Chapter Text
The terrible thing is, Chay is having fun. When he offered to help Kim, he did so with the firm knowledge that it was going to be An Ordeal and he was going to be miserable the whole time, but he would see it through out of the goodness of his heart.
Unfortunately, he didn’t take into account the fact that this Kim isn’t the same Kim who broke his heart. He is completely unguarded; expressing emotions, and laughing at Chay’s jokes, and bringing him interesting bits of his own life for Chay to examine.
It reminds Chay a lot of the Kim before the kidnapping and how easy things felt then. Which is confusing, because Chay has been sure that that was all a ruse, but this Kim acts just the same even though he has no reason to try and bamboozle Chay.
Probably.
At one point Kim ends up with a guitar in his hands and without thinking he starts to tune it. Chay watches the process, feeling transported back to their tutoring days, but then Kim jumps into a perfect acoustic performance of the first Wik single to really go viral.
Chay watches in fascination, and then can’t help himself but jump in with the lyrics when Kim gets to the first chorus.
Kim’s face startles, but his hands remain steady. Chay carries onto the verse and Kim’s resulting smile is bigger than any Chay’s ever seen him wear.
Chay commits to the song and goes all out for the hook, and by the end they’re both wearing foolish grins.
“I don’t know the lyrics,” Kim admits after, eyes sparkling. “I don’t even know how I know the chords.”
“It was your first single to really go viral, you play it every show. Maybe it’s muscle memory?”
It’s as good an answer as any.
They move through the rest of Kim’s room slowly. Chay finds a series of jackets in Kim’s closet that makes them go down another spiral of Wik videos.
“Do you want to try one on?” Kim asks him after Chay shows him an entire twitter account dedicated to all of Kim’s different jackets.
The offer surprises Chay. “You don’t mind?” He looks at them longingly but… “I shouldn’t. I don’t think the other Kim would like it.”
This Kim frowns like he heartily disagrees. “Does he have to know?” Kim says then, face morphing into a cheeky smile, as if either of them know the rules of cursed-fanmail caused amnesia.
Chay’s fingers twitch as he tries to hold himself back. The Chay he is now shouldn’t want anything to do with Kim or Wik, but the Chay of the past who spent his afternoons daydreaming about exactly how Kim’s leather jacket would feel under his fingertips…
As it turns out, it’s soft. Very soft.
Before Chay knows it, he’s gone from feeling up the jacket to wearing it, and Kim is looking at him with such fond eyes.
He shouldn’t be doing this, but he can’t help himself from flailing. Just a little.
Then, as usual, Kim ruins everything.
“I’m hungry.”
He says it casually, head cocked to the side as he admires Chay in the jacket. “Can I buy you lunch?”
Chay does not react casually. He scowls and rips the jacket off. It was foolish to even try it on in the first place.
Kim’s face falls. “Or not.”
Chay takes several deep breaths and reminds himself that this Kim doesn’t know the other Kim weaponized those words before. He probably really just meant that he was hungry.
“No, food is fine,” Chay tells him after much too long of an awkward pause. “I could eat. Let's see what’s in your kitchen.” They’ve been in Kim’s room all day so far, it’s probably time to explore the rest of the apartment.
They make their way out to the living room and Kim freezes in place when comes face to face with his own face, blown up on the wall.
“Oh, fuck no,” he says.
Chay bursts into laughter. Honestly, Chay likes Kim’s portrait, it’s something he would have put on the wall in his room, but he’s a fanboy with a shrine. It’s a very different design choice when it’s your face blown up huge on your wall.
“I don’t care what the other guy thinks,” Kim growls, marching over to the portrait. “This is coming down- oh.”
Just as he lays his hands on the frame and starts to lift - it slides instead. Behind it is… Chay tries to find a nice word for it, but it’s nothing short of a murderboard.
Kim takes two steps back, stunned, while Chay assesses it more calmly. He knew Kim was investigating the family, he just didn’t know he was getting artsy and craftsy about it.
“I’m surprised it’s still up,” Chay says cooly, taking in his own face on the board. At least it’s a decent picture of him. “You already cracked the case. Well, the case was cracked. Your father just started telling people what he was up to.”
