Chapter Text
Sky’s back slammed against the cold wall of the building as Nani, without any warning, pinned him to it with his entire body and kissed him hungrily. A loud moan of pleasure that escaped Sky’s throat immediately echoed through the dark alley behind the club they had just left, both of them already pretty damn wasted.
He tried to regain control, but Nani had no intention of letting him. Instead, he pressed their bodies together even harder and deepened the kiss.
With one hand, Nani brutally yanked him by the hair, forcing his head back, and mercilessly sank his teeth into the exposed skin of his neck. A fleeting thought crossed Sky’s mind that he was going to wake up with a purple bruise in the morning, but… good. Fuck, it was actually perfect. Everyone in this fucking city needed to know that he belonged to Nani, and Nani belonged to him.
“Don’t you ever smile at strangers like that again, you hear me?” Nani rasped, pulling away by barely an inch. Desire and possessiveness burned in his alcohol-glazed eyes.
Sky chuckled. He knew he was playing with fire right now, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to push his buttons a little, because he absolutely adored it when his wild kitten showed his claws.
“He was just a bartender, babe. He was only handing me a drink…” Sky raised an eyebrow.
Nani’s hair was now tied back into a small ponytail, with a few loose strands escaping to frame his sharp features. Nani stared, utterly mesmerised by those huge, dark coffee eyes.
Under that look, Sky could feel himself getting hard instantly. Fuck. Nani turned him on like crazy.
“I don’t give a fuck who he was!” Nani growled. “You are officially banned from staring at or smiling at anyone else but me. Got it?”
“Oho… someone is jealous.” Sky gave a provocative smirk, and this time he was the one who tried to silence him with a kiss, but Nani immediately saw through his trick.
He grabbed Sky firmly by the throat and shoved him back. The younger boy’s head bumped against the wall – not hard enough to actually hurt him, but enough to make little hearts dance before his eyes.
God, I love him so fucking much, Sky thought proudly, feeling that this tiny concussion was completely worth the price.
Although Nani might’ve actually used a bit too much force.
Was the future mafia boss currently getting beaten around by the jealous man behind a club and feeling like he was on cloud nine? Yes, of course. Because this was his man.
Nani narrowed his eyes, completely ignoring the lovestruck look on the younger man’s face.
“Call it whatever you want,” he whispered, “but that smile belongs only to me.”
Sky felt his heart start beating faster. There was something dangerously hot about that look. Nani’s eyes were glistening with booze, stubbornness, and something else – Sky didn't know what it was, but he was sure of one thing. It made him completely lose his mind whenever he looked into them.
A few days ago, instead of studying for his history test, Sky had been scrolling through his phone and stumbled across an article claiming that the average guy thinks about sex nineteen times a day. The author had even calculated that, assuming sixteen hours of being awake and eight hours of sleep, the thought pops up in a man’s head approximately every fifty minutes.
Bullshit, Sky had thought.
All it took was one look from Nani like that and Sky was convinced that the author of that study had never been in love. Sky was much more inclined to believe that ridiculous myth that guys think about sex every seven seconds. Besides, around Nani, those seven seconds drastically shrank down to just one.
Sky moaned again as the older boy rubbed against him. Nani was hard. Not that Sky was in a better situation. His pants were becoming painfully tight, and the alcohol was heating his blood to a total boiling point. Fuck, he needed to feel him. Right now.
“Shut up already, Changkham, and show me how much I’m yours,” Sky rasped, looking at him boldly. “Take me in that mouthy little face of yours.”
Nani raised an eyebrow.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Nateetorn? You think you’re the one in charge here now?” Nani pulled away with a mocking smirk and unbuckled his belt. “I’m still pissed off at you.”
Before Sky could open his mouth to tease him again, Nani grabbed him by the shoulders, turned both of them around, and pressed his own back against the wall of the building. Then he pushed Sky straight down, forcing him to his knees.
“Open your mouth,” Nani ordered.
Kneeling in the dark alley, Sky just grinned wide. Fine, whatever. He would let his adorable boyfriend dominate because, damn it, it turned him on like crazy.
And besides… his twisted, completely fucked-up hobby was simply tasting Nani in every possible way.
Should a future mafia boss be letting himself get pushed around like this? Probably not, but he didn't give a single fuck. Nani could do whatever he wanted with him…
…because they belonged to each other.
***
Nani walked ahead with a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand, humming some song he had heard at the club. The street at this hour, in the middle of the night, was empty. They wandered through the alleys of Bangkok, not worrying at all that some low-level gangs might try to mess with them. After all, the night belonged to them, not the other way around.
