’re going to move him onto CPAP,” the doctor says. “His lung injuries are not healed enough yet that he doesn’t need support, but getting off the ventilator is the first step.”
As the medical team starts, Macau reaches up for Pete’s shoulder, squeezing it, digging his nails in. It doesn’t take long; the tube is removed, Vegas coughs, splutters and gags, then relaxes. Quickly, they switch him to the CPAP. The nurse listens to his chest and shines lights in his eyes. Once they are satisfied, they all take a step back.
It’s nothing like the movies; Vegas doesn’t immediately start talking, really, other than the tube gone from his mouth - he looks the same. He remains still, apart from some twitching in his hands. His face furrows into an expression of pain.
Pete gingerly heads to the side of the bed. Vegas’s eyes are open, scanning the room in an unfocused manner. His hand flexes on the sheet, fingers pulling at the fabric.
“Vegas,” Pete starts. “It’s okay, I’m here.”
Vegas’s eyes flick to him, look straight through him as if he is invisible. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. He coughs, a dry and raspy wheeze.
“Hia,” Macau says, voice thick with emotion. “Hia…”
Vegas’s bottom lip wobbles; a single tear leaks from the corner of his eye. The nasal prongs of the oxygen tubing in his nose push his nostrils outwards, making his nose look wider on his face. The nasogastric tube is pushed up against it.
“P...” is all Vegas manages to say. “Mm-” His face crumples; more tears leak out of his eyes. His jaw tenses.
Pete squeezes his hand, and Vegas looks over, confused.
“You’re in the hospital,” Pete says. “You have been very sick. But you are doing better. Don’t try to talk.”
Vegas’s eyes widen even further, then scrunch up. Trembling, he lifts his free hand and moves it to the dressings on his stomach. More silent tears leak from his eyes.
“P-” is all Vegas can force out.
“I think he’s in pain,” Pete says to the nurse. His heart drops to his stomach. He wants to pull Vegas close to him, hold him against his chest, stroke his hair. He wants to climb inside Vegas’s ribcage, scoop out all his pain from the inside out, suck the hurt from his nerve endings like marrow from the bones in a stew.
She nods and presses one of the buttons on the stack of machines. Vegas makes a small mhmm noise, his face relaxes, and his hand goes slack a couple of moments after.
“I gave him a bolus of pain relief,” the nurse says. “It should keep him more comfortable. He’s being moved to HDU level care now, so somebody won’t be in the room all the time. Please press the call bell if you need anything, or if you think Khun Vegas is uncomfortable. He can’t have anything to eat or drink, so don't try to give him anything.”
After the medical team have completed some more examinations, the room empties, and for the first time in two weeks, Pete and Macau are left alone with Vegas. Macau looks over at Pete, his lip quivering, hand resting on Vegas’s shoulder. Pete stands at the other side of the bed, holding Vegas’s hand. The high-flow oxygen in his nose hisses. The room sounds eerily quiet without the whoosh of the ventilator. Vegas’s body is still about fifty per cent wires, tubes and surgical drains.
His eyes flutter open again, then immediately go wide and fearful.
“Hia,” Macau whispers. “It’s okay, hia.”
Vegas looks between the two of them and coughs, wincing at the same time. His lips move, but no sound comes out.
“Vegas, it’s okay,” Pete tries to soothe him, as he brings a shaky hand up to pull at the oxygen in his nose. Macau guides his hand back to the sheet.
“-cau,” Vegas manages to force out. His voice sounds like he’s swallowed sandpaper. “Okay?”
Macau nods, tears streaming down his face.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Vegas’s eyes flick to Pete.
“Pete. Why?” His eyes roll again. “Dad… he’s -“ Vegas winces. “Gonna be mad.”
Vegas’s eyes fall shut again, the effort of saying one sentence having exhausted him.
“Don’t worry,” Macau repeats. “Just rest.”
Vegas gives a small nod. Pete’s heart aches. Vegas looks so small in the hospital bed, face drawn and hair hanging greasily over his eyes. He’s got the look he had had after his visits from his father in the safe house, a scared kid looking for approval. The tape has left red patches on the corners of his lips, and his skin is rough with stubble. He doesn’t look like the person who smiled as he pressed the jumpers of a car battery to Pete’s balls, who expertly enacted the most painful methods of torture upon their prisoners, who schemed and plotted. A smiling monster in a transparent poncho. But then, Pete thinks, he probably doesn’t look like a man who stared Vegas down when he was electrocuting him, who fixed Vegas in his gaze as he took their prisoners apart piece by piece, who witnessed and wasn’t afraid.
“Hurts…” Vegas mumbles. “What?”
“You were shot,” Pete tells him. “You are healing.”
Vegas’s eyes flutter closed again, and his expression relaxes. Macau exhales a held breath. Pete holds Vegas’s hand like it’s a lifeline.
***
Healing is a slow process. Vegas remains semi-lucid, only waking briefly in his opioid-induced haze to mumble a few incoherent words. Macau paces the room while Vegas sleeps. Pete fusses with Vegas’s pillows, massages cream into the dry skin on his heels, and applies lip balm to his cracked lips. Vegas whimpers and cries when the nurses come in to turn and change him. Pete strokes his hair as the nurses roll him from side to side to freshen him up and change the sheets under him. Macau takes to leaving the room. Time goes a bit strange; the world shrinks down to the small hospital room, with Vegas as the gravity well in the centre.
Then, a couple of times a day, Vegas becomes more conscious, but less lucid. The first time it happens, it comes as a shock. Pete wakes from a doze to the sound of Macau’s panicked voice, shouting for him. He blinks awake to see Macau hunched over Vegas, his hands on both his shoulders, trying to keep his thrashing brother inside the bed. Pete nearly trips over his feet in his haste to get to Vegas. Tears run down Vegas’s face, and his teeth are bared. Pete tries whispering soothing words to him, but he continues struggling, eyes dark.
“He’s going to hurt himself,” Macau says, panic rising in his voice as Vegas tries to rip the oxygen out of his nose.
“Vegas,” Pete tries to soothe him. “It’s okay.”
Vegas bares his teeth and digs his nails into the meat of Pete’s wrist, squeezing hard. Pain blooms, and for the first time in what feels like a long time, Pete feels gravity return to normal. Blood rushes in his ears, and his feet fix to the floor as he becomes embodied again.
“There you are,” he whispers to Vegas, a smile spreading across his face.
An alarm blares. The door flies open, and multiple medical staff members rush into the room.
Macau has pressed the fucking emergency alarm.
Somebody has their hand around Pete’s wrist, trying to prise Vegas’s fingers off. Pete shakes them away. Then, Vegas goes slack, as whatever medication they give him starts to work. His fingers relax, and his free hand falls back to the sheet with a thump.
“Are you alright?” Mek asks. Pete looks down at his wrist in Mek’s palm. Vegas’s nails have left red crescent moons behind; a slow stream of blood ebbs out of one of the deeper marks, just starting to clot at the site.
Pete nods. He feels high. Ken acquired some cocaine once, and they all snorted lines in his and Big’s room. He feels like that, ninety percent head rush. He feels the best he has in weeks.
“Let me wash it and put a dressing on.” Mek takes Pete’s arm and almost drags him to the sink. He opens a vial of saline and dumps it over Pete’s wrist. The blood sloughs off, running down the drain.
“I don’t want it dressed,” Pete forces out. He wants to see it. He wants to see the proof that he is real.
Mek rolls his eyes, dabs the wound dry with a wad of gauze.
“Suit yourself,” he says.
Vegas sleeps again, face slack. One of his fingernails is stained red. Macau flops into the recliner, his head in his hands.
That night, while Macau sleeps, Pete traces the wound with his thumb, pressing on the fading redness. With his nail, he picks at where the scab is just starting to form, making the wound bleed again. He looks over to Vegas, asleep in the bed, his chest rising and falling as he snores.
Pete looks down again at the welts on his wrist. He presses them again, lets the sharp ache ground him.
“You’re fucked up, Pete,” he whispers to the dark room.
Vegas continues sleeping. The oxygen hisses. EDM bleeds out of Macau’s headphones, but somehow he’s sleeping through it.
***
When somebody knocks on the door the next day, Pete calls for them to come in, thinking that it must be one of the nurses coming for their half-hourly check. Instead, Porsche stands in the doorframe, hair gelled back, looking as if he has raided Vegas’s wardrobe.
Macau just looks at him, rolls his eyes and turns away, continuing to scroll on his phone.
“Porsche,” Pete says, standing up.
“Hey,” Porsche replies. He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot, not stepping over the threshold, as if he’s waiting to be invited in. “How is he?”
Pete just looks over at Vegas. “What do you think?”
Porsche makes a little hmph noise. A wobble in his lower lip betrays his genuine upset at Vegas’s situation. “Kinn sends his regards,” Porsche says. He looks over to Macau. “Um, can we speak outside, Pete?” Something gold glints on Porsche’s finger as he turns on his heels.
Pete follows him.
“What is this about?” he asks, as they stand in the sterility of the corridor.
“I just came to see how you all were,” Porsche says. He looks tired, his face drawn and sallow. “Pete... you look like shit.”
Pete huffs a short laugh. In fact, he looks much better than he has done. He brushes his teeth every day now. He eats at least one meal. Arm has brought him another bag of clothes. He sleeps three hours every night.
“You look like Vegas,” Pete says. Or, he at least looks like the persona of Vegas, not like how he used to dress at the safehouse. He’s trying to wear the swagger, the bravado, like a borrowed suit of armour.
Porsche looks down, pulls his shirt away from his body.
“I guess,” he says. “I’m -” He taps his foot on the floor. “I guess I’m the head of the minor family now.”
Pete focuses on the signet ring on Porsche’s finger.
“Is that Kinn’s idea of a dowry?” Pete huffs.
Porsche looks down, sadly.
“I brought you a phone,” he says, reaching into his pocket and holding it out to Pete. “So we can stay in contact, so you can let me know how Vegas is. I need -” Porsche runs his hand through his hair, forcing a smile, as if he’s not sure what he needs. A friend, maybe. “I hope Vegas feels better soon. If you need anything, please, you can talk to me.”
Pete takes the phone from Porsche and puts it into his pocket. He wants to say to Porsche, what can you give me, other than mountains of cocaine, a thin-on-the-ground staff, and inherited problems. At the same time, he wants to talk openly with Porsche, he wants to cry on his shoulder, tell him how worried he is, but the words stick in his throat.
“Thanks,” is all he says.
“Don’t be a stranger, Pete,” Porsche says. Then turns on his heels and goes. His loafers clack on the linoleum like the chains of a prisoner.
When Vegas is better, Pete wants to take him and Macau far away from Bangkok, get a little house somewhere, and Vegas can cook for them, and Macau can go to university... and maybe Pete can get a job manning the door at some beachside nightclub. He thinks of Porsche telling him, across their darkened room, about his dream of opening a bar. Maybe it’s a pipe-dream, stepping out of this life defined by blood and violence, maybe they are all tainted by it now, marked as other, forever doomed. Maybe, none of them know how to live without it.
He goes back into the darkened room. Vegas’s eyes are open, and he looks around. Macau sits with his knees pulled up to his chest in the recliner.
“What did Porsche want?” Macau asks.
“He was just asking after your brother.”
“He’s wearing Pa’s ring,” Macau whispers.
A silence chills the air in the room. The oxygen hisses. The monitor beeps.
“He is,” Pete says.
“Dad... he’ll be angry,” is all Vegas says, eyes sad and glazed.
“Hia,” Macau starts, frustration creeping into his voice. “Dad is dead. I’ve told you this so many times now.”
“Oh,” is all Vegas says, gaze distant. “Oh, is he?”
They don’t discuss it anymore after that, falling into an uneasy silence.
***
Vegas gradually becomes more lucid over the next few days. Pete can’t decide if it’s worse or better. His mind is still fragmented, fogged by heavy opioids and the exertion of healing, but at least he’s awake more. He stares through Pete and silently watches the American drama shows Macau puts on the TV above the bed. Pete can’t understand half of them; somebody is trying to solve a crime, or doing crime, he can’t figure it out.
Porsche texts him every day. Pete replies occasionally.
Vegas starts physical therapy. Pete recognises the therapist from when he hurt his knee around four years ago. A small, owlish man in round glasses. They start simple, beginning with moving the back of the bed so Vegas is sitting up. The owl-man and his assistant incline the bed to ease Vegas into a sitting position, his jaw set in a grimace as he slowly eases upwards.
“Hia, you are doing so well,” Macau says.
Pete holds his hand, Vegas feels cold; he’s shaking like a leaf with the exertion.
Once he’s at around a seventy-degree angle, the little colour he has drains from Vegas’s face.
“I’m gonna -” Vegas forces out. “I’m -” He retches violently, coughs what seems like an inhuman amount of bile down his front, then promptly passes out.
The therapist pulls the emergency alarm and the room fills with people, checking Vegas’s observations, shining lights in his eyes, wiping the mess off his front and chin. He’s conscious and in a clean hospital gown again after not too long.
The staff leave, leaving a subdued Vegas lying flat in the bed and a panicked Macau trying to calm his breathing in the corner.
“It’s okay,” Pete tries to reassure him, but also himself. “It’s the first time you have sat up. It’s really okay.”
Vegas just huffs, closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep. Macau goes out to pace the corridors. Pete sits guard, pretending not to notice as Vegas’s body shakes with silent sobs.
***
He must fall asleep at some point, because when he wakes it’s dark in the room; the only light comes from the monitor. Macau snores in the corner, a t-shirt over his eyes, headphones on.
“Pete,” Vegas says, his voice raspy.
“You alright?” Pete blinks against the darkness.
“Pete,” Vegas says again. Pete reaches out for him from his own recliner, trying to find Vegas’s hand in the dark. Vegas sniffs. “I’m really scared.”
“It’s okay,” Pete strokes over his knuckles. “I’m here…”
“Hurts…” Vegas mumbles.
“I can get the nurse to get you more pain relief.”
Vegas shakes his head.
“Makes me feel sick. Makes me feel floaty,” he gasps out. “Pete, can you?”
“What do you need?”
Vegas taps the sheet next to him. The heart monitor beeps.
“Come and lie with me.”
“Vegas, I -“
“Please.”
Pete stands from the recliner and lowers the rail at the side of the bed. Vegas tries to shuffle over to make more room but can’t. The bed creaks as Pete climbs in. He adjusts Vegas’s catheter tubing so he’s not lying on it and gingerly cuddles up against him, one arm over the only free place on his chest. The ECG electrodes stuck to his chest dig into Pete’s forearm.
“Missed you,” Vegas says.
Pete inhales the salty smell of his neck. They’ve missed some stubble when shaving him, and his chin feels rough against Pete’s lips.
“I missed you too.”
“I hurt you,” Vegas whispers, eyes fixed on the crescent moons adorning Pete’s wrist. Deep down, Pete knows it’s not just about that. “I’m -“
“You did hurt me,” Pete replies. “But -“ he swallows back the urge to say I liked it, it made my mind shut up, I want you to do it again.
“I’m sorry,” Vegas sobs. “I’m sorry for everything.”
Pete presses his lips to Vegas’s carotid, it pulses against his lips. It’s so intimately close that Pete considers how easily he could bite it, rip it out of Vegas’s flesh.
“Don’t apologise,” he says.
“You should run,” Vegas whispers. “The door is open. I don’t have anything to offer you.”
“I don’t need anything.”
The oxygen hisses. Vegas shifts. “I’m not going to… I’m useless. Do you want your life to be cleaning up my piss and shit? Maybe my dick won’t work - what will you do then? You’ll want to leave.”
Pete pushes himself up on his elbow. “I don’t need to be fucked. I don’t mind looking after you.” He brushes Vegas’s hair out of his eyes, strains a smile onto his face. “I’m loyal. It’s kinda my thing.”