He hadn’t known quite the extent Kim was investigating him and his family, but there are more notes on the coverup of Chay’s parent’s death than he’s ever seen before. There are a few strings leading off of Korn’s picture to other pictures and articles, but Chay doesn’t understand the connection. Honestly, as long as his brother and mother are safe, he doesn’t want to understand.
Kim grumbles something unintelligible.
“What was that?” Chay can’t help but ask.
“I said, of course he fucking did. Is this guy even real? You mean to tell me I’m a popstar and a crime lord and a secret detective?”
Chay snorts and can’t help but smile. “Did I mention you moonlight as a trauma surgeon for the poor?” He ribs Kim with his elbow. “Also an astronaut, but you quit that to pursue the music thing.”
Kim looks mildly panicked for the first half, then scowls as Chay continues. “Now you’re fucking with me,” he declares though the look in his eye tells Chay that he might believe Chay if he pressed-
He has to restrain himself. He gives himself a stern, quick talking to about how Kim is very vulnerable right now and he’s trusting Chay of all people with relearning the truth of himself. And even if Chay wanted revenge, this isn’t a particularly satisfying way of dealing it out. “Yeah, I’m fucking with you,” Chay tells him. “But I almost had you on that doctor thing.”
Kim looks at him, and it’s clearly supposed to be a glare but it’s so fond, and it’s absolutely criminal how kissable he looks right now. The way Kim’s eyes are alight, it’s so open, so honest. Seeing this now only highlights how guarded Kim always was before.
Chay can feel his smug grin fall off his face, and the light in Kim’s eyes dims with it.
Chay tries to distract himself and grabs a small black box off the table in front of him. “We should keep looking around-”
In trying to avoid one landmine, Chay trips right into another.
The box contains the polaroids Chay hid around Kim’s apartment. He takes them out and counts them - all twelve are there. He looks at his own dumb face and sees an idiot who didn’t know anything. He wants to reach through time to the Chay who took these photos and tell him to stop ignoring the red flags. He’d seen them, sure, but he plowed right through them. He wanted it too much. Wanted Kim too much.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there looking at their past selves, but when he snaps out of it, he sets the box down harder than he means to. It catches Kim’s attention, but Chay ignores the inquisitive look.
Kim reaches for the box, and looks twice at Chay when he doesn’t stop him. When he opens it, he looks at Chay again, for a much longer time. Chay can feel his skin tingle where Kim’s gaze lingers on him.
The photos are the first real sign Kim has received that they really ever were anything.
Kim picks the polaroids up delicately and looks at each of them in turn, studying the pictures and the messages as if trying to commit them to memory.
“So you did love me,” Kim says quietly. “But not anymore?”
“No,” Chay chokes out the lie. “Not anymore.”
“What did I do?” Kim asks.
Chay turns away and walks towards the kitchen. “I’m hungry,” he says and remembers.
“Damn, bitch, you live like this?” Chay mutters examining the contents of Kim’s fridge. It’s mostly meal replacement drinks and a few sad takeout boxes. He barely even has any condiments. The only ingredient he could actually cook with is eggs, and he’s not going to do that on principle.
Kim shuffles into the kitchen a minute after him, and now he’s just blinking at Chay.
“See,” Chay says, moving from the fridge to the cupboards, “now this is fun. I can’t tell if this is to blame on meme illiteracy or weird amnesia curse thing.”
“Let’s blame the amnesia thing.”
“I’m not so sure. That’s another fact about you, you’re shockingly bad at pop culture references for someone whose job it is to do pop culture things.”
He finds a stash of protein bars and not much else. “Oh to be rich, you just eat out for all your meals, don’t you?”
Kim opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by a loud chirp from Chay’s pocket.
It’s Porsche’s special text tone. Chay scrambles to check the message but it’s nothing disastrous this time, just an invite to lunch.
Perfect timing.
“Hey, Phi,” Chay says, “how do you feel about moving this investigation along? My brother invited me to lunch with your brothers, want to join them and have something more enjoyable than liquid protein?”
Kim pulls his own phone out of his pocket, and Chay wonders if that’s muscle memory or if he’s actually looking for something. The lock screen is still devoid of notifications.
“Sure,” Kim says, finally. “That sounds like a good plan.”