Nani tripped over the uneven curb several times. Sky, although he wasn’t exactly blessed with the best reflexes himself at the moment – after all, he had dutifully helped him finish the first half of the bottle – tried to catch him every single time so he wouldn’t take a hard fall.
Nani burst into a drunk laugh as Sky pulled him closer against his chest, and then, like a satisfied kitten, he purred happily, resting his cheek on the younger boy’s shoulder.
“So, babe? Done being mad at me yet?” Sky asked, amused.
Nani instantly narrowed his eyes and pouted.
“You’re still banned from talking about that bartender, Nateetorn,” Nani muttered with a petty pout before taking another sip of booze.
He looked at Sky with glassy, drunk eyes and suddenly hugged him.
Sky smiled and stole a quick kiss. Sometimes he couldn’t keep up with his boyfriend’s mood swings. Just half a bottle of vodka ago, Nani had been furious, pinning him to the club wall in a fit of jealousy, staring at him like a lioness at her prey. And now? Now he had turned into an ordinary house cat, demanding nothing but cuddles and lazy kisses.
Maybe he just ran out of steam, Sky thought with pride. He knew exactly how to satisfy him and make him feel good, and that was exactly what he had done in that alley.
And when Nani felt good, Sky automatically felt pure euphoria running through his own veins. He just felt fucking amazing. Happy wife, happy life, flickered through his mind out of nowhere.
The vodka bottle dangled loosely from Nani’s hand as Sky cupped his face and began to kiss him lazily beneath the night sky and the city’s neon lights. When they finally broke apart, trying to catch their breath and calm their wildly beating hearts, Sky noticed something from the corner of his eye.
Against the wall of a small shop stood an old vending machine filled with cheap toys inside plastic capsules.
“Hey, Nani…” Sky tugged lightly on his sleeve, his eyes lighting up with drunk enthusiasm. “Look. Maybe we should try to get something, huh?”
Nani rolled his eyes, taking another sip from the bottle.
“You’re stupid, Sky. You’re eighteen years old, and you still want to play some kids’ toy lottery?”
“What if there’s a My Melody in there?”
Nani pressed his lips together because that bastard had just hit his weak spot.
“Fine, whatever,” Nani muttered. “Do you even have any change?”
Sky narrowed his drunken eyes and started searching through his pockets. After a moment, he pulled out two coins – twenty baht in total. He dropped the first coin into the slot and turned the handle.
Click.
A pink capsule rolled out of the machine. Nani placed the vodka bottle on the pavement and was already reaching out to open it when Sky suddenly grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
“Wait, one more. Your turn now.”
Nani rolled his eyes again, but surprisingly, he didn’t say anything. He dropped the second coin into the slot that Sky had handed him and turned the handle. Another capsule, this time a blue one, dropped down.
“Let’s open them together,” Sky suggested, handing him one of the capsules.
Nani snorted.
“Holy fuck, Nateetorn, you’re acting like we just intercepted a shipment worth millions of dollars, not pulled out some plastic garbage worth twenty baht,” he said, but gave in anyway, because the younger boy’s drunken excitement was just fucking contagious.
“Come on, Ni. Open it.”
They opened the capsules at the same time. Inside both plastic balls were two green rings that were clearly trying, and failing, to imitate jade, each featuring a red heart crookedly glued in the middle.
Nani burst into bright, melodic laughter.
“Look at that, toy wedding bands. What now, Sky? Want to go look for some Barbie dolls and play house?”
“It’s a sign,” Sky announced, dead serious, without taking his eyes off the cheap rings.
“What sign now? Sky, you are completely drunk.”
“So you are.”
Sky wasn’t listening anymore. In his alcohol-clouded mind, everything suddenly started connecting. This had to be fucking fate. The exact same fate that brought their paths together and made them fall head over heels in love.
A sober Sky would probably try to calculate the mathematical probability of pulling two identical rings out of a machine full of random toys, but right now, he was wasted. It was much easier to just believe in destiny.
And it was far more romantic.
I am fucking heaven’s favourite, crossed his mind. Because why the hell would someone as incredible, beautiful, and perfect as Nani even want to be with him and feel the same way he did? The heavens fucking loved him.
Their grown-ass, adult male hands were way too big for toy jewellery, but Sky gently took Nani’s hand anyway. With a smile, he slipped the ring onto his pinky finger. The plastic got stuck about halfway down.
“Perfect,” he declared with utter confidence, holding out his own hand and looking at Nani expectantly – giving him a clear signal that it was his turn now.
“You are completely insane, you know that?” Nani laughed softly, but he took the second ring and slid it onto the pinky of his drunk, head-over-heels boyfriend.