“Give it a few months,” Vegas huffs, turning his head away. “You’ll get sick of it.”
“Then, why did you ask me to get in the bed with you?”
Vegas blinks slowly. “Because I’m weak, Pete.”
Pete holds him closer. “Then I am, too.” Avoiding the ECG leads, Pete begins to rub small circles over Vegas’s sternum, willing his breathing to relax. “My grandma used to do this when I couldn’t sleep as a child. It’s okay to need comfort.”
Vegas sniffs and closes his eyes. As he rubs over Vegas’s skin, Pete thinks of his grandmother. He thinks of her soft spot for angry, broken boys. For that reason, he's more her son than his father’s. But then, his grandmother saw his bruises and said nothing; she was his father’s parent after all. His father was a product of her, raised by her. Pete is his grandmother’s grandson; he has her weakness. He’s drawn like a moth to a bug catcher to angry broken boys who are no good for him. Perhaps his father made him an angry broken boy, too.
Gradually, Vegas’s breathing slows, and he slips back into sleep. Once Pete is certain he’s fast asleep, Pete shifts and slips off the bed, not wanting the nurses or Macau to see them snuggled up together.
Pete holds Vegas’s hand from the recliner. He twists his wrist so the gradually healing welts made by Vegas’s fingernails are visible.
***
Over the next week, while physically Vegas improves, mentally he deteriorates. He spends less time asleep and instead stares for hours at the wall, not engaging with either Pete or Macau. He just lies there blank-faced when the nurses come in to change him, not making a sound and staring at the ceiling. They’ve started slowly feeding him through a new, thinner NG in his nose, rather than via TPN, to assess how his healing stomach can cope. The pump clicks and whirrs as it drips a beige liquid down the tubing.
“I’m worried about him,” Macau whispers in the middle of the night. Vegas has finally settled after spending multiple hours retching over a cardboard kidney dish, but refusing any anti-sickness medication from the nurses.
“He’s getting better,” Pete says, focusing on the physical. “His wounds are healing well. He’s finally able to have water; he’s having the tube feed.” He looks over to the pump. “It’s going at ten millilitres an hour now.”
Macau rubs his tired eyes. The light of his phone makes him look ghostly. He’s watching a live stream of somebody playing video games; the sound of gunfire echoes in the background. Pete grinds his teeth, trying not to think about the blue water of the pool, the red of Vegas’s blood, the white of the tile.
“I’m talking about mentally.”
“Oh, okay.”
A silence falls between them. Macau clicks off the livestream, and the sound of gunfire and shouting ceases.
“Our mum... she -” Macau looks down, sadly, the implication clear. “I was young. I don’t remember. But she -”
Pete can’t see anything but Vegas with his gun to his throat, and Vegas holding his hands up in surrender as Pete pressed a knife to the soft place at the side of his neck, both of them dancing on the edge of ending their own lives.
“We’ll look after him,” Pete assures him. “We will.”
“It’s in our family,” Macau says. “I’ve... well...” He pulls his sleeves down over his hands, making little sweater paws.
Vegas’s chest rises and falls. Macau taps his foot on the floor.
Pete watches, observes, waits. Macau falls asleep soon after, head flopping on his chest, his phone hanging from his slack fingers.
In the dark room, Pete swears that he’s going to protect both of them from all demons, both internal and external. In a world which has taught them strength is the only way forward, Pete vows he will allow the two Theerapanyakun brothers to be weak, to be looked after, for once.
***
Whether Vegas will let him, is another matter.
“Just fuck off, will you,” Vegas hisses, staring at Pete. He’s suspended halfway off the bed in a hoist sling, arms crossed in front of him, as two nurses move him from the bed to a padded recliner chair. He’s been moved onto regular nasal cannula oxygen now. The catheter bag is strapped to his thigh. His hospital gown has slid off his strapped shoulder. “Can’t you see this is fucking embarrassing?”
One of the nurses looks over at Pete, looking like she is going to tell him to leave. Macau has already been banished from the room.
Pete crosses his arms, plants his feet on the ground.
“It’s not embarrassing, Vegas,” Pete says. “I don’t think any less of you.”
“Well, I fucking do! Get the fuck out, Pete. Don’t stand there and gloat.”
Pete wants to scream at him: Let me look after you, let me care for you, let me be involved, I want to see all of it; I want you to allow me in. I’ve been here. I’ve stayed. I’m fucking starving, you ungrateful bastard.
“You should go,” says one of the nurses, calm and professional.
Vegas squirms as much as he can in the hoist sling.
“If you don’t leave,” he threatens. “I’m going to throw myself on the floor.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Vegas,” Pete sighs, crossing his arms.
“I’ll do it,” he wiggles again. “One. Two.” He sways in the sling. One of the nurses puts her hand in the centre of his chest, holding him still. A wicked smile crosses Vegas’s face, and he brings his more mobile hand to the one still strapped across his chest as if he’s going to jump off a diving board. “Three...”
“Get out,” the other nurse orders. “Get out now.”
Pete stares at them, then turns and leaves the room, letting the door slam behind him.
Macau sits in the corridor, playing a game on his phone. Pete flops down next to him.
“Has he told you to fuck off?” Macau says, not looking up from his phone.
“Don’t swear,” Pete sighs. He’s not sure why he says it. Maybe because Macau is still a teenager, and he’s started feeling strangely paternal towards him.
Macau rolls his eyes. “You aren’t my Dad. I can swear, I’m sixteen. I can call you a motherfucking cunt ass dickhead, and you can’t do anything about it.” A wicked smile spreads across Macau’s face.
“Fair enough,” Pete replies, stretching his aching legs out in front of him.
“Hia told you to fuck off, didn’t he?”
Pete nods. “Yeah, he did, the motherfucking cunt ass dickhead.”
Macau chuckles softly. “Yeah, sounds like him.” He jabs his thumbs against his phone screen, shooting some aliens.
Pete exhales heavily and kicks his heels against the floor.
“Do you love him?” Macau asks, still not looking up from his game. “Is that why you have stayed?”
“I guess,” Pete says. “I guess I do.” He’s not sure if it's love, it’s more that they have been bound together by some inextricable force. He needs Vegas to breathe, he needs Vegas to eat, he needs Vegas to sleep. He’s the mitochondria in his cells, the oxygen in his blood, the enzymes in his mouth.
“You’re kind of a weird guy,” Macau continues.
“Yeah, maybe I am?”
“Don’t let him hurt you,” Macau says, still not looking up from his phone. “You aren’t his punching bag.”
Pete scoffs.
They are interrupted by the nurse coming out of the room.
“Khun Vegas says you can go back in now, Pete.”
Pete pushes himself up from the floor.
“You coming?” Pete says to Macau.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” he replies, making an exaggerated kissy face.
Pete just rolls his eyes at him and heads back into the room.
Vegas sits in the patient recliner chair, propped up with pillows, slightly slanted to one side, reclined back to stop him slipping out. His face is deathly pale. Below his swollen legs, his feet look skinny in the gripped socks. His arms tremble. Shining tears track down his angular features.
“I’m sorry,” he says in English. “Come here.”
Pete folds his arms and holds position. He’s not a punching bag.
Vegas holds his good arm out.
“Pete,” he starts. “Pete, please.”
Pete crosses the room and kneels on the floor next to the recliner. With a trembling hand, Vegas reaches out and strokes his hand through Pete’s hair, like he is a particularly favoured lap dog.
“I just want to be here for you,” Pete says. “I just want to help. I want you to allow me to see you - all of you. Even the hard parts right now.”
Vegas brushes a finger over the shell of Pete’s ear.
“I know,” he says, then switches to English. “I’m an arse. I’m sorry.”
“This is hard, Vegas,” Pete says, resting his head against Vegas’s knee, resisting the urge to rub his cheek against him like a cat, to scent him, claim him. “Just let me help.”
“Mhmm,” Vegas whispers.
“Your ankles are so swollen,” Pete says, running his hand down the warm skin on Vegas’s leg. “Do you want me to massage them?”
Vegas nods and winces.
They sit in silence as Pete gently massages Vegas’s ankles. Vegas runs his hands through Pete’s hair, his touch gentle. Pete melts. He thinks of the safehouse, how Vegas had stroked his hands so tenderly up his sides, how his tongue had felt so soft against his hole, how his body and mind had melted into the tender touch following all the pain. He hopes Vegas feels like that now.
Vegas’s eyes flutter closed as Pete rubs over the prominence of his ankle. They both exhale together, letting the tension out.
***
A week later, Vegas steps down from the ICU to one of the private rooms on the main floor of the hospital. It’s more open than the ICU room, with a large double bed, an adjoining bathroom, and two recliner chairs for Pete and Macau. It looks more like a fancy hotel suite rather than the clinical starkness of the ICU upstairs.
Vegas is quiet as they transfer him from the stretcher onto the bed, only letting out a soft grunt as they slide him over. Pete can tell he’s exhausted, eyelids drooping. They removed the NG tube two days ago, and he’s been managing a liquid diet since. His stomach is still a mass of padded surgical dressings. The morphine drivers and nerve blocks from the ICU are gone. Pete knows pain, and he can tell that Vegas is in a huge amount of it.
“This is more comfortable,” Pete says, as he adjusts some of the pillows around Vegas. He knows he’s fussing, but it’s all he knows how to do.
Vegas just grunts, clutching his abdomen. Pete rubs his shoulder and passes him the oral syringes of liquid medications the nurse has left. Vegas tosses them back with a sigh.
Macau gets settled on one of the recliners, plugging his phone into the outlet on the wall. Over the last few days, Pete has been cajoling him to start doing his school work again. He has exams in a few months. Due to the ‘car accident’ that has very sadly killed his father and injured his brother, he’s on an extended leave of absence. He keeps saying he’s not ready yet, he can’t concentrate, he can’t think about algebra and English grammar.
Vegas looks small in the large bed, swamped in the white duvet. Pete sits down on his own recliner. Macau puts another American action movie on TV, one with men in spandex this time, who have superpowers and punch each other across the screen. All of them sit and watch in silence.
***
Sometime in the middle of the night, Pete is dragged out of his slumber by a hand grabbing his shoulder, shaking him.
He blinks awake. Macau stands in front of him.
“Something’s wrong,” Macau says, through rapid breaths.
Pete jumps up in the recliner, looking straight over to Vegas’s bed. Vegas is lying on his back, snoring softly. Everything looks fine. Vegas doesn’t stir, knocked out by his evening dose of pain medication.
Macau shakes his shoulder.
“No, not with Vegas, with me.”
Pete turns to face Macau, his face is pale, and he’s clutching at his chest, blowing out little puffs of breath.
“What’s wrong?” Pete asks. “Are you not feeling well?”
“I’m -” Macau takes in another ragged inhale. “I think I’m….”
“Okay,” Pete says, instantly wide awake. He’s seen Tankhun in a similar way many times before, he knows how to calm somebody. “Try and take some deep breaths. Do you think it’s a panic attack?”
Macau shakes his head. “My chest really hurts, Pete. I feel really weird. I wouldn’t be disturbing you if I thought -” He stops and drags in another ragged breath. “I’m - I’m really struggling to breathe.”
“I’ll go and get one of the nurses to come in and check you over.”
“No,” Macau whispers. “I don’t want to wake hia, I don’t want him to worry.”
He starts gasping again, quicker this time. Convinced something is really wrong, Pete takes his arm and almost drags him out of Vegas’s hospital room.
One of the nurses is in the corridor, pushing a medication cart. She looks up at Pete and Macau. Concern passes over her face.
“Everything okay?” she says.
“He’s got chest pain,” Pete says.
“Khun Vegas?” The nurse asks, her eyes darting to his room.
“No. Macau.”
She looks over at Macau, who has now started trembling. He’s breathing so fast that Pete is certain that something must be terribly wrong. The nurse grabs an observation machine from where it’s plugged into the wall.
“Come with me,” she says, taking them through to a small treatment room down the corridor. She prompts Macau to lie down on the examination bench and starts to attach various pieces of equipment to him, taking his blood pressure and checking his heart rate. Macau lifts his shirt as she begins to place ECG stickers on his chest, hooking him up to the monitor.
“Where’s the pain?” the nurse asks.
Macau points across the full length of his chest.
“All across here,” he forces out. “I’m feeling a bit dizzy.”
“Try and take some deep breaths for me,” she says to Macau. “We’ll get you sorted, sweetheart.”
Macau lets out a little sob and looks over to Pete with wide eyes.
“I feel stupid,” he says. “I just feel really bad.”
“No, no,” the nurse continues. “Just lie as still as you can while I print the ECG.” A sheet comes out of the machine and she looks it up and down. “The good thing is there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with your heart rhythm. Your heart rate is a bit fast, and your blood pressure is a little low. But your oxygen levels are fine.”
“What does that mean?” Pete asks from where he’s standing in the corner. Under the sterile lighting, Macau looks so pale and small.
The nurse turns to Pete.
“It means he’s not having some kind of cardiac event.”
“So he’s not having a heart attack or anything?” Pete clarifies.
The nurse shakes her head. Macau still breathes heavily on the treatment couch, clutching at his ribs.
“Try and take some deep breaths for me if you can Macau,” The nurse says, guiding him through a couple of inhales and exhales. Once he’s calmed slightly, she asks: “Are you taking any regular medication, Khun Macau?”
Macau nods. “Yeah, Amitriptyline for my migraines, Naproxen when I get one. And Escitalopram and Diazepam for you know...”
The nurse kneels next to the bed. “Have you been taking them regularly and on time?”
Macau looks down, and shakes his head. He hugs his knees to his chest. “There’s been so much going on, maybe I’ve missed a few days... I’m not sure.”
“Okay,” the nurse says. “I’ll go and speak to the doctor.”
The nurse goes to get the doctor to review Macau. Pete goes and stands next to him while they wait. Macau lies there, subdued, his breathing still quick.
The doctor comes in and reviews Macau. She concludes that it’s a panic attack, and advises Macau to take some Diazepam and try to rest. They head back to Vegas’s room. Vegas lies in the bed, still fast asleep, unaware of the drama. Macau sits down in the recliner, and Pete goes to get his tablets out of his bag. He hands it to Macau and he takes the tablet.
“I’m sorry,” Pete says.
“What for?” Macau puts the water bottle down on the table and hugs his knees.
“I’m not looking after you very well.”
Macau sighs. He’s breathing a bit better now. “Pete, it’s not your job to look after me.”
“I know but -”
A silence falls in the room, other than Vegas’s snoring.
“Can you just sit up with me, Pete?” Macau asks, voice small and wavering. He sounds exhausted. “Just until this tablet works and I fall asleep.”
Pete crosses his legs and sits on his recliner.
“Of course, Macau,” Pete says. “Lie down, try to rest. I’ll be here.”
***
Pete vows to himself that he’ll try to look after Macau a bit better. He starts with looking after himself more so he can support the teenager. He forces himself to get dressed every morning, to shower, to try and eat. It does make him feel more human, more capable of looking after the two brothers. He prompts Macau to take his medication on time. To encourage him to at least eat semi-regularly, Pete starts to venture out to some of the nearby food stalls to bring back food for Macau that at least has nominal nutritional value. While Pete is out, he takes their clothes to the laundromat down the street. Pete enjoys chatting to the aunties at the laundry and the food stalls, smiling at them as they discuss the local gossip, while adding an extra spoonful of prawns to Macau’s bowl.
Porsche texts him. Arm checks in occasionally. He has cleared out Pete’s old room for some recruits, so brings Pete a suitcase with the rest of his things. Pete finds his favourite earrings, the chunky silver loops, and puts them in his ears. He starts to take a bit more attention to his appearance, making sure he’s brushing his hair, cleaning his teeth, and wearing deodorant.