It is, in fact, a very bad plan.
They probably should have decided what they were going to tell their brothers about Kim’s memory condition before strolling into the compound for lunch, but then they run into Porsche and Kinn at the door, and Porsche decides it’s a good time to pull Chay into a headlock and give him a noogie even though he’s nearly twenty, Hia, and he’s too old for this manhandling.
When he finally unearths himself from Porsche’s clutches, Kim and Kinn seem to have mutually acknowledged each other’s existences, then they’re being swept into the informal family dining room. One of the housekeepers is hastily setting another place at the table.
Tankhun comes in like a hurricane and the average speaking volume of the room goes up dramatically. He pinches Chay’s cheeks and admires Porsche and Kinn’s complimentary suits, then he turns to Kim and says, “Oh, so you haven’t died yet? Decided to grace us with your presence today, hmmmm?”
Chay is used to Tankhun’s antagonistic brand of affection, but of course Kim wouldn’t be.
He puffs up and scowls. Then Kinn scowls at him for scowling at Tankhun, and lunch goes downhill from there.
Chey keeps trying to find the right place in the conversation to drop in, Hey, so your brother here has amnesia, isn’t that odd, but Porsche starts talking about their mother’s health and Kinn then wants to talk about memorial services for some of the men they lost during the coups, and then Tankhun starts crying about how Pete was lost because he still refuses to believe Pete would willingly leave and- There’s just never a good time.
Kim jabs at his food and doesn’t contribute a word, but Chay can tell he’s hanging onto every word being said.
The grandfather clock in the corner chimes and suddenly Porsche and Kinn are gathering their things and rushing off again.
Porsche gives Chay a long hug on his way out. Tankhun and Kinn pause awkwardly in front of Kim, but end up heading out without saying anything.
After, Kim looks miserable, small and curled up on himself. Chay feels the ice around his heart start to thaw.
Other than the murderboard, there were no pictures of friends or family at his apartment, no signs of guests, no signs of anyone really. If he’s learned anything today, it’s that Kim’s life is… lonely.
Kim is clearly thinking the same thing.
“I don’t think my brothers like me,” Kim says. When he looks up at Chay, it’s enough to make Chay’s heart break for him. “Does anyone?”
Chay flounders at the question. “I’m sure they love you-”
“But they don’t like me,” Kim says with more certainty this time.
Surely Kim can’t be so lonely as to have no one who likes him, but Chay struggles to think of who else Kim was close to. During their time together, he realized that Kim had plenty of acquaintances at school, but he never really hung out with them. If he called someone in front of Chay, it was always no-nonsense work practicalities or scheduling. From the state of his fridge in his apartment, it’s clear he never really hosts anyone at his place. And no one has appeared out of the woodwork looking for him now that Kim’s been incommunicado with the rest of the world for a week.
The only one who knows who likes Kim is probably Kim himself.
“I’ll figure out how to get your memories back, P’Kim,” Chay says with renewed determination. “We can track down whoever sent you that thing, we can-”
“I don’t want them.”
It’s so sudden and unexpected Chay blinks at Kim, taken aback. “You, what?” He’s sure he must have heard wrong.
“I don’t want my memories back, Chay. I don’t want to be him. I’ve seen his life and I want nothing of it.
“That guy,” Kim continues, voice low, “he’s an idiot. He’s lonely, and he’s paranoid, and he hurts you. I don’t want to hurt you, Chay.”
Chay wants to object, but nothing Kim has said rings untrue.
But then Kim continues. “I want to make you happy, Chay. I want to make more songs that will make you do that weird flaily thing, and I want you to teach me about memes, and I want to have food in my fridge that you like so that you’ll want to stay. I want you to like me enough to want to stay.”
“What if…” Chay starts, then swallows before starting again, “What if you only think that because of the spell? It made you trust me, what if it made you-” like me, want me, love me.
“Then so be it,” Kim says with finality. “I don’t care.”
But Chay does. Chay cares so much. He’s had Kim for the wrong reasons before, now he wants Kim to choose him of his own free will, not because it’s the only thing he knows.
But shit, does Chay want to say yes.