Before Nani even finished shoving the plastic ring onto his little finger, Sky already knew exactly what he was going to do. He wondered if this was how Isaac Newton had felt when that legendary apple smacked him right in the head and he discovered the law of gravity. Because in this exact moment, Sky felt like an explorer. He wanted to shout eureka!
“When we finish university, we’re getting married, Nani,” Sky blurted out suddenly, looking at him with a drunken, yet strangely determined expression.
“Sure, sure,” Nani laughed, equally drunk, pressing a kiss to his lips. “But in that case, I’ll have to wait a whole year for you to graduate. I’m older, after all.”
Sky narrowed his eyes, tightening his grip on his hand.
“You’ll wait. And the day I defend my thesis and officially graduate, we start planning our real wedding immediately. I’ll buy you real diamonds then, not green plastic.”
Nani burst out laughing, resting his forehead against Sky’s shoulder. This whole drunk vision of a grand wedding planned by a high school student sounded absurd and hilarious, and yet… his heart suddenly started beating much faster at the mere thought of that promise.
“Fine,” Nani murmured, giving in to the sweet illusion. “Let’s get married after university.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, Nateetorn. Now come on, before I throw up,” Nani muttered, pulling him by the hand.
That night, even though Sky was young and wasted, he knew he meant every single word.
Nani was his love. His one and only. In that moment, on that empty Bangkok street, the only thing that mattered was Nani’s bright, loud laughter, his hand resting safely inside his own…
And the certainty that no matter what happened – they would always, always belong to each other.
Five Years Later
A black Mercedes with tinted windows sits at the edge of the parking lot, not far from the Chiang Mai public library.
The world outside blurs under the heavy afternoon rain, but the weather means nothing to the man sitting in the back seat. His eyes are fixed solely on the library’s glass entrance. The morning shift has just ended.
And then he sees him.
Sky’s heart slams against his ribs with a force that nearly knocks the breath out of him.
Nani steps outside, pausing for a second under the overhang. He narrows his eyes at the grey sky before opening a big, coloured umbrella. Then he starts walking briskly toward the nearest bus stop.
Sky unconsciously tightens his grip on the leather seat beneath his hands.
“Sky, aren’t you going to go say hello?” asks the driver, his closest friend and right-hand man, Gemini, carefully watching his boss through the rearview mirror. “You just gonna let him walk like that?”
Sky doesn’t answer right away.
He tracks Nani’s silhouette until he disappears inside the bus. Every nerve in his body is screaming at him to throw the door open, run after him, board that fucking bus, and just lock Nani in an embrace he’d never let him out of.
Five years.
He hasn’t changed a bit. Well, maybe his hair is slightly shorter, and he’s subtly bulked up, but he still has that same magnetic aura. Exactly the one Sky remembers from when they were teenagers.
“Not yet,” Sky finally rasps, his voice unnaturally low. “But soon. Very soon. As soon as I graduate.”
Slowly, he lowers his gaze to the stack of photos spread across his lap – the latest batch his men delivered just this week. His thumb trembles slightly as it brushes across the glossy paper.
Photo number twenty-three: Nani in front of a small grocery shop, kneeling on the pavement, helping some old lady pick up fruit that had spilt from a torn shopping bag. His smile is so pure and sweet. The sight sends a sharp, agonising pang of longing straight through Sky’s chest.
Photo number twenty-seven: Nani behind the library counter, handing a book to some young guy, his eyes bright with polite charm. In a single heartbeat, the warmth in Sky’s veins turns into icy jealousy. His fingers curl into a fist, crumpling the photo.
He sure as fuck won’t be smiling at anyone else like that much longer. That smile belongs to me. Only me.
And finally, photo number thirty-one, his favourite: Nani on the balcony of his tiny apartment at dusk, holding a steaming mug of coffee. No smile. His eyes are closed, peace softening every feature of his face, as though the day’s social battery has finally been drained dry and he can, at last, rest. He looks as if, deep down, he is subconsciously waiting for someone to show up and pull the weight of the entire day off his shoulders.
Sky smirks to himself. Just one more month, baby.
His feisty kitten definitely has had enough time to stop pouting by now, right?
Seriously, five years is getting a little excessive, don't you think? But fine, whatever. Sky has given him time to cool off. He understands that Nani can be stubborn as hell. He got mad, left for uni, blocked Sky everywhere, then hid himself away in some library on the other side of the country… But seriously, how long can you keep playing hard to get?
Sky lets out an amused snort.
What kind of childish bullshit is this on his part anyway?
A library.
Oh, come on! Give him a fucking break!
Nani Hirunkit Changkham – the son of one of the most famous mob bosses in the country. Motorbikes, fights, and driving Sky absolutely fucking insane run through his veins. There isn’t the slightest chance that the mafia prince actually dreams of cataloguing books for the rest of his life!