While bringing food up for Macau, Pete bumps into Pol downstairs in the hospital foyer, waiting to get his cast removed. He has his leg resting on one of the chairs opposite, picking small rhinestones off the cast.
“Not good for the plaster saw,” Pol says. “Dr. Bom refused to cut it off; apparently, it hasn’t been tested on plastic gems.”
Pete just rolls his eyes.
“Khun misses you; he’s so annoyed at you,” Pol says, looking up with big eyes. “We all miss you.”
“I miss you too,” Pete replies. He does, but he also doesn’t.
He sits with Pol for a bit, helps him deconstruct Tankhun’s arts and crafts project.
Other than that, there is silence from the rest of the Theerapanyakuns.
***
Vegas struggles through physical therapy, starting with being able to sit up unaided, then graduating to standing, then walking across the room to the small bathroom with a frame.
The physio says Vegas will never be able to lift his right shoulder again; the nerves are too damaged, and he’ll always have weakness in that hand and arm. He’ll never shoot again, never ride a motorbike again, and probably will always need assistance with daily tasks. The dietician says he’ll only ever be able to eat small portions, and he’ll have to make sure everything is soft, or at least chewed properly. The doctors say to prepare for an unpredictable level of chronic pain, both in his shoulder and his abdomen. The nurses talk about him ‘needing support with his activities of daily living’ and that they will ‘try to improve his level of functioning.’ An Occupational Therapist comes in with adapted cutlery, she talks about mobility aids, how there are many options out there these days.
Pete listens to everything they say, tries to work out in his brain what their life will look like going forwards. Vegas takes the news stoically. It’s only in the middle of the night, when he thinks that Pete’s asleep, that Pete hears him quietly sobbing.
***
Progress remains slow and frustrating.
“This is absolute shit,” Vegas says, sitting on the toilet, leaning over towards his knees. “Why is it so hard to fucking piss…”
They removed the catheter earlier in the day. Pete stands in the corner of the bathroom, with the taps running on full power. The nurse had suggested it.
“Just think of waterfalls or something,” Pete suggests, feeling a little stupid. “Think of lakes, of iced tea, of the ocean.”
“Pete, shut up,” Vegas whines, his cheeks flushed. “I can’t fucking do it. I can’t piss sitting down. I’m getting uncomfortable.”
“I can help you stand?” Pete suggests. He helps him stand up and face the toilet, steadying him from behind. Vegas trembles as Pete splays his hands out across his hips.
Vegas stands in front of the toilet as long as he can but doesn’t succeed.
“Fucking hell!” Vegas curses in English. “Fuck this shit.”
He ends up back on the bed, the nurse pressing an ultrasound probe to his abdomen to perform a bladder scan. Vegas grits his teeth. Pete hovers at the head of the bed, trying to think how he can reassure him.
The catheter goes back in. Vegas is quiet for the rest of the day.
Weeks pass in a push and pull of improvement and setbacks. Vegas gets another chest infection and spends a week back on oxygen, coughing and spluttering and generally complaining. Macau paces the room, looking as anxious as he did back in the ICU. Pete rubs tiger balm into Vegas’s back. He helps him eat jok and bone broth. They work through his physical therapy exercises. The permanent catheter comes out, replaced by smaller intermittent ones, which the medical team say he will have to use to urinate for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life. They say something about it being an unfortunate complication of the surgery, using words Pete doesn’t understand. Vegas begins to shuffle around the room more with his walker. He begins to eat more. Pete talks with the nurses about what things will look like after he’s discharged.
Vegas sits in the bed, stony faced, not engaging in the discussions.
They’ll adapt. Pete is good at that. He can mould himself. It’s what he’s done his whole life.
In the mirror in the small bathroom, Pete looks at himself, at the earrings in his ears, the choice of clothes. He feels... better. More embodied. A real person rather than a ghost.
***
Pete falls into a steady routine. He slips out of the room when it’s still dark, leaving both brothers fast asleep. He goes for a walk, gets a coffee from the 7/11 on the corner, and eats a pastry. After one of these outings, he comes back from picking up breakfast for Macau to see Vegas sitting up in bed, looking despondent. Pete pulls the curtains open, letting the morning sunlight into the room. He places the food on the table and looks back at Macau sleeping on the recliner in the corner.
“Why are you still here?” Vegas says. His lip trembles.
Pete’s heart plummets to his feet. He sits down on the edge of the mattress, taking Vegas’s hand in his own, rubbing his thumb over his knuckle. Vegas looks down at it like Pete is holding a live bomb. Pete looks down at it like it’s an anchor.
“I can’t exactly just run off anywhere,” he says, half as a joke, half deadly serious.
Vegas’s face falls.
“You can run,” Vegas says, echoing what he said weeks ago. “If you run now, I’m okay with that.”
Pete just looks at him. Can’t Vegas see that he’s loyal? He’s stayed by his side all this time. Does that not mean anything? Why the fuck is he doubting him?
“I’ve got nothing left,” Vegas says.
Pete wants to shake him and say: What the fuck am I then? Am I nothing? What the fuck is your brother over there? Are we all just nothing?
“I don’t want to be your burden.” Vegas’s voice is quiet, trembling.
Pete shuffles closer to him on the bed, taking his hand and wrist in both of his, linking them together like a handcuff, a chain. He wants to say to Vegas, You aren’t my burden, you will never be my burden, I’ll happily carry you. I’ll give my blood to you, I’ll kill for you, I’ll die for you. I’ll let you suck me dry, chew on my bones, grind me up until there is nothing left but ashes.
Instead, he says: “I just wanna follow my heart.”
Vegas sniffs, turns his head to one side, his lip quivering.
“From now on,” he says, slowly. “You aren’t my pet, you are the most important person in my life.”
Pete looks at him, inhales through his nose. He wants to say: Can’t I be both? Isn’t there something very us about that? Don’t you care for your pets? Don’t you want to care for me?
Instead, Vegas leans forward, reaches out to place his hand on the side of Pete’s neck, thumb over his carotid. Pete melts and leans in.
Their lips touch. It’s not like they haven’t kissed since Vegas was extubated; they have, but they have been closed-mouthed little pecks on cheeks and foreheads. Pete opens his mouth, letting Vegas inside. He reaches over and strokes the side of Vegas’s neck, feeling the jump of his pulse. Pete whines against Vegas’s lips, as he traces the line of his jaw, and with the other hand follows the curve of his ear. The fractured nature of the world since Vegas’s injury seems to knit back together, like stitches pulling closed.
Macau wolf-whistles from the recliner. They pull apart.
“Now that’s fast,” Macau says.
Pete sits awkwardly on the side of the bed, a rehearsed smile crossing over his face.
Macau crosses the room and shakes Pete by his shoulders.
“My in-law,” he laughs.
Vegas just rolls his eyes. “Why didn’t you say you were awake?”
A blush spreads across Pete’s cheeks as he awkwardly nods.
“Aww, don’t be shy,” Macau says.
“No,” Vegas joins in the teasing. “Don’t be shy, come here.”
He pulls Pete across his lap, allowing him to snuggle in. Macau cuddles in behind, giggling, as Vegas presses kisses to both of their heads.
Pete smiles, maybe the three of them might just be okay.
***
That night, Vegas taps the sheet next to him, inviting Pete to lie there. He slides into the cool bedding, his head resting on the good side of Vegas’s chest. They have removed some of the dressings now, leaving behind whorled, bumped scars. Pete holds Vegas, inhales his scent, and gives a little sniff-kiss to the side of his neck.
“I love you,” Vegas says into the darkness.
Pete slows his breathing and pretends to be asleep.
They start to lie next to each other every night, Pete curled up against Vegas’s side. He sleeps better, lulled by the smell of him, how he runs his fingers through his hair.
Vegas tells him that he loves him. Pete doesn’t say it back. He’s never said that to anybody, so it feels like a lot. Vegas says it readily, openly. He said it to Pete when Pete was certain he didn’t love him.
Pete hopes that he doesn't mind.
They don’t discuss it.
***
“We’ll provide you all with one of the minor family apartments,” Porsche says, a teacup in front of him. He’s wearing a green linen suit, a white shirt underneath, unbuttoned to show off his chest.
Pete sits opposite him, having been called for a meeting regarding Vegas’s imminent discharge from the hospital. There’s a teacup in front of him, but he doesn’t drink. Macau sits across from him, stony-faced. Arm stands in the corner, arms crossed.
Kinn stands behind Porsche, a glass of scotch in his hand, the ice clinks.
A selection of small cakes, looking dry and untouched, sits on a silver tray in front of them.
Pete is used to standing in Arm’s position. Now he’s at the table, as whatever he is, maybe an honorary member of the family, he finds he’s come to hate the performance, the play acting, the fake respectability.
“You are still family,” Kinn says. “You are still our responsibility. The situation is -” He looks over at Porsche, his face falling. “Complex.”
Pete looks down at his cup, as if he’s reading tea leaves. Macau crosses his arms, his face twists into a pout. Porsche sips his tea.
“So, we are your prisoners,” Macau snaps.
Pete reaches over, places a steadying hand on Macau’s wrist.
“No,” Kinn starts. “We just want to -”
“So, we just have to shut up and put up,” Macau interrupts, shaking Pete off him. “We’re punished for our Dad’s mistakes, locked away in the fucking tower like our crazy cousin.”
At the mention of Tankhun, Kinn’s eyebrows furrow, and a flash of anger crosses over his face. He steps forward, slamming the glass down on the table so hard Pete worries the crystal will shatter. Amber liquid sloshes out of the glass. Macau squeaks, shuffling closer to Pete, looking for protection. Pete tenses, sure Kinn is going to reach across the table and wrap a hand around Macau’s neck at the worst, slap him across his cheek at best.
“It would do you good to remember your manners, Macau,” Kinn hisses, his eyes dark. “To remember why you are in this situation. Your brother isn’t -”
Porsche places a firm hand on the small of Kinn’s back, hovering above his waistband as if he’s going to pull him back by the belt.
“Shall we all just stay calm,” Porsche interjects. He looks over to Macau. Kinn inches closer towards the teenager, his tear bared, like a leopard with a muntjac deer within his grasp. “The kid spoke out of turn, but there’s been a lot of changes we are all still getting used to.” Porsche rubs Kinn’s back.
With a hiss, Kinn retreats, retracting his claws.
“You don’t ever speak to me like that,” Kinn snaps. “Don’t think you are above your station.”
Macau just looks down at the table, pale faced, mumbling an apology.
“We appreciate you providing us accommodation Khun Kinn. I want to ask, does it have to be forever?” Pete says. He thinks of running away from Bangkok, going south, going to one of the islands near home. He thinks of sitting on the beach with Vegas. It’s a nice dream, but deep down, he knows it’s impossible.
“For now,” Porsche says, he looks over to Kinn, making sure they are on the same page, a united front. “We need to assure your safety. Word spreads fast; our enemies will try to use you against us.”
Pete looks at the table, looks at the tremor in Porsche's hand, then up to his face; he’s wearing concealer over one of his cheekbones.
“It’s for the best,” Kinn adds. He’s settled back into his standing position now, taking a sip from his scotch. He forces a small smile to his face. “After all we’re all family here. Let's work together. Let us look after you.”
Macau slams his teacup down on the table so hard Pete worries the fine china might shatter. He stands, wais to Kinn and Porsche, and then storms out of the room.
Pete stands, nods respectfully to Kinn and Porsche before he goes. Arm meets Pete’s gaze, pushes his glasses up his nose and twists his face into a yikes expression.
“He’ll come around,” Pete says. “He just needs some time to adjust.”
He follows Macau out.
***
“This is the fucking nanny’s apartment,” Macau huffs as Pete unlocks the door of their new accommodation. It’s a smaller apartment on the edge of the minor family compound. They had to take the service elevator up, located at the back of one of the kitchens, due to Vegas’s wheelchair. He insisted to Pete he could try the stairs, but Pete shut that down quickly, having visions of Vegas collapsing halfway up.
Pete pushes the door open. Vegas sits quietly in his wheelchair as Pete wheels him into the main foyer. It’s quite a dark space, the windows covered by shutters. The living area is open, with a small kitchenette on the far wall. A corridor leads to three closed doors, which Pete assumes lead to the bedrooms and bathroom. It’s big by bodyguard accommodation standards, but small to what Pete assumes are Macau and Vegas’s.
One of the guards has brought their bags up. They stand in a line against the wall, Vegas’s walker next to them.
Macau stalks off to the closed doors.
“I’m having first pick of the bedrooms,” he huffs.
Vegas looks down at the floor.
“You alright?” Pete asks him, kneeling next to his chair.
Vegas nods.
“Yeah, just in so much pain,” Vegas mutters. “I’m tired. I want to lie down.”
Pete looks over to the sofa. “You want the bed or the sofa?”
Vegas looks down sullenly. “The sofa is fine.”
Pete wheels him over, helps him stand and get settled, then slips Vegas’s shoes off. Vegas sniffs as Pete lifts his legs so he’s lying on the sofa, propped up against the arm.
“Thanks,” Vegas mumbles, rubbing a hand over his abdomen. “For everything you have done.”
Pete sits down next to him and rubs a soothing hand over his knee.
“I want to,” Pete says. “It’s not a chore.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Vegas says, closing his eyes.
Pete looks down at the hideous carpet. He fucking hates carpet. But he’ll deal with carpet for Vegas. Then, he leans over to press a kiss to Vegas’s forehead.
“You do,” he whispers against his warm skin. “You do.”
“I’m getting the bigger room,” Macau shouts from the corridor, slamming all the doors. “Oh, there’s a bathtub!”
A small smile crosses over Vegas’s face. Pete takes his hand, and Vegas rubs his thumb over Pete’s knuckles.
“I miss you,” Vegas whispers.
Pete pulls in closer. “I’m right here.”
“I know,” Vegas moves his hand so his fingers just brush Pete’s inner thigh. Pete sucks in air through his nose, spine straightening. “I miss being closer to you.”
The implication is clear.
“I’m not with you just for sex,” Pete says. “I’m happy, Vegas.”
“Are you?”
Pete leans in, presses a kiss to Vegas’s lips, and coaxes him to open up and let him in.
“I’m happy,” he whispers as they part.
“Okay.”
Pete runs his hand across Vegas’s jawbone. “Try and rest,” he says. “I’m going to help Macau get unpacked. I’ll get you some water.”
Vegas allows his eyes to flutter closed. Pete can tell he’s really tired, the short journey over from the main family tower having exhausted him. He goes to the fridge in the kitchenette and finds it stocked with some water bottles. He brings one over for Vegas.
He’s already asleep when Pete returns, his head turned to the side on one of the couch cushions. One of his hands lies protectively across his abdomen, his mouth hangs slightly open, and his tongue is pressed against his bottom teeth. Pete places the water bottle down on the coffee table, presses a kiss to the crown of Vegas’s head, and heads off to see how Macau is getting on.
He finds Macau with his head inside one of the packing boxes, pulling things out. One of the guards has brought some personal items from both of the brothers’ rooms.
“The HDMI cord is missing from my PS5,” Macau grumbles, pulling out a tangled mass of wires. “And all my clothes stink of weed; somebody has been smoking in my old room. I bet it’s fucking Porchay...”
Pete sits down on the unmade bed. He’s not met Porchay many times, but Porsche’s kid brother doesn’t seem to be one for recreational drugs.
“I don’t think Porsche has stolen your HDMI cable,” he says. “It’s probably in one of the other boxes. I don’t think he’s got much time to watch TV or play games at the moment. ”
Macau huffs. “He might have done. He’s already stole my fucking house.”
Pete lets out a soft laugh. “Fair enough. I’ll get you a new one if you can’t find it.”
Macau lifts his head out of the box, and settles cross-legged on the floor.
“Thanks Pete,” he says. From his expression, Pete can tell it’s not just about the HDMI cable.
“How are you feeling?” Pete asks him.
Macau just shrugs. “I’m alright,” he replies, sorting through a pile of video games. “Just trying to find where to put everything.”
“Pleased to be out of the hospital?”
“Yeah, I am.” Macau pulls another mass of cables out of the box. “Ahh... my VR stuff is all tangled.”
“How are you feeling about going back to school?”
Macau just shrugs again. “I’m going to take at least another two weeks off.”
“Alright,” Pete doesn’t argue with him. He’s not his parent. He’s just... If the kid wants to lock himself away in his new room and play video games for a month, that’s fine with him. If he never wants to go back to school, that’s also okay with him, at least for now. Pete never finished high school, and he’s at least made something of his life. He knows Vegas probably thinks otherwise.
“How’s hia doing?” Macau asks, turning to look at Pete.
“He’s sleeping,” Pete replies. “He’s tired.” Pete pushes himself up from the mattress; the plastic cover squeaks under him. “I’ll try to find some sheets to make your bed. Try and make it look a bit more like a home in here.”
Macau looks up at him, eyes wide, posture tucked in and small.
“Yeah... okay, thanks, Pete.”
Pete goes and looks through some of the boxes. He wants to try to make it as normal as he can for Macau. He finds some sheets, makes the bed, plumps the pillows the way his grandmother used to do for him when he’d go and stay with her as a child.
While Pete makes the bed, Macau sets up his game consoles in the entertainment unit under the wall-mounted TV.
“The Xbox is working, do you wanna play Forza with me?” Macau asks, as Pete sorts through some of Macau’s clothes, which, fair dues to the kid, do stink of weed.
Pete ends up sitting with him, crashing the sports car Macau has picked for him around a virtual Mexico. Macau laughs like a hyena every time Pete crashes. Luckily, the game is quite forgiving.
Vegas appears in the doorway a little later, holding onto his walker, hair ruffled like the arse-end of a duck at the back.
“You woke me up,” he huffs. “Giggling like schoolgirls. What are you doing?”
Pete pats the bed, and Vegas comes and sits next to him, steadying himself with an arm around Pete’s back.
“Playing Forza,” Macau says, gaze focused on the screen.
“Good nap?” Pete asks him as Vegas leans in to press a kiss to Pete’s cheek.
Vegas nods, and Pete smooths his hair down at the back.
“Is your pain okay?”
Vegas nods again, although Pete can tell by the tension in his jaw that it isn’t. He’ll get up in a moment, draw up some more of the pain relief into the little purple syringe for him.
Macau unpauses the game, and Pete promptly drives his sports car off a cliff.
“Wow, you are really shit at this,” Vegas laughs, spreading his good hand out on Pete’s thigh.
***
Turns out, Pete is really shit at quite a few things involved with running a household. He nearly causes an evacuation of the minor family compound while trying to cook an omelette. He dyes all of Vegas’s white socks peach-pink. He sucks one of Macau’s favourite bracelets up the hoover, which to be fair to him, the floor isn’t an appropriate place to keep jewellery. He quickly starts to take their clothes to the laundromat and relies upon the aunties at the market and the convenience store for their meals.
“I wish I could look after you better,” Vegas says, sitting at the kitchen table as Pete puts containers of green curry down in front of his and Macau’s places, and a lighter broth with shredded poached chicken for Vegas.
“We’re doing okay, right?” Pete asks, moving the plates around so Macau has the most meat in his.
“I just like caring for you,” Vegas takes his spoon and begins to pick at his food. His hand trembles. “I like knowing that your needs are met. I’m not able to do that these days.”
“My needs are met,” Pete says. He turns towards the corridor to the bedrooms and shouts: “Macau, turn your game off. Food is on the table.”
Vegas just looks at him with big, sad eyes.
“Are they really?” he says.
Pete looks across the table at him. Vegas raises an eyebrow, expression drawn.
“If you’re talking about sex, I’m really fine.”
“Oh, okay...” Vegas says.
Pete moves his curry around on his plate. “Are you?”
They sleep in the same bed every night, continuing the trend from the hospital. Vegas is a cuddler, Pete isn’t naturally. He tends to pull away from him during the night once Vegas is asleep, getting overheated and overstimulated. Vegas tells him he loves him; Pete hasn’t told him back yet.
Vegas looks down at his plate, looking like he wants to say something.
“I feel like you don’t want to touch me,” Vegas says. “I’ve... when I was in the hospital... So many people had to touch me. My body, it wasn’t... I just want, I just want it to be you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Pete says. It’s the truth. “You’re still healing.”
Vegas’s eyes soften. He twists his spoon in his soup, creating a vortex.
“Instead of just helping me shower,” Vegas says. “Can we go in the bath together? I just want to be with you. I want to be close to you. I don’t -”
Pete has visions of Vegas getting stuck in the small bathtub. He’s sure he could lift him out if he tried, but he hasn’t been training, and his core strength isn’t what it used to be. Instead, he flashes a smile at him and says:
“Of course.” He looks back down at his food, then shouts: “Macau! Turn the game off now. Your food is getting cold.”
***
As Pete fills the bathtub, Vegas perches on the closed lid of the toilet. He’s been quiet all evening since mentioning it. Pete dips his elbow in the water, checking the temperature.
With his good arm, Vegas manages to push his pyjama trousers and underwear down, kicking them off his feet. Pete comes over and helps him with his shirt. All of the dressings are gone on his abdomen now, leaving behind the scars from both the gunshot wounds and the surgery to fix the damage. He’s so skinny now, his stomach indented in at the ribs, the zipper-like scar down his middle jutting out, still purple and angry. The curve of his hipbones stand prominent, sticking out like a mountain range, and his cock hangs heavy between slender thighs. Vegas holds his weaker arm in his mobile one, supporting the weight of it. He takes a deep breath, steadying himself.
Pete undresses in front of Vegas, slowly removing his sweatpants and underwear. He’s happy being naked; most of the time, he prefers it to wearing clothes, enjoying the lack of scratchy material pulling on his skin. Vegas’s eyes immediately are drawn to his cock. Pete turns slightly so he can see the curve of his ass. His eyes widen, and Pete smiles - Vegas is an ass man, through and through - and Pete is happy to provide. He lingers over removing his shirt, then pulls it over his head.
Vegas reaches out for him, stroking his good hand over the belt scars on Pete’s chest. His face falls.
“I’m sorry,” Vegas says in English.
Pete looks down at them; he hardly notices them anymore.
“It’s okay,” Pete says, joining Vegas in running his hand over the raised marks, following his touches like a shadow. “I kinda like them. I like how they are from you.”
Vegas’s face falls. He leans in and places a kiss next to Pete’s nipple, licking across one of the scars. His tongue feels dry and rough against Pete’s skin, like a cat's. He draws in a sharp inhale.
“I hate how they don’t come from love,” Vegas whispers, his breath tickling Pete’s chilled skin. “I hate that I marked you with my own self-loathing.”
Pete runs a hand through Vegas’s hair, allowing him to rest his cheek against Pete’s chest; his breath comes in little puffs, even the act of kissing a little too much for him.
“Shall we get in?” Pete says, looking towards the water in the tub.
He helps Vegas get in first. Vegas groans as he sinks into the warm water, which reaches up to the bottom of his ribcage. He stretches his legs out, bony knees poking up out of the suds.
“You alright?” Pete asks, coming in to join him. He hisses as he lowers himself into the water, resting his legs against Vegas’s.
“You are so sexy, you know that, right?” Vegas says, in English, running his toe up Pete’s side. Pete shivers at the touch, goosebumps flaring on his skin even in the hot water.
Pete looks down at the pink flush of his cock in the water, the sparse hair on his thighs. He’s never really thought of himself as sexy; that was always something other people did, what other people were: Kinn, Vegas, Arm and Pol, Big and Ken, and later Porsche, they are sexy. He is dependable, funny, maybe. The best-friend archetype in one of Tankhun’s dramas. He isn’t sexy. He doesn’t find people attractive in the same way as Arm and Pol, who whispered to each other about how nice somebody’s ass or thighs were as they watched a series. He always felt himself a bit more like Tankhun, a bit repressed, a bit uninterested. When he lies in bed at night, he doesn’t think of the usual things like a hard cock or a wet pussy, he thinks of pool training, he thinks of bruises, and he thinks about being allowed to give up control. He thinks about hands on the back of his neck, sharp impacts over his ass and thighs. That same dark and animal desire is what drew him to Vegas. That fucking blood-splashed transparent poncho and a pair of pilers did more for him than any sculpted body did.
Pete supposes that it is weird, so he doesn’t really talk about it. He’s always been like that. He supposes that he was just made wrong, that something in his childhood twisted him into wanting what he wants.
“Look at me,” Vegas says, voice quiet. Pete does, tilting his head, looking into Vegas’s brown eyes. “Does saying that you’re sexy make you uncomfortable?”
Pete shakes his head. “No. I just -” he trails off.
“Pete,” Vegas looks down at himself in the water. He brings his hand over his abdomen, covering some of the scars. “Do you still find me attractive?”
Pete nods. “Of course, I do.”
“I’ve changed a lot,” Vegas says, voice small. “My body has changed. You’ve had to do things for me that most partners don’t. I can’t - I don’t think I’ll be able to fuck you like I did back in the safehouse, at least not for a while, maybe not ever.” A tremor creeps into his voice, the spectre of self-loathing. “I’m fucking useless.”
“Vegas...” Pete starts.
“I just want to say. If you need that, if you need more than I can give right now. You can go. I don’t want to keep you as a prisoner, Pete.”
Pete reaches forward, presses his finger to Vegas’s lips, shushing him.
“I’ve told you since the start,” Pete says. “Penetrative sex, oral, hand stuff is not everything to me. It’s not even halfway up my hierarchy of needs. What we did in the safehouse, I don’t need that all the time. That’s not why I -”
Vegas splashes his legs in the water and sticks his tongue out of his mouth to lick Pete’s finger.
“Then, how can I show you I love you?” Vegas says, breath hot around Pete’s finger. “I can’t even fucking cook for you at the moment. I can’t make sure you aren’t hungry. You have to go out and buy food.”
Pete considers it. He shuffles forward in the water, so he is in the space inside the V of Vegas’s legs. He turns his head, offering the soft flesh of his neck to Vegas, hooking his arms over Vegas’s shoulders.
“Bite me,” Pete whispers. His pulse increases in tempo in his ears. “I’m giving myself to you. I’m yours.”
Vegas inhales sharply through his nose. He turns his head, licking a long stripe up Pete’s neck, swiping away the condensation from the hot water.
“Oh,” Vegas breathes against him. Sniffing him like he’s a particularly fine wine. “Oh.” He switches to English. “I’m so fucking obsessed with you.”
Pete gasps out little puffs of breath. He feels lightheaded. Vegas licks his neck again, sucking the tender skin into his mouth.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Patience.”
Pete’s cock twitches between his legs, where it sits pressed against Vegas’s thigh. Vegas licks up his neck again, just grazing over his jawbone with his teeth. The water splashes as Pete bucks his hips, rubbing himself against Vegas’s thigh.
“Vegas...” he gasps out, gritting his teeth. “Do it.”
A soft laugh leaves Vegas’s mouth, tickling his skin. Pete whines as it is followed by the sharp sting of Vegas’s teeth digging in deep. He allows his eyes to roll back into his head and lets the burn of pain take him. His mind slows, calms, a steady tide. He whimpers as Vegas licks over where he has sunk his teeth in, and presses his lips to the growing bruise.
Vegas hums softly against his skin. Then dips his head downwards, sinking his teeth into the tense place where his neck meets his shoulder. Pete throws his head back and lets out a whine. His pulse slows, his mind empties, his cock throbs. Again, the sharpness of the bite is followed by the softness of Vegas’s tongue lapping over the mark.
“I wanna go down on you so much,” Vegas whispers against his skin, flicking his tongue into the divot of Pete’s clavicle in a facsimile of his desire.
Pete brushes a hand over Vegas’s damp hair. He thinks of Vegas’s tongue pressing against his hole, how he’d held onto the chains, how he’d let himself go completely in a way he hadn’t before. From what he can remember, he hadn’t even washed prior. Vegas had wanted all of him, in such an intimate way. A smile creeps across Pete’s face - Vegas is such a fucking freak.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” Pete says. “We have time, let yourself heal.”
Vegas whines against his skin. “You’re staying then? We have time?”
“Of course,” Pete says. Really, what he wants to say is: you are my oxygen, you are my gravity, you are the blood in my veins, my blood is in yours, we are forever connected. You can’t leave me, like I can’t leave you. I’ll let you consume me, we’ll consume each other. What would I do without you?
Vegas sniffs at Pete’s skin, licking down over his clavicle to the meat of his shoulder. He shifts his leg, and the pleasure blooms more in Pete’s cock. Vegas bites down again, harder, sinking his incisors in. Pete sucks in air through his teeth. Gently, Vegas takes Pete’s hand, unfurls his tightly clasped fingers, and places them on his cock. Pete bites down on his bottom lip as Vegas gently flexes the muscle in his wrist. He’s not a huge fan of jacking himself off; it always feels a bit weird. He gets in his head about it, starts to feel his fingers too much, begins to think of spicy fermented pork wrapped in plastic.
“My motion isn’t too good with the way my shoulder and arm are,” Vegas whispers against Pete’s shoulder. “I’ve never been too good with my non-dominant hand.”
Pete looks down.
“Want to feel you,” he gasps out. “Here.” Pete adjusts Vegas’s good hand, arranging Vegas’s fingers so his hand creates a channel for him to fuck into. Pete places his own hand on top to assist with the movement. He shifts his hips, moving slowly in and out.
“Oh... wow,” Vegas says, completely sincere.
He’s - Pete swallows - he’s so uncool sometimes it makes Pete’s heart swell.
Pete reaches behind himself, steadying himself on the side of the bath as he slowly fucks his cock into the waiting channel of Vegas’s hand.
“Fucking, bite me,” Pete hisses, as the pleasure builds. He smiles his I’m-against-the-ropes, signature grin. “Harder than before. I want to really feel it.”
Vegas looks up at him through half-lidded eyes and smiles a wild, feral smile. He dips his head, bares his teeth, and sinks them deep into Pete’s shoulder. White-hot pain blooms there, spreading like molten metal down his arm, settling in his belly, tracing down like electricity to his cock. Mixed with the warm pleasure - it’s fucking everything. Vegas sucks in another breath, and then bites down again - even harder this time.
Pete throws his head back and howls. The vague thought that he hopes Macau has his headset on crosses his mind before all thoughts disappear from his brain, replaced by pure white, fizzing static. Pete’s hand slips against the side of the bath as he tries to hold himself upright. He doesn't want to fall against Vegas and hurt him. He doesn’t want to fall backwards and brain himself on the porcelain.
“Fuck,” Vegas gasps out. “I love you, you absolute fucking freak.”
Once Pete can prise his eyes open, he looks down to see he’s come across Vegas’s arm, and over to his chest, some of it has hit the bathwater, leaving a milky oil spill on the surface. He’s been so focused on the sweetness of the pain, he hasn’t even noticed his orgasm has snuck up on him. Vegas breathes hard, his lips red. Pain throbs in Pete’s shoulder, across the side of his neck, and he lets himself settle into it, allowing himself to float. Vegas kisses and licks over where he has bitten, soothing the tender flesh.
“Thank you,” Pete gasps out, melting into Vegas’s hold. “Thank you.”
“Fuck,” Vegas gasps. A flush colours his cheeks, his chest rises and falls rapidly. “I must have made a lot of merit in my past life.”
Once his breathing settles, Pete reaches down, stroking Vegas’s inner thigh, up to where his balls sit against the bottom of the tub. He finds him still soft and flaccid.
“Do you want me to?” Pete asks.
Vegas shakes his head.
“It doesn’t always do what I want it to these days. It doesn’t mean I’m not turned on. But -”
Pete leans in and presses a kiss to his lips.
“We can -” he starts. “I can, if it will make you feel good.”
“I’m good,” Vegas replies. He brings his hand over his lower abdomen and sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m a little sore. Maybe... maybe you can just wash my hair.”
Pete coaxes Vegas to turn around. He brings the handheld shower down and begins to soap his hair, working the lather into his scalp, then rinsing it out. Using the washcloth, Pete wipes Vegas down, cleaning over the scars on his stomach, over his shoulder, and around to the coarse hair under his armpits.
“Thank you,” Vegas whispers afterwards. He sits perched on the side of the bath, wrapped in a fluffy white towel, watching Pete lather shampoo into his own hair.
Pete dries Vegas’s hair in the living room afterwards. He falls asleep halfway through, his head dropping to his shoulder. Pete lifts Vegas’s legs onto the sofa and covers him with a blanket. He looks fragile, curled up and blowing out little snores.
Pete pads through to the bathroom, looks at the blooming bruises on his neck and across his shoulder in the mirror. He presses on them, inhales at the ache, and turns to see how they look different in the changing light.
He goes back through to the living room, sits on the sofa next to Vegas, lifts his feet up to rest them over his lap, and runs a hand through his hair.
“I do love you, you know,” Pete whispers to his sleeping form. “I just can’t quite say it to you yet.”
Vegas snores and twitches. Pete turns on the TV and watches the ten o'clock news.
***
Pete wakes late the next morning to find what has become Vegas’s side of the bed empty. Panic grips him immediately. It’s light in the room, the shutters half open. The smell of something savoury drifts in. If Macau is cooking, he’ll set the fucking place on fire. Pete jumps out of bed, grabs Vegas’s robe from the back of the door.
“Vegas?” He calls out of the door. Maybe he’s in the toilet? But the bathroom door is open. Macau’s door is still shut, and he can hear him snoring. Both brothers snore like freight trains.
Pete pads through into the main area of the apartment to see Vegas standing in front of the stove, frying something. The kitchen is a mess.
“What are you doing?”
Vegas whips around, nearly sending the pan crashing to the floor.
“Shit, you’re up,” Vegas says. “I’m making you an omelette. I was going to bring it to you in bed, but -“
“How?” Pete asks. Vegas can barely hold the weight of his own arm, never mind a knife. The last thing Pete needs is for Vegas to sever one of his fingers.
Vegas beckons him closer, showing him a plastic box with some kind of grid chopping mechanism inside and a handle to push down.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Vegas says, proud. “I was talking to my OT about cooking and stuff, and she recommended this. Macau ordered it from Shopee.”
“Yeah, it’s good,” Pete says, looking at the contraption.
Vegas demonstrates. He puts a chilli inside the lid and presses down with the palm of his hand, leaving behind little neat cubes in the box.
“Could probably put somebody’s dick in here,” Vegas says, pushing down on the lid again, harder this time, a wry smile on his face. “Maybe I’ll add it to my briefcase of tricks.”
Little cock cubes are not an image Pete wanted to have in his head this morning. He scrubs his hand over his face, trying to wake himself, trying not to think of Spam.
“Have you been sitting?” He asks Vegas. “You’ve been taking breaks?”
Vegas nods, pointing to one of the barstools. “Yeah, I’ve been resting in between stuff, don’t worry. Oh, and I dropped an egg on the floor over there, might need a hand to pick up the shell, and the egg. I tried, but I kinda just mashed it into the tile.” Vegas points to the dining table. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” Pete says, taking a seat. His stomach growls. Vegas turns on the coffee machine, setting it to brew a pot. Pete thinks of the safehouse, how the smells of cooking used to come in through the door. How his mouth used to water, how, despite being tied up and held captive, in those moments, he felt unusually safe.
He watches as Vegas begins to fry the omelette, adding the egg to the cooked vegetables in the pan. Vegas insists on bringing it over, balancing it precariously on the forearm of his weaker side, hugging the bowl to his body. It looks more like scrambled eggs with some vegetables mixed in.
“How does it look?” Vegas asks. He looks a bit despondent. “It’s a bit shit, right? Maybe omelette wasn’t the best idea.”
“Looks delicious.” Pete picks up his fork and spoon and dives in. It’s delicious, flavourful with onions and garlic chives, and bird's eye chilli. There’s a small bit of eggshell in it, but he doesn’t care. It tastes incredible.
Vegas watches him with bated breath.
“I just want to look after you,” Vegas says, settling down at the table. “You’ve done so much for me. I want to make sure you are fed. I want to make sure you are comfortable, Pete.”
Pete could cry at the flavour, but also at the care. He exhales fully for the first time in what feels like ages.
“Come here,” Pete says, and Vegas leans over the table. Pete kisses him, open-mouthed and messy. The robe slips off one of his shoulders, revealing the yellowing bruise in the shape of Vegas’s bite.
“I’ve marked you,” Vegas says, reaching over with his good hand to brush his fingers over it. He moves up to the mark on his neck.
“I like it,” Pete says. “I like knowing they are from you.”
Vegas digs his thumb into the bruise on his neck, and Pete hisses, his cock twitches in his pants; if Vegas did it again, he might just come there and then.
“My good boy,” Vegas whispers. Pete melts, spooning another mouthful of omelette past his lips. “Eat your breakfast.”
“I love you,” Pete says. It just comes out, sitting heavy, sucking the air out of the room, like carbon monoxide.
Vegas blinks at him across the table, slow like a family housecat.
“You haven’t said that before,” he says. “Were you waiting for me to feed you?”
Pete just smiles at him, and eats another spoonful.
***
Gradually, they begin to figure out what their new lives will look like.
The background mafia business of the minor family hums around them like an angry wasp nest in a garage, satisfied to be ignored as long as it doesn’t encroach on the sanctity of their apartment. The only time Pete considers it is when he meets Porsche occasionally, and they go for a drink at Yok’s bar. Each time Porsche looks more drained and drawn.
Cooking becomes Vegas’s thing. Boxes arrive from Shopee most days, containing lighter frying pans, more chopping boxes, and non-slip chopping boards. Vegas seems happier, content that he is able to provide. The aunties at the food stalls start to comment that Pete is not coming around as much. Pete smiles at them, reassures them that he’s being fed.
Pete brings Vegas his pain relief in the morning, organises his numerous daily medications, helps him get dressed, helps him wash his hair in the shower, and does his shoulder exercises with him. Pete worries sometimes that Vegas is pushing himself too hard. He still sleeps a lot, having to have a nap most days in the afternoon. They have sex twice. The first time consists of a mutual handjob in the shower where Pete comes but Vegas doesn’t. The second time Pete attempts to give Vegas a blowjob, but Vegas struggles to stay hard and gets frustrated. After trying to persevere, both of them are too strung out and stressed to do anything further. More often, they just cuddle in bed while Vegas bites Pete’s shoulder and chest. For Pete, it’s enough for now, but he can tell Vegas is moody, restless and insecure.
Macau spends most of his time in his room, playing video games. He hasn’t gone back to school yet. Pete thinks he should just go back next semester. Vegas thinks he needs to continue his education. Pete shushes him. The kid has been through a lot - he deserves some time to just be.
It’s painfully clear that Macau is struggling. Vegas tries to talk to him, but Macau just insists he’s fine and goes to warm up a heat pack for Vegas’s stomach. Pete thinks of the night Macau woke him up in the hospital, sweaty and panicking. He doesn’t know how to talk to the kid, but finds himself fussing over him, making sure he’s eating enough, encouraging him to go outside at least once a week. Even with that, Macau ends up spending more time in his room, getting moody, snapping at Vegas. The tension finally bubbles over, leading to Macau throwing a glass of water over Vegas, and Vegas weakly throwing a sodden hardback copy of Paradise Lost at Macau.
Pete gives Macau half an hour to cool off, then knocks on his door and pushes it open before Macau has a chance to stop him from entering.
“Do you want to talk?” Pete asks, standing in the doorway.
“No,” Macau huffs, staring at his game.
“You sure?” Pete says, coming and sitting down on the bed next to him. “Something is bothering you.”
Macau pauses his game, pulls his knees up to his chest.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not, Macau.”
A silence falls between them.
“I miss my dad,” Macau says, finally. “I feel bad for missing him. He wasn’t nice. Sometimes, I wonder if he ever even loved me. He was so harsh to hia. I saw the bruises he left on him, I’m sure he did worse as well...”
“He was still your dad, though,” Pete says. “It’s okay to have complex feelings about him.”
“Yeah,” Macau sniffs. “I’m sixteen, and I’m an orphan. My friends at school, they all... they just don’t understand. That’s why I can’t go back yet. They are worried about fucking exams and getting a kiss, and I... Well, I just feel a bit out of sync, a bit out of time. I feel older, but then some days I feel like I am five years old.”
“You’ve been through a lot.” Pete inches a little closer to him on the bed. “I was an orphan at sixteen, too.”
Macau looks down at his knees and pulls his long-sleeved shirt down over his hands.
“What did you do?”
Pete doesn’t think: I ran away to Bangkok to become a bodyguard for the gang who killed my father, is an appropriate answer, so he says: “I figured it out. You will too, Macau.”
“Okay, okay, Pete.” Macau sniffs, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I also don’t want to show Vegas I’m hurting,” Macau continues. “He’s got enough going on. He doesn’t need worrying about me added to it.”
“He’d want to know you are alright,” Pete says. “He’s your brother.”
“I am.” Macau stops, blowing out a long breath. “Pete, I’m fine, honestly. I’m just processing everything.”
Pete claps a hand on Macau’s knee. “Okay then,” he says, then looks back to the TV screen. “What are you playing?”
“Just Fortnite,” Macau replies.
“Can I watch?”
Macau nods and unpauses the game.
Pete just sits with him; that’s all he knows how to do.
Over the next few weeks, Vegas cooks, the three of them watch dramas together, and Pete plays video games with Macau. Macau starts to come out of his room more. One evening, after Pete has been in the shower, he hears Macau and Vegas both talking in the younger’s room. Pete leaves them to their conversation and goes to watch a football game on the TV in the living room. When he goes to check on them later, both of them are fast asleep in Macau’s bed. Pete smiles, pulls a blanket over the two of them, and slips out of the room.
They fall into their own quiet routines, a little mismatched family.
***
They go to Vegas’s six-month appointment. Pete sits and holds Vegas’s hand as the doctor tells him that any improvement is unlikely. Now, they should focus on not injuring himself further, doing gentle exercise to strengthen his lungs, continuing his shoulder physio, and focusing on adaptation rather than complete recovery. He might need another stomach surgery in a couple of months to remove some adhesions which are still causing him pain, but they’ll see how he goes.
Vegas looks down at the doctor's desk, as if the cord of the phone is the most interesting thing in the world. The doctor has a Newton’s Cradle on his desk, and it clicks backwards and forwards. Pete grinds his teeth at the sound.
The doctor tells Vegas he should be thankful, that he’s lucky he can breathe without oxygen, he can eat a (semi) normal diet, that he’s not using the walker anymore, and that he can shit. As if that’s lucky somehow. As if he should feel grateful.
“And you’re getting on well with the intermittent catheters?” the doctor says, looking down at his notes.
Vegas nods and squeezes Pete’s hand.
“Doctor,” Vegas starts, an unusual awkwardness in his voice. “What about um - sexual activity?”
“Oh,” the doctor says. “Well, everything internally is healed. As long as you have no pain, I can’t see that there would be any restrictions; you just don’t want to overexert yourself. Just listen to your body, Khun Kornwit.” The doctor’s eyes track over to Pete. “I’m sure Khun Saengtham here is very understanding.”
Pete feels his cheeks darken. He really doesn’t want to talk about their sex life with this doctor.
“I’m, um... there are some performance issues,” Vegas continues.
Pete curls his toes in his shoes. He wonders if there is a secret passage under the medical wing that he can just fall into. Maybe there is a secret code to open the trapdoor. A safeword. Yes, a safeword would be great right now.
“Oh. Well, you are still on a lot of opioid pain relief, and your body has had a major injury. It can be quite common for men, following what you have been through. I can prescribe you some tablets which might help if you wish, I’ll give you a script.”
“Oh, okay,” Vegas says, looking down.
“Of course, there are other aids. These days, you can find many things online -”
It’s all too much for Pete. He jumps to his feet, Vegas looks at him as he flashes a wide, disarming smile to the doctor, laughing his awkward laugh.
“Thank you, doctor,” he babbles, bowing politely. “Thank you, this has been so helpful. We’ll see you in two months, right?”
Pete holds his hand out to Vegas, almost dragging him out of the chair.
“Of course,” the doctor says, handing Pete the prescription. “You should feel very grateful, Khun Theerapanyakun; your recovery is going very well.”
They sit in silence as Pete drives them back to the minor family compound. The paper bag from the pharmacy sits in the cupholder.
“You don’t have to feel grateful,” Pete says, looking forward to the road. “You don’t have to feel grateful for any of this.”
Vegas reaches out with his good hand to place his palm on Pete’s knee.
“The only thing I feel grateful about from all of this is you.”
***
They try the tablets.
Pete gets himself prepped in the bathroom, fingering lube inside himself, so Vegas doesn’t have to wear himself out with prep. This is more for Vegas than him. Of course, he enjoys being fucked, but it isn’t something he misses or pines for. Instead, he dreams of rope, of being restrained, of Vegas’s teeth pressing into his shoulder...
He just wants Vegas to stop moping around. To stop saying he’s useless. To stop asking if he’s going to leave him.
Perhaps fucking him in the arse is what will solve the problem.
Pete walks freely naked from the bathroom to the bedroom as Macau is out playing football with Porchay. He’s been going out with him more, apparently they are friends now.
Vegas sits on the bed, a glass of water and a foil blister pack on the table, looking awkward.
“I’m not sure I like this,” Vegas says. “This feels weird. It feels really medical.”
“It’s okay,” Pete replies.
Vegas looks at him with big uncertain eyes and whispers, “Is it?”
Pete nods and pads over to the bed. He places his hands on the bottom, and begins to crawl towards Vegas. His cock drags along the duvet, twitching under him.
“Is it working?” Pete asks, pressing a kiss to Vegas’s lips. He dips down and goes to pull the duvet off Vegas’s lap with his teeth.
Vegas nods and squeezes his eyes closed.
“I’m hard, yeah. It took a bit, but I am.”
Pete pulls the duvet back, underneath Vegas’s cock sits half erect. Pete leans down and places a kiss on the head, swirling his tongue around. He tastes of salt and sweat. He opens the condom packet and slips it on.
“Pete,” Vegas whines. “If you want me to fuck you, get on with it. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last.”
“Where would be good for you?” Pete asks. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Vegas still has his eyes closed.
“Pete...” he gasps out.
“Maybe if I ride you?” Pete suggests. “Then I’m doing most of the movement.”
Vegas nods.
“Open your eyes,” Pete coaxes him. “Look at me, Vegas?” Vegas obliges. Pete cups his jaw in his hand. “There you are,” he whispers. “There you are.”
Pete reaches behind himself and takes Vegas’s cock in his hand, giving it a few strokes. He’s thick, warm in his palm. He smears more lube on top of the condom, hovers above Vegas’s lap, and lines him up with his hole.
“Did you put enough lube inside?” Vegas asks, worry passing over his face. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Pete nods as he pushes the spongy head of Vegas’s cock against his wet hole. He gasps as he eases Vegas’s cock inside. Breathing through it, Pete cants his hips a few times, opening himself up on just the first inch. Then, he sinks down, his arms around Vegas’s neck. The stretch punches a moan out of him.
“Feel good?” Pete asks.
Vegas nods, his eyes are wet. He reaches out for Pete’s face, cupping his cheek.
Pete rocks back and forth, starting slow. The lube squelches inside of him. His eyes flutter closed as he slowly increases the pace, trying to angle it so Vegas’s cock hits his prostate. His own cock is half-hard, just beginning to rise against his stomach. He settles into the stretch, the feeling of his nerves singing inside.
“Fuck, Vegas,” Pete gasps out. “I’ve -”
He begins to fuck up and down with more earnestness, his hands wrapping around where Vegas’s hair curls at the nape of his neck.
Vegas cries out under him, and it draws Pete to a stop; it’s not a cry of pleasure, but rather a short, sharp little squeak of pain. And not the fun kind.
“Vegas?” he asks.
“Keep going,” Vegas hisses through gritted teeth. “I don’t -”
Pete doesn’t move. “Vegas, are you sure?”
“Pete, don’t - don’t fucking stop.”
Pete lifts himself once more. Vegas’s nails dig into his back, scratching down his spine. Pete’s eyes flutter closed as Vegas’s cock presses in just the right place against his prostate.
“Oh shit, Pete...” Vegas cries out. “Stop. Stop. I’m - ow. Fucking, ow.”
Pete stops immediately, lifting himself off of Vegas’s cock so quickly that it burns and stings. Vegas hunches over, clutching his lower abdomen, breathing heavily. Pete wraps an arm around his shoulder, holding him. Vegas’s eyes screw up in pain, and he bites his lip. He thumps his fist against the sheet, his weaker arm spasms across his chest.
“Shit,” he gasps out. “Fucking hell...”
“You okay?”
“My stomach,” Vegas sniffs. “Think I pulled something. It’s -”
Pete eases him back onto the cushions.
“Lie back,” he says. “Does it still hurt?”
“Yes, it still fucking hurts...” Vegas hisses. He’s sobbing now, breaths coming quick, sucking in air like he can’t get enough oxygen into his damaged lungs.
“Do you think we need to call somebody?” Pete asks, worried. They are going to have to go to the hospital, they are going to have to explain they’ve ripped Vegas’s intestine or something while trying to fuck. That fucking doctor is going to say they should have used an ‘aid’ they bought online. Maybe Vegas will die, maybe Pete will kill himself, that sounds preferable to whatever conversation he is imagining they are going to have. “Vegas?” Panic rises in Pete’s voice. “Do you need me to call the doctor?”
Vegas shakes his head. “No, it’s getting better. Can you - Can you just get my oxycodone?”
Pete reaches over to the bedside table, draws the dose of the medication up into the syringe and puts it in Vegas’s mouth, pressing the plunger. He lies down next to Vegas, snuggled up against him, trying to provide whatever comfort he can, as Vegas grits his teeth and tries to slow his breathing.
“Fuck, and my fucking dick is still half hard,” Vegas hisses. “I hate this shit...”
“It’s okay,” Pete tries to soothe him, stroking his hair.
“You looked so sexy as well,” Vegas sighs, slipping into English.
“It’s alright,” Pete brushes some of the hair back from Vegas’s eyes. “How are you feeling?”
Vegas sniffs, wiping where tears have run down his face.
“Better, thanks.” He reaches out for Pete with his good arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry,” Pete says. “Please don’t say sorry.”
“I just want to make you feel good. I’m just...”
“Vegas...”
“I can’t even fuck you, Pete,” Vegas says, tone shifting to anger, his good arm flops over his face, hiding his eyes. “Why the fuck are you still here? I can’t get it up, and when I can, I’m bent over in pain.”
Pete sits up, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Maybe because I love you, Vegas,” Pete snaps. The lube is drying inside of him, making him feel itchy.
“But I can’t give you -”
“Can’t I just fucking love you?” Pete snaps again. “It doesn’t have to be so fucking transactional. Can’t you just accept my love? Do you think so little of me? Why can’t you just trust me?”
“Pete...” Vegas starts, trying to grab at him as he stands and gets off the bed.
“I’m going to wash some of this fucking lube out of my arse.” Pete storms out to the bathroom, leaving Vegas in the bedroom.
Pete spends a long time in the shower, trying to calm his growing rage, allowing the water to wash over him as he digs the drying lube out of his hole. He soaps up his body, getting into every crevice. Vegas doesn’t come through to him, leaving him alone.
He’s so annoyed at him. He just wishes that Vegas would trust him. That he wouldn’t think he was going to run off all the time. It makes him feel that Vegas looks down on him, that he’s not loyal, that he’s only here for some selfish reason.
Pete wraps his hand around his neck and squeezes until he sees stars. He wishes he had a collar, then maybe Vegas would trust that he wasn’t going anywhere. He traces his fingers over the fading bite marks on one of his pecs, marks Vegas left just a week ago. They didn’t fuck then, Vegas just bit Pete’s chest, and then they cuddled after. It was all he needed. Why the fuck can’t Vegas see that? Is he so invisible?
As Pete steps out of the bathroom, the smell of something garlicky and spicy flows out from the kitchen. Pete lingers in the entranceway; Vegas sits on his stool by the kitchen bench, the chopping contraption in front of him, slamming the lid down with the palm of his hand.
Crack. Crack.
It sounds like a belt. The hairs rise on Pete’s neck, something dark and small unfurls within him.
Vegas has his head down; he’s watching a recipe video in English on his iPad. The spice coming from the pan makes Pete’s eyes water. He can smell and hear sizzling pork. Vegas tips something from the box into the pan. Pete comes up behind Vegas, placing a hand on his hip.
“Kua Kling?” Pete asks, resting his head on Vegas’s good shoulder. “Smells good.” His grandmother used to make this for him as a child.
Vegas nods sadly; he’s still subdued.
“How are you feeling?” Pete asks him, bringing his hand around to rest it on his lower abdomen.
“Better,” Vegas huffs.
“You should be resting.”
“I wanted to cook for you.”
Pete peers over to the ground meat in the pan, red with curry paste and chillis. It looks delicious.
“You can’t eat this?”
Vegas just huffs again. “I’m making it for you. I’m not hungry.”
Pete gets a bowl from the cupboard and places it down next to the stove.
“While we eat,” he says. “Can we talk?”
Vegas stops stirring, his face falls, and abandonment flashes over his expression like lightning.
“Okay,” he replies.
“I just want to talk about before; I want to reassure you.”
Pete goes and sets the table, getting a spoon and a fork out. Vegas brings the food over. He sits opposite Pete at the other end of the table, like they are in a boardroom and not two boyfriends eating together.
“Are you leaving me?” Vegas asks.
Pete looks up from his food. The meat sits on his spoon. He hasn’t even tasted it yet.
“I’m not even going to answer that question, Vegas.”
Vegas doesn’t respond and looks down at the table. He reaches his good arm across to hold Pete’s hand on the tabletop. With his free hand, Pete spoons some of the food into his mouth. His nerves sing as the spice burns his taste buds; it tastes like home, it tastes like comfort.
“I want you to tell me what your problem is?” Pete starts once he’s swallowed his mouthful. “Have I not shown you I’m loyal? I’ve been with you throughout all this, and before, even with the before Vegas, I’m still fucking here. Do you doubt me so much that you think it’s not my choice?”
Vegas’s eyes soften.
“I just - I just struggle to see why you would want to be with me? I really hurt you, I tortured you...”
Pete nods. “You did. And I’m still here.”
“Now, I’m - Well, I’m no good. I’m reliant. I just worry I can’t give you everything you deserve.”
Pete takes another spoonful of his food, chews and swallows. “I never go hungry when I am with you, Vegas. That’s enough for me.”
Vegas rubs over the top of Pete’s hand with his thumb.
“Is it?”
“It is. I love you. I care about Macau. We are - Whatever we are.”
Vegas looks down, looking sullen.
“I love you, too.”
“Can we talk about the sex?” Pete asks. “That seems to be a hang-up of yours.”
“You’ll want sex,” Vegas says. He looks down. “People want sex. People need sex. I can’t give -”
“I don’t care about you fucking me, Vegas. Yes, it’s nice, and I enjoy it, and I enjoy it because you enjoy it. But I’m not going to leave you over it.”
Vegas crosses his arms. “What do you want then, Pete? What can I give you?”
Pete moves his food around on his plate with his spoon.
“I just want to be yours, Vegas,” he says. “I want to give everything of myself to you.”
“Okay,” Vegas starts. “And what if how I am now can’t provide everything you need?”
“I don’t need much, Vegas,” Pete says and then takes another mouthful of food. “I just need to give myself to you. What we have been doing when you bite me, that’s what I need.”
“You want me to hurt you?” Vegas narrows his eyes. “Pete...”
Pete nods, slowly.
“Pete. I can’t do things I used to do before,” Vegas continues. Pete thinks of all the equipment Vegas had back at the minor family house; none of that has made its way to their small apartment. Maybe Porsche and Kinn are making use of it, exploring some new avenues of their relationship. Good luck to them. “I feel bad that I want to hurt you. I hurt you before out of my own selfishness.”
“You aren’t a freak for being a sadist,” Pete says. “I’m not a freak for being a masochist.” He thinks of Arm, who, after Pete surfaced red-faced and hard during pool training, smirked at him, with his little: I know what you are, smile. “I want it. You are doing it because it’s what I want. I want to be tied up by you, I want you to bite me, I want you to make me scream. I want you to hurt me because that makes me feel the closest to you. I want to give that to you.”
Vegas’s eyes darken.
“Okay. Well, I can’t exactly do much impact play stuff with you the way I am now. I don’t think I would even be able to tie you up properly. There’s technique, you know, Pete, I can’t just fuck around and find out. Somebody else would be able to do it better than me. They’d be able to give you what you need.”
“Then, we’ll fucking adapt, Vegas,” Pete snaps, it comes out a bit harsher than he expected. “Isn’t that what we have been doing since you got injured? Do you think so little of me that you think I won’t work with you? That it’s some fucking dom sex-god I want rather than you. I only want you, Vegas, I want this you, not a fucking performance.”
“Okay, okay,” Vegas says and watches intently as Pete shovels more of his food into his mouth. “Sorry, I’m just. I always had to be a certain way. Being vulnerable like this... It’s new for me.”
“You can be vulnerable with me,” Pete replies. “I want you to be vulnerable with me.”
“Okay,” Vegas says again. “I’ll - I’ll try.”
Pete looks down at his food and begins finishing the rest of it.
“Is there anything in particular you want to do?” he asks Vegas.
Vegas’s eyes narrow, the corners of his lips turn upwards in a half-smile.
“I want to eat you out again,” he says. “I want to... I want you restrained somehow. I want to control when you come, I want to make you come until you can’t anymore. Until you are begging for me to stop.”
Pete’s cheeks darken, arousal squirms in his gut.
“Would it make you feel better if I planned something?” Pete asks. “Less like you are forcing it on me. Will it make you trust me that this is my choice?”
Vegas nods.
“Okay,” Pete says, “I’ll figure it out.”
***
Pete does the only thing he knows how to do: he rings Arm, the only other person in his life who he knows has similar proclivities.
“Arm,” he says. “You free to talk?”
Arm’s tone is jovial on the phone.
“Pete, how are you? What do you need? Do you miss Pol and me?”
“I need you to hook me up.”
“What do you need, Pete? You need a bug to spy on Vegas?”
“No,” Pete sighs, steeling himself. “I need -”
“A USB with a computer wiping virus on it. Oh, Pete, don’t tell me you have been watching porn on the bodyguard's WiFi? Aren’t you not Vegas’s boy now, don’t you have your own WiFi?”
“No. I need -” Pete grits his teeth. “I need your advice on sex toys.”
So, Pete finds himself in Arm’s room, Arm pulling various bags out from underneath his bed. Pete sits awkwardly on the edge of the bed as Arm begins to unzip the bags. Arm’s whole thing is that he’s kind of a nerd; he knows everything about computers, tracking devices, and security systems. His special skill is that you can give him a random number and he can tell you which Pokémon that is from the Pokedex. He also happens to know most things there about sex toys, sex furniture, and bondage products. He’s a bit of a connoisseur, a sex guide, a caring prescence, for the younger - and older - bodyguards.
“What are you thinking?” Arm says, twisting back to look at Pete. “Something big.” He whips out a large purple fluorescent dildo and waves it towards Pete like it’s a sword; the soft silicone bounces back and forth. The balls at the bottom are big and veiny.
Pete stares at it, horrified. “Put that away. Fucks sake, Arm, why do you even have that?”
Arm looks at it, wiggles it again, a wry smile on his face.
“It’s surprisingly nice. Gotta have your black belt though, it’s only for professionals.”
“I hate it, thanks.”
Arm’s expression turns serious.
“No, seriously, Pete, what are you looking for?”
Pete takes a deep breath.
“Well, Vegas has some mobility issues following his injury; he has limited movement in his dominant shoulder, arm and hand. So, I was maybe thinking about something with a remote control. I... I like restraints, but Vegas’s shoulder and arm aren’t the best for tying knots at the moment. We need something he can get me out of and into. I could get myself out, but -”
“But where’s the fun in that?” Arm concludes. He rummages through the bags again. “Let me see...” He pulls out a couple of leather harnesses, some padded cuffs, and a few different connectors. “Do you like prostate stimulation, Pete?” Arm says, as if he is asking Pete if he wants extra chilli on his food.
Pete’s cheeks darken, and he shuffles his feet on the floor.
“Yeah, I guess,” he replies.
Arm scratches his chin. “Hmm, I do have a few remote-controlled prostate massagers. Some of them are better than others. The Bluetooth on some... so bad. I wrote to one of the companies, you know. They fixed it.”
“Arm,” Pete puts his head in his hands. “I don’t care about the Bluetooth connection. I just want something with a remote.”
“Any size preference?” Arm asks.
Pete considers it. “Just... regular, I guess?”
Arm reaches inside the bag again, bringing out a long fabric roll that looks like it’s for a set of knives or ammunition. He unfurls it on the floor like a scroll. Pete stares down at it, his eyes trying to take in the sheer amount of butt toys. They are all organised in size and shape order.
“Have a look,” Arm says, with a flourish.
Pete just continues staring at them.
“Arm, why do you have an armoury of butt plugs?”
Arm shrugs.
“Why not? I like to be organised.” He points to one section. “These are the remote-controlled prostate-focused ones.”
Pete takes the middle one in his hand, feeling the weight of it on his palm. It’s got some heft, but the silicone feels nice and smooth. It’s got a good curve to it for optimum prostate stimulation. Arm picks up the remote and presses it. The device starts buzzing in Pete’s hand. Inside the silicone, it has two little ball bearings which move up and down the short shaft.
“It has six patterns,” Arm says. “Ten different strength levels.” Arm ramps it up, and the device nearly buzzes off Pete’s hand. “The ball bearings are my favourite bit. It’s great for stimulation both inside and out.”
“Yeah, this one is good,” Pete says. He doesn’t want this conversation to go on any longer than it has to. “I like it.”
“It’s one of my favourites.” Arm leans further under his bed, hands Pete a closed box. “I have a spare, actually, I have three spares. It’s one I tend to give away a lot.”
Pete smiles at it.
“Thanks,” he says.
Arm turns back towards the bag. “You wanted some restraints?”
Pete nods. “Yeah, nothing metal though. I don’t want a too handcuffy, handcuff, if you know what I mean.”
“Something soft then. How do you feel about harnesses?” He looks at the various leather garments he has laid out on the floor and picks up a pair of padded leather cuffs. “I can put some chunkier quick-release clips on for you. They might be easier for Khun Vegas to use with his non-dominant hand.” He holds up a harness. “Here, let me try this on for you. It’s bulldog style, nothing too extreme.”
Arm coaxes Pete to stand and begins fastening the harness around his shoulders, under his arms, over the top of his t-shirt. It’s made of a buttery padded leather, with black hardware. The main strap crosses over Pete’s pecs, pushing them together slightly. A metal O-ring connector hangs down from the centre. Another strap goes across his back, with another O-ring connector in the middle. Pete exhales as Arm tightens the buckles so it fits. It feels like a hug, just lightly compressing his chest.
“Feels nice?” Arm says.
Pete nods; his mind is already calming.
“Hold your arms out for me.” Gently, Arm fastens the matching leather cuffs around Pete’s wrists, then attaches them with a loop of leather, fixed together in the middle with a metal clip. Using one of his hands, Arm unclips it, letting the two cuffs fall apart, then he clips it back on with one hand. “Does that look like it would be okay for Vegas?” he asks.
“Yeah, looks good,” Pete says.
Arm smiles and manoeuvres Pete’s hand so he can hook the cuffs through the loop at the back of the harness, pulling Pete’s arms behind his back. Pete exhales heavily.
“So, he can have you this way,” Arm says. He releases the clip, moving Pete’s hands around to his front, threading the connecting piece of the cuffs through the loop on the front. “Or this way.”
“It’s perfect,” Pete says.
Arm smiles at him again. “You look good, mate. It suits you.” He unclips Pete, then pulls on the front loop. “He can throw you around a bit with these as well. Makes it easy to move you one-handed, too.”
“You sure I’m okay to have these?” Pete asks. They look really high quality, very expensive.
“Yeah, of course,” Arm says. “I do product reviews, so I get sent stuff.” He winks. “I’m more of a latex man, anyway. I like the more sporty style. Jocks and stuff, you know.” A smile spreads over Arm’s face.
“God, Arm, too much information,” Pete winces as Arm unclips him out of the harness, as if they haven’t just been discussing the intricacies of sex toys for the last half an hour.
Arm puts the goods into a tote bag for Pete.
“Good luck,” he says, as Pete heads out of the bodyguard quarters to the car park. “Have fun! Be safe! Remember RACK! Use a condom!”
“Oh fuck off, Arm,” Pete grumbles.
***
“I’ve planned it,” Pete says as Vegas chops an onion in his box chopper. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”
A smile crosses Vegas’s face.
“What do you have planned?”
“Nothing extreme, but maybe I’ve got us a toy. So you can keep your promise of controlling my orgasms, and making me come until I can’t anymore.” He leans in, whispering in Vegas’s ear. “And, maybe, I’ve got something to keep me in place.”
Vegas freezes, the box chopper halfway pushed down, mouth hanging open.
“I fucking love you,” he says. “Macau is going out with Porchay tomorrow. Shall we?”
Pete leans in and presses a kiss to the back of Vegas’s neck. The kitchen smells of onion, and his eyes water.
“If you are feeling up to it, yes?”
Vegas nods. “I am. I’m excited.”
“Okay, tomorrow then. If you don’t feel good tomorrow, we’ll do it a different day. There’s no pressure. Just when we are both up to it.”
Vegas smiles and Pete helps him transfer the chopped onion to the pan.
***
Pete puts the chest harness on in the bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror, he likes how it frames his pecs. The leather feels cool against his skin, soft and buttery. It hugs him in just the right way, almost like it's holding all the broken parts of him together. He puts the cuffs around his wrist, leaving the connector hanging from one of them, so Vegas can decide where he’s going to be tied to. He keeps his underwear on; Vegas can remove that later.
He turns in the mirror, looking at himself from the front, the side, the back. He smiles. He thinks he looks sexy. That’s new.
He put the new toy in Vegas’s bedside drawer before heading to the bathroom to get cleaned up earlier, then left Vegas to get ready himself.
Pete takes a deep breath and exits the bathroom. He heads through to the bedroom, pushes the door open to see Vegas sitting on the bed, shirtless. The white duvet pillows around him like a cloud, clinging to his crossed legs. He’s arranged pillows around himself for extra support. His eyes open wide, immediately drawn to the harness.
“Holy shit, Pete,” he says. “Where did you get that?”
“I got good advice from a friend,” Pete smiles. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” Vegas whispers. “You look so fucking sexy.”
Pete holds his wrists out, turning them so Vegas can admire the leather.
“Do you like the cuffs?” he asks.
“Yeah, Pete.” Vegas is almost drooling. “They are so - holy fuck.”
Vegas beckons him forward, signalling for Pete to come onto the bed. Pete obliges, places his knees on the side of the mattress and shuffles over so he’s kneeling in front of Vegas. Vegas traces the shape of the harness with his finger, then tugs on the O-ring at the front, pulling Pete in for a kiss. Once they part, Pete reaches over to the bedside table, gets the lube so it is within reach.
“I have something else as well,” he leans over and opens the drawer to Vegas’s bedside table. “Have a look.”
Vegas reaches over, feeling around with his good arm, until his hand comes to rest on the box. He picks it up, and his eyes widen as he reads the packaging.
“Remote controlled?” he says. “God, Pete, this is why I love you.”
“You’re happy?” Pete asks, trying to hide the tremble in his voice. He just wants to make this good. He just wants Vegas not to be so self-hating all the time. Vegas nods and hands Pete the box to open, the toy is in a fabric bag inside, already pre-charged. Pete takes it out and puts it on the bed.
Vegas leans back against the pillows, getting himself comfy.
“Get on your hands and knees for me,” he orders. “Take your underwear off first.”
Pete shivers and obeys, he pushes his boxers down, flicking them off his feet and moves to his hands and knees, ass in the air. He relaxes into the command, the familiar floaty feeling creeping in at the edges of his consciousness.
“Turn so I can see your arse,” Vegas whispers, licking his bottom lip. “Spread your cheeks for me. That’s a good boy.”
Pete whines, shuffles so Vegas can see him. He reaches behind himself and spreads himself open.
“I’ve missed that arse,” Vegas says with a smile.
“You see my arse every day,” Pete laughs.
Pete looks over his shoulder to see Vegas looking at him with wide eyes.
“Not like this, not from this view. You have such a pretty hole,” he says, tapping his lap. “Come lie over me.”
Pete obliges, lying over his lap, making sure that the majority of his weight is distributed through his arms rather than pressing down on Vegas.
Vegas hums, raking his nails over the swell of Pete’s arse, pinching and squeezing. Uncoordinated, he also kneads the muscle with the flat of his weaker hand. Pete’s mind relaxes at the sharp scratching, and he blows out a little puff of breath. He loves the vulnerability of his position, how he knows he will be opening up for Vegas, how he will be able to see the tender skin at the back of his balls. He’s still got a few burn scars there from the car battery. Vegas runs his finger over them, working up and down his perineum, then up to his back, stroking up the notches of his spine. He gives the loop at the back of the harness a tug, pulling Pete backwards, up onto his knees.
“Are you mine, Pete?” Vegas asks. His breath is hot against Pete’s cheek.
“I am.”
Vegas drops the O-ring and begins scratching at the bottom of Pete’s back, as you would do with a loyal dog.
“Down,” Vegas whispers. Pete flops down, burrowing his head against the mattress, ass in the air again. Vegas returns to scratching his nails over his skin, dipping into the crease, fluttering his finger around the tight rim of his hole. “I can feel how hard you are getting against me. So needy.”
“I am,” Pete gasps out. He’s throbbing between his thighs. He bucks his hips, trying to grind against Vegas’s leg.
“Ah, ah,” Vegas chides. “Only bad dogs hump their owner’s legs.” A sharp sound cuts through the air, like the wings of a bird. Then, with a thwack, the flat of Vegas’s hand collides with the tender skin where the back of Pete’s balls meets his perineum. Pete is almost too shocked to make a sound; all that comes out of him is a little punched out breath. Tears sting the corners of his eyes. The pain spreads through his nerves, calming them, making the surroundings grow fuzzy. Then, Vegas does it again. There’s not too much force behind it; if he were hitting Pete’s arse, he probably wouldn’t feel much, would beg for it to be harder. But, from the angle of his hand and the sensitivity of the area he is targeting, it stings so perfectly. This time, Pete lets out a little sob, followed by a louder keening wail as Vegas goes in for a quick third hit. Pain explodes over the already sensitive area, and the constant radio hum in Pete’s brain stops screaming at him.
“Thank you,” Pete mumbles, drooling onto the sheet. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Hmm, I thought that would make you less hard,” Vegas mock teases. “Somehow it’s only made you harder, you little freak.”
“I love it,” Pete whispers, inhaling the smell of their laundry detergent from the bedding. “I’m yours to do what you want with me.”
“You are,” Vegas draws a line with his finger down the cleft of Pete’s arse, lingering over his hole, just gently massaging it. Then he moves down, over the swell of his balls, rubbing in little circles. He chuckles and then squeezes them hard.
“Fuck,” Pete cries out, as the burn travels all the way down his cock.
Then Vegas pulls the O-ring at the back of the harness again, dragging Pete up onto his knees, off of his lap. He whines at the pull of the leather across his pecs.
“Position yourself so I can eat you out,” Vegas says, voice dark.
A shiver runs along Pete’s spine. Between Vegas’s open legs, he stretches out, arms straight towards the bottom of the bed, spine slightly curve. He lifts his arse, splaying out his knees so he spreads himself. Vegas lets out a sharp exhale, as Pete backs up until he feels the cleft of his arse connect with the tip of Vegas’s nose.
“That okay for you?” Pete asks.
“Mmhmm,” Vegas replies, his breath is hot on Pete’s sensitive skin.
Pete gasps as he feels one of Vegas’s hands stroke up his thigh, his fingers working into the muscle. Vegas slowly breathes out a warm puff of air over his hole.
“Shift down a bit, Pete,” Vegas instructs. “My neck and shoulder is pulling a bit in this position.”
Pete obliges. Then, lets out a soft sigh as Vegas’s tongue swipes over his hole. He follows it with another long inhale through his nose.
“You smell so good,” Vegas mumbles against him, then licks him again. “And you taste...”
Pete lets out a low moan as Vegas spears his tongue inside, breathing heavily against him. So Vegas doesn’t have to move his neck as much, Pete shifts his hips up and down, moving with the movements of Vegas’s tongue. Crying out at having nothing to rub against, Pete’s cock throbs underneath him, Vegas licks him again and again, alternating between long swipes and spearing his tongue inside. Pete melts, all his ligaments become pliable, as if he were made of spun sugar. It feels so good, so intimate... Vegas makes little happy wet sounds as he laps at him, until they turn into little grunts tinged with pain.
“Vegas,” Pete gasps out, worried that Vegas is going to hurt himself. He doesn’t trust him to take it slow when it comes to oral. The man eats ass like he’s starving and it’s his first meal in weeks. “Take it easy.”
Vegas sighs and draws off him. Even though he can’t see him from his position, Pete can tell he is breathing hard. He imagines his face, lips red, saliva staining his chin. Vegas strokes his good hand up and down Pete’s spine, rubbing over the swell of his arse, swiping down the cleft, smearing the wetness around.
“Such a good boy,” Vegas whispers. “My good boy. ”
Pete lets out a little pining whimper. He is such a good boy.
He hears Vegas struggling with something, the crinkle of plastic, a thud as something hits the bed. A uttered curse under his breath.
“Turn around for me,” Vegas says.
Pete shifts, turning so he’s now facing Vegas. The lube sits on the bed next to him, the cap is still closed, Vegas not able to open it. Pete makes a mental note that they need to get one with a pump.
He kneels on the bed in front of Vegas, looks up through half-lidded eyes to see him smiling, a real, proper smile, one of the first Pete has seen since his injury. Vegas’s lips are red, and saliva glistens on his chin. He’s breathing hard, a slight wheeze on the exhale.
“Look how hard you are for me,” Vegas whispers, eyes tracking down to Pete’s cock. Pete follows his gaze. He’s hard between his legs, his cock swollen and red with need, wetness gathering at the head. “I want you to finger yourself open for me,” Vegas says, then his eyes track to the toy on the bed next to him. “Then, we are going to try this out.”
Pete hums and reaches for the lube, squeezing some on his fingers. He kneels, legs spread on the sheet and moves his hand behind to his arse. With a glint in his eye, Vegas reaches forward and loops his fingers through the O-ring on the front of Pete’s harness. He removes them to stroke across the leather, reaching down and giving one of Pete’s nipples a sharp squeeze between his index finger and thumb, then returning his fingers to the loop.
Pete kneels, arm reaching behind himself, poised with his finger at his entrance, awaiting instruction. All his nerves tremble in anticipation.
“You are going to curl your finger when I -” Vegas pulls the O-ring of the harness, dragging Pete forward towards him. “They might be your fingers, but I am controlling them.” He holds eye contact with Pete. “Put your finger inside.”
Pete lets out a little breathy moan as he pushes his forefinger inside. Vegas smiles at him and pulls on the O-ring at the front of the harness. Pete curls his finger, his eyes fluttering closed as he tries to find the sweet spot inside himself. Vegas lets go of the tension on the O-ring, and Pete uncurls his finger.
“Fuck, Pete,” Vegas gasps. “Do you know what you do to me? Move your finger in and out for me.”
Pete nods, shifting himself, pumping his finger in and out. He’s relaxed from the oral, so it feels so good. Vegas pulls on the O-ring again, and Pete curls his finger. They fall into a steady rhythm.
“Vegas,” Pete gasps out. “I need more.”
A wicked smile crosses Vegas’s face.
“Such a greedy boy,” he laughs. “You have no patience. You can last a bit longer with just one finger, right?” He loops his fingers into the O-ring again and yanks Pete forward with more force, driving Pete towards him, but also roughly dragging the finger he has inside of him. Pete yowls, panting. He dips his head down, rubbing it against Vegas’s chest, stroking himself against him. “Because you are such a good boy,” Vegas whispers. “You can put another finger inside.”
Pete pushes his middle finger in beside his forefinger, exhales deeply at the more intense stretch.
“Thank you,” he pants out. “Thank you, thank you.”
Vegas yanks the O-ring again, and Pete curls his fingers inside himself. With the second finger, it’s a lot easier to reach his prostate. His cock throbs between his legs, untouched, a thin film of precome wetting the head. Vegas watches him, eyes wide, pulling on the O-ring in a steady rhythm.
“Are you ready?” he says after a while.
Pete nods. He needs to feel more inside. He needs to know that Vegas is controlling the toy. He needs, he needs...
“Turn around so I can see you put it in.”
Pete picks up the toy from the bed and squeezes some lube onto it. He makes sure that the remote is under Vegas’s hand where he can reach it. He turns, spreading himself so Vegas can see, and pushes the head of the toy against himself, allowing the tip to slip inside.
“Slowly,” Vegas whispers.
Pete eases it in, breathing through it as it gets settled, then relaxing as the head of the massager sits nestled up against his prostate. Still facing away from Vegas, he feels one of Vegas’s hands pull at the cuffs. He takes the connector, looping it through the O ring at the back of the harness, then fastens it to the cuff on the opposite wrist, so Pete’s arms are pinned behind his back.
“Fuck,” Pete gasps out. He loves not being able to move. Loves knowing that Vegas can do anything to him and he won’t be able to fight back. His mind slows, as that beautiful floaty headspace overwhelms him.
“Turn back around for me,” Vegas instructs. “I want to see your face.”
Pete shuffles back around on his knees so he’s facing Vegas again. His weaker arm lies resting on his lap, the fingers curled, and his other hand holds the remote. There’s something about Vegas still being in his underwear, legs covered by the duvet that feels...
“Hmm,” Vegas says, dragging Pete out of his thoughts. “Shall I turn it on, or just keep you here like this. Waiting for me.”
Pete whines, trying to shift his hips to get any stimulation from the inert toy inside him.
“Turn it on, Vegas. Or I’ll lean over and fucking bite you -”
Vegas chuckles and presses the remote, turning the toy onto the lowest setting. Pete lets his eyes flutter closed as it begins to vibrate inside of him, the little ball bearings move up and down the shaft, applying gentle stimulation to his hole. The lightly textured T-bar brushes up against his perineum each time he shifts.
“Feels good?” Vegas asks, watching him intently.
Pete nods. The remote clicks as Vegas presses it again. The rhythm changes into short little bursts, and then a direct buzz right on his prostate.
“Oh, Pete,” Vegas whispers. Pete looks down at himself. Every time the toy gives a more direct buzz, another viscous dribble of precome leaks out of his cock. Vegas leans forward off the cushions supporting him and presses a kiss to Pete’s lips, open-mouthed and needy, his tongue exploring. Pete moans into his mouth as Vegas clicks the remote again, increasing the intensity. Catching his breath, Vegas pulls away, leaves the remote on the bed next to him and begins fondling Pete’s chest, framed by the harness.
“I’m not going to touch your cock,” Vegas says. “I’m going to see if you can come from your prostate alone.”
Pete whines. He’s never done that before, but from how he is feeling, he’s sure that he can. Vegas presses the remote again, and the intensity increases, sharp and relentless against him. Pete gasps, squirming where his hands are pulled behind his back. Vegas watches him with an intensity in his gaze, his eyes dark but soft.
He presses the remote again, ramping it up to one of the even higher intensities, and Pete keens, his hands balling into fists behind him, pressing against his spine where they are bound. Vegas leans back against the pillows again, watching him intently. Pete basks in his gaze, like he’s sitting in warm sunlight coming through a patio screen. As the toy continues to vibrate intensely against his prostate in a steady rhythm, his cock twitches and dribbles out another bead of precome
“Mmm, look at you,” Vegas hums, reaching out and wiping away the dripping milky trail from Pete’s cock.
The slight touch is almost too much and Pete moans, rocking back onto the toy. The ball bearings change their speed around his rim, lightly opening him further, stimulating the nerves there. Click. The toy vibrates in a long, sharp rumble, directly against his prostate.
Pete’s vision goes white. His thighs tremble. A deep bloom of pleasure builds up inside of him, working from the inside out. Pressure intensifies inside his pelvis, almost like he desperately needs to piss. It grows and grows, he hears himself gasping, his sounds rising to a high-pitched keening.
He’s going to come.
Then it stops. The toy turns off.
Pete snaps his eyes open. Surely it’s broken. Maybe Arm was right about the Bluetooth. He should have listened to him.
Vegas just giggles, a wry smile spreading over his face, finger hovering over the remote.
“I’ll -” Pete gasps out.
“You’ll what?” Vegas lifts an eyebrow.
Pete doesn’t know what he’ll do. He’ll fucking bite him, or headbutt him or -
Click.
The toy vibrates again, ramping up to full intensity straight away. Pete gasps, rocking his hips, letting the sensation take him away. The wave builds again, hot and warm. His mouth falls open, his eyes squeeze shut. He’s going to....
Click. Stillness.
This time, Pete screams, bearing his teeth, his eyes trained on Vegas. He sees Vegas through a haze of red.
“Please,” he gasps out.
“Oh, what’s up, Pete?” Vegas whispers, voice dripping with acid. “What’s wrong?”
“Can’t you see?” Pete gasps out through gritted teeth.
“Tell me what you want.” Vegas’s mouth curls upwards into a smile at one corner. He’s pushed the duvet off his lap and has his hand inside his underwear, palming himself.
Pete drags in a deep breath. He’s going to go insane. He’s going to explode.
Instead, he gasps out: “To come, please.”
“I’m a bit busy over here,” Vegas chuckles, pulling his underwear outwards, beginning to stroke himself. He’s semi-hard, the pink flush of his cock just visible.
Pete squeezes his eyes shut.
“Please, Vegas, please -”
“I love hearing you beg,” Vegas says.
“I need -” Pete sniffs, worried for a moment he’s going to burst into tears.
“But I like giving you what you want even more.” Vegas removes his hand from his underwear and reaches for the remote.
Click.
The toy bursts into life again. Vegas starts it with a low intensity rumble, then click it switches to one of the higher settings.
Pete nearly topples over. He cries out, rocking back on the toy, trying to get as much sensation as possible, terrified Vegas is going to turn it off again. He pulls against the restraints, enjoying how he’s bound against his back, fixed in position. The harness pulls against his chest as Vegas reaches out, wraps his fingers around the O-ring again, and drags Pete closer to him.
Pete whines, the toy pulses unrelentingly inside of him, directly stimulating his prostate. The pleasure builds and intensifies again, the warm pressure in his abdomen growing. His cock feels like it’s going to explode.
Click.
Vegas turns the toy off again.
Pete lets out a loud sob. He needs, he needs…
“Oh, Pete,” Vegas whispers. “I’m so horrible sometimes…”
“Vegas,” Pete cries out. He rocks back more on the toy, biting his lip. He looks down, wishing his hands were free so he could rip the toy out of his hole and start relentlessly fucking it into himself.
“Look at me, Pete,” Vegas whispers. “Look at me.”
Pete lifts his head, breathing hard, teeth bared. His cock is so hard between his legs.
Click.
Vibration.
“Thank you, thank you, Vegas, thank you…”
“You can come,” Vegas whispers, pressing the remote again to change it to a sustained buzz. “You can come for me, Pete.”
Pete keens. His balls tense. Then the world goes white. His brain goes silent. His cock pulses, stars flash in front of his eyes. It’s all so much. He comes harder than he thinks he ever has done before.
“Holy shit...” Vegas gasps out.
Pete shakes, edging on overstimulation. His breath comes in great heaving gasps. His thighs tremble. His cheeks are wet. Pete looks down, he’s come all over his stomach, it’s dripping down onto the sheets, his thighs.
The vibrations don’t stop.
“Vegas.” Pete squeezes his eyes shut. “Vegas, it’s -”
“You can come again for me.”
“Too much,” Pete whimpers. He’s so sensitive inside it’s almost painful. “It’s too much… I can’t do it.”
Vegas reaches out for him, placing his hand on Pete’s overheated cheek. He brushes his thumb over the bone, soothing him. His eyes soften for a moment, a wordless check-in. Vegas moves his thumb down to Pete’s lip, and Pete locks eyes with him, showing him that he’s okay.
“You can take it, Pete.” Vegas continues, bringing his thumb down to Pete’s lower lip, coaxing him to open his mouth. “Come on, Pete, you can take it.”
Pete drags in a ragged breath. “I can take it,” he manages to gasp out.
“That’s my good boy,” Vegas presents his wrist, offering it between Pete’s teeth, urging him to bite down. “You can bite down on my arm if it makes it easier for you.”
Click
The vibrations, somehow, increase again, becoming one long, extended, continuous buzz. Overwhelmed, Pete growls then bites down, digging his teeth into Vegas’s arm. Vegas hisses.
“Good boy,” he says. “You’re so well-trained. You only bite when I tell you to.”
The sensations are too much. That pressure feeling is back, he’s slightly worried he’s going to piss himself, before the only rational part of his brain left reassures him this is just what a prostate orgasm feels like. As the feeling increases, Pete sinks his teeth further into Vegas’s arm, the flesh depresses underneath them. He can taste the salty sweat on his skin, and smell his arousal.
“You can come, Pete,” Vegas whispers. “You can come again for me. Show me what a good boy you are.”
Everything inside Pete shatters, all his walls, all his defences, all the long lonely days in the hospital room, the blood, the smell of chlorine, the chains in the safehouse, all melt away. He’s... He doesn’t know what he is. He’s both simultaneously embodied and disembodied, in the past and present, flesh and spirit.
He hears himself howling. Everything is shaking. His cock throbs. Pleasure blooms deep in his pelvis, as the tension unravels. A less powerful stream of something sticky, hot and wet lands on his thigh.
When he comes to, he’s fallen forward, his forehead resting on the sheet, the heat of Vegas’s crotch radiating out to the top of his head. Somebody is stroking his hair, shushing him, telling him he’s done a good job. The cuffs stay on, the harness compresses his chest in just the right way.
All Pete can smell is the tang of Vegas, the sweat from his inner thighs, the heat of his arousal. He still has his underwear on. Pete inhales him, letting himself float. He’s safe. He’s gone to that warm place, that safe headspace. He’s not crashing down to Earth, he’s being held there.
Once he can feel his limbs a bit more, he lifts his head, smiling up at Vegas.
“There you are,” Vegas whispers. He takes his weaker arm and lifts it off his lap, letting it fall beside him, so Pete can rest his head on his thigh. Once Pete is settled, he lifts the arm so it rests over Pete’s back, holding him close, tucked over where his hands are cuffed to the harness. With his other hand, he continues stroking Pete’s hair. The toy is still inside him, not on, but still holding him open. Vegas strokes down his back, over the harness, over the swell of his arse, to press at where the T bar sits flush against him.
“Do you want it out?”
It’s starting to ache a little, so Pete nods. He relaxes his muscles to make it easier for Vegas to remove. A little whine leaves his mouth as Vegas eases the toy out of him.
“Thank you,” Pete gasps out.
He looks up from where he is lying to see Vegas holding the toy in front of his face, a sly smile on his face. He gives it a little sniff, then flicks his tongue out of his mouth, licking up the length of the silicone.
“Vegas, ew,” Pete protests. “That’s been up my arse...”
Vegas just laughs
“So what, I like your arse.”
Pete just rolls his eyes as Vegas licks it again.
“You are so gross.”
Vegas smiles, licks his lips, and places the toy down on the sheet.
“You feeling okay?” he says, stroking Pete’s hair again.
Pete nods.
“How are you?” Pete asks him. He turns his head on Vegas’s thigh so he can see him better. His cock pushes against his white briefs, half-hard. “Do you want me to?”
Vegas looks down, as if he’s only just realised he’s hard.
“Oh,” he says. “Well, it’s behaving.”
Pete shuffles over, having to wiggle his body as his arms are still restrained. “It’s always behaving, even when it’s not quite doing what you want it to do.”
“Do you want to be untied?” Vegas asks, stroking down the shell of Pete’s ear.
Pete shakes his head. “No, I want to stay bound. I’ll go down on you,” he says. He looks up, reading Vegas’s expression. “Is your pain okay?”
Vegas takes a deep breath and nods.
Using his core, Pete gets himself settled between Vegas’s legs.
“Can I come on your face?” Vegas asks.
Pete looks up at him, eyes darkening. “Of course.”
“Holy shit, I love you,” Vegas gasps, “I can’t believe you are real sometimes.”
Pete chuckles and begins to pull Vegas’s briefs down with his teeth. Once Vegas is free, he presses a little kiss to the head of his cock. He’s half-hard still, so it’s slightly difficult to get the angle right without the use of his hands, but Pete manages. He takes Vegas’s first few inches inside, swirling his tongue around, feeling him harden against his inner cheek.
Vegas cards his hand through Pete’s hair, gasping so hard he starts to wheeze and cough.
Pete pulls his mouth off Vegas’s cock. “Breathe, Vegas,” he whispers. “Remember to breathe.”
Vegas clears his throat, takes in a big gulp of air and blows it out.
Pete returns his mouth to Vegas’s cock, working his tongue up and down, pushing his foreskin back. He uses his cheeks to create suction, drawing Vegas further in, then opening his throat. The taste of Vegas’s precome, salty and slightly metallic, fills his mouth as he draws closer. The noises Vegas is making can only be described as little mewls, breathy and desperate. Pete sucks him deeper, moaning around him.
“Shit, Pete,” Vegas hisses. “I’m gonna - I’m not going to last long... It’s been.”
Pete pulls off, and Vegas takes his shaking, non-dominant hand and gives himself one, then two, hard strokes. Pete lines himself up as Vegas throws his head back, and comes. It hits his face, covering his cheeks, dripping down over his lip.
“Thank you,” Pete says, and smiles.
Breathing hard, Vegas growls and tugs him forward with the front O-ring of the harness, so their faces are in line with each other. He inhales, then licks a long stripe up Pete’s face, cleaning the come off his cheek.
Pete giggles, trying to squirm away, but Vegas holds him still, licking over Pete’s other cheek, his lip, his chin until he is clean. He flops back down on Vegas’s thigh, and they both catch their breath, lying and enjoying the warmth of each other for what feels like a long time.
“Kiss me,” Pete whispers, once they have settled.
Vegas does, it starts soft and chaste, then deepens. His lips and the inside of his mouth taste like come.
“Do you remember the safehouse?” Pete asks as they part.
“How could I forget?” Vegas says.
“Do you remember when you told me about those books you studied at university, about blood brotherhood?”
Vegas looks up, then nods in affirmation.
“Kiss me hard,” Pete says. “Bite my lip. I want - I want our blood to mix. You touched the wound on my chest back then, but you wiped it... You didn’t -”
Vegas’s eyes darken.
“You are so weird, Pete. I love you.”
“Untie me,” Pete whispers. Vegas reaches behind, flicks the clip, and the cuffs slide free.
Pete dives for him, his hand on the back of Vegas’s head, and clashes their lips together. Vegas lets out a surprised little mmmph.
“Bite me,” he whispers against Vegas’s lips. “I’ll bite you back.”
Vegas bites down, pulling Pete’s lower lip into his mouth. Pain blooms, and the taste of iron fills Pete’s mouth. Vegas breathes heavily against him, and Pete sinks his canines into the thinnest part of Vegas’s lip. He hisses, and the metallic taste increases, mixing with his saliva.
Both of their lips are stained red when they part, with little splits where they have torn the first layer of skin off.
“I love you,” Vegas whispers.
“I love you, too.”
“You’ll never leave me,” Vegas says, eyes wide.
“I’m as much part of you as I am myself,” Pete replies. “Leaving you would be abandoning myself.”
“I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
Pete flops down next to Vegas, pressing at the still bleeding mark on his lip, as they both catch their breath. Vegas cuddles into Pete, stroking over the leather of the harness, massaging over the separated cuffs on his wrist. They lie there a while, enjoying the closeness, both teetering on the edge of sleep and consciousness.
Eventually, Vegas asks, “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” Pete says, yawning. He feels tacky on his skin.
“I’ll cook us something,” Vegas says. “You go get cleaned up.”
Pete helps Vegas to get up from the mound of pillows, his back having seized up from sitting so long. He pads through to the bathroom, and Vegas goes through to the kitchen. Pete takes a long shower, washing away the sweat and come from his skin.
When he comes through to the kitchen, Vegas is perched on a stool by the stove, stirring a pot. The kitchen smells rich with the aroma of pad kra pao.
“Smells great,” Pete says. He comes up behind Vegas and presses a kiss on the back of his neck. He still smells of sweat and sex. The rice cooker hisses in the corner. The meat sizzles.
Pete sets the table, putting out three places with forks and spoons. He fills a jug with water from the fridge and sets it in the centre.
The front door clicks.
“Am I safe to come in?” comes Macau’s voice from the entryway.
“Yeah, we’re just in the kitchen,” Pete calls through.
Macau appears in the opening, smelling of grass and outside, dressed in a football strip, with dirty, grass-stained knees.
“Oh, good,” he says. “You’re cooking. I was worried I’d come back to find you were shagging or something,” he continues in English.
Vegas coughs at the stove. Pete smiles wryly.
“You okay, hia?” Macau asks.
“Yeah, just inhaled some chilli.”
“What are you cooking?” Macau asks. “Ahh pad kra pao, Pete’s favourite.”
Pete goes over to the workbench and helps Vegas dish up. He brings the plates over, setting them at their places.
“Tuck in,” Vegas says, once they are all seated.
“Looks delicious,” Pete says. “Thank you, love.”
“Yeah, thanks, hia,” Macau replies. He takes a bite and then coughs, taking a big drink of his water. “God, it’s fucking spicy. Does everything have to be to Pete’s taste these days?” Vegas slaps Macau playfully on the back of the head. Macau looks at Pete with big pleading eyes. “Did you see that, Pete?”
Pete smiles down at his plate. “Eat your food, Macau,” he says.
They sit together and eat.