Spending the day together has brought up all the things he liked about Kim. He wants to throw himself into Kim’s arms and let himself be loved by this gentle version of Kim, who’s a little less scarred and a little less scared.
“Kim,” he whines, “if you remember and leave me again, I can’t-”
Kim strides to him, crossing the room in the flash of an eye. A hand on the back of Chay’s neck, and then, a kiss pressed to Chay’s cheek.
Chay loses himself in the memory of Kim, the other Kim, in the studio, showing an outburst of emotions Chay had never seen from him before.
This Kim doesn’t have that memory, that shared history. Maybe that means this is authentic. Maybe it means that kiss was authentic.
Then this Kim pulls him back into this moment with a raspy breath and Chay realizes he’s waiting for his reaction.
Chay throws his arms around Kim and makes the memory theirs again.
He waits for Kim to complain he can’t breathe, but it never comes. Kim clings back just as tightly.
Chay tempts fate and brings Kim home with him.
Not to the compound, home. To the pull out couch in the living room where they put on a movie and don’t watch it.
The next morning when Chay wakes up, he feels guilty. What is he doing? What does he expect to happen?
“Why are you pretending to be asleep?” Kim asks him softly. Chay leaves his head where it’s resting nestled on Kim’s shoulder. He wrestles with letting this play out, but then he decides he has no choice.
“I’m scared,” this Chay and past Chay say in unison, “that if I look at you, I’ll cry.”
He feels like an actor in front of a live audience, and the lines have already been scripted. He just has to play his role.
He turns up to Kim to look at him, but Kim’s face is just as unreadable as it was the first time.
“I love you,” he says anyway. He should stop there, but he doesn’t. He has to break his whole heart all over again.
“Do you-”
Kim goes off script. “I love you, too.”
Chay stares at him. That’s not his line. This isn’t how the story goes.
He’s long resigned himself to never hearing Kim say those words. Even now that they’ve been uttered, he waits for Kim to take them back.
Or maybe Chay just imagined them. The room is still and quiet, has it ever been anything else? He can’t remember the exact tone and cadence, maybe it didn’t happen at all.
Kim must sense Chay’s panic because he gently rolls them over so Chay is pressed beneath him, caged in on all sides like he’s worried Chay is going to be one to run out.
“Chay,” Kim says again, slowly, keeping their eyes locked together so Chay can’t miss a single word. “I don’t know anything but one thing. I love you. The me before loved you, and this me loves you, and whoever I become tomorrow will love you too.”
Chay’s heart soars, but on wings made of wax and he’s afraid Kim is the sun. He’s sure any minute now that everything is going to fall apart and Chay’s going to plummet down to Earth any second.
“You wouldn’t say that if you were you,” Chay whispers.
Kim lowers his head until his nose is touching Chay’s. “Then let me show you,” he whispers back into the quickly diminishing space between them.
He kisses Chay and it’s the kiss they never had before. It’s a soft kiss at first, but Kim deepens it quickly
Chay has dreamt about their first kiss countless times, but never like this, never Kim slowly coaxing him and Chay the one needing convincing. It’s the only reason he lets himself believe this is real.
So of course, that’s when it all falls apart.
Kim is sucking on his bottom lip one second, then the next he is on the other side of the couch, pressed as far back as he can to put the most distance between them. His eyes are panicked and Chay just knows.
“Welcome back,” he chokes out, eyeing Kim warily.
Kim says nothing, just looks at Chay with uncharacteristic fear.
Chay doesn’t want to watch that fear turn into anger and accusation, so he rolls over and curls up around himself. “You remember the way out, I assume,” he says sharply.
He hears Kim scramble up, and when the soft click of the front door opening and closing echos he takes a moment to wonder which morning was worse, the kidnapping or the curse breaking.
He thinks the kidnapping was the better of the two. At least then he still believed he could be loved.
The dam bursts and Chay lets himself cry and cry and cry.
When he runs out of tears, he continues laying there all morning until his bodily functions demand he get up.
He drifts around his own house like a ghost, an echo of who he used to be until it’s time to face the reality of who he actually is and go back to the compound.
Of course, on his very first steps to normalcy, he opens the front door and trips over Kim.
He’s sitting just outside Chay’s front door, knees pulled up