Sky has to admit one thing, though. Only Nani can tease him in such an adorably infuriating way. He knows his babe is just going through one of his dramatic little phases, and Sky – being the boyfriend (and very soon, fiancé) of the year – has generously given him his space to throw his little tantrum and arrange all those books of his.
Sky gets it… He really does. Arranging books in alphabetical order and getting them lined up to the exact fucking millimetre on a shelf can seriously be calming. Therapeutic even…
But how long can you drag it out?
This game of hide-and-seek is starting to get boring. So, like the responsible partner he is, Sky has decided it’s time to wrap up this chapter of their relationship… Enough is enough.
And if Nani still wants to sulk… Well, he is more than welcome to do it in their shared bedroom, with a gold wedding band on his finger.
Sky looks out through the car’s window once more, but the bus carrying Nani is long gone, leaving behind nothing but a splash of dirty water on the pavement.
For the first time in five years, he has seen Nani with his own eyes, in person, not just through the stack of photos his men deliver regularly.
Very soon, Sky will officially graduate, defend his thesis, and then march straight into that library, collect his runaway boyfriend, and remind him of the promise they made to each other.
Because Nani belongs to him, and Sky belongs to Nani. They belong to each other.
And Sky would sooner burn this entire fucking city to the ground than let anyone else touch a single hair on Nani’s head. Nani is his. Very soon he’ll be safe, locked tight in his arms – even if Sky has to drag him into those arms by force.
“Drive,” Sky orders sharply, slipping the photos back into his briefcase. “We need to be in Bangkok by tonight. We have a meeting with Alexander.”
Gemini shifts into gear, and the Mercedes pulls smoothly out of the parking lot, merging onto Chiang Mai’s rain-soaked streets. For a long moment, silence hangs inside the car.
“I’ve got a feeling that Alexander isn’t going to like what he’s about to hear,” Gemini finally says, keeping his eyes on the road. “He lost millions when we intercepted his last shipment at the border and cut him off from the port’s profits.”
“He brought it on himself,” Sky replies coldly, not taking his eyes off the window. “If he sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong and goes looking for trouble, he gets a lesson. Does that old bastard really think he can reach for my power? Not happening. He completely forgot who the fuck he’s dealing with.”
Sky watches the city buildings flash past outside, still thinking about the man he has missed so damn much over the last few years, but Gemini’s next words make him frown and finally shift his gaze to his friend.
“Alexander’s also started sniffing around the Changkhams,” Gemini continues, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel.
“Be more specific, Gem.”
“We don’t know exactly what he’s planning yet, but one thing is for sure,” Gemini glances at his boss in the rearview mirror. “Even back when your father was running things, Alexander had his eyes on your family’s empire and business influence. He’s determined to take control of the south, and he’ll do whatever it takes to replace the Nateetorns.”
“And you think he might try to go through the Changkhams to get it?”
Gemini doesn’t answer.
A cold smile slowly spreads across Sky’s lips. There isn’t a trace of weakness in it. Quite the opposite. Sky knows exactly what game they are playing.
“Let him try,” Sky answers his own question. “I’d love to remind him why my name strikes fear into this country. And besides, he better keep his fucking hands off the Changkhams. Don't even breathe in my husband’s direction.”
He shifts his gaze back to the briefcase beside him, where he’d tucked away Nani’s pictures. His hand rests on the leather, gripping it tight. Inside, he can feel the small box holding two plastic rings.
“If Alexander Sokolov gets a clear message about what happens to people who try to fuck with me, the rest of the clans will think twice before reaching for what’s mine… and if they don’t… Well, we’ll have a different kind of conversation.”
Sky adjusts his suit cuffs, then pulls a tablet out of the briefcase.
“Now let me study,” he says, his expression changing in an instant – from ruthless mafia boss to a university student preparing for the most important exam of his life. “It’s commercial law. If I fail this exam, I won’t graduate, and if I won’t graduate, I can’t, in good conscience, propose to Nani. I can’t write retakes while we’re supposed to be choosing flower shades with the florist for the wedding tables. And of course, postponing the wedding is not an option, Gem.”
Gemini lets out a heavy sigh, looking at his boss, who is already highlighting something on the tablet screen with a stylus.
“Right, of course, Sky,” Gemini replies, turning toward the airport with the face of a man who will literally never be surprised by anything in his life ever again. “So what are we reviewing today then? Debt collection or marital property law?”
“Debt collection is our daily routine; I don't need to study that, because nobody collects debts better than my boys,” Sky mutters without even looking up. “Marital property law,” he adds, squinting at the screen. “That’s one of the most important things before getting married. Right after choosing the wedding cake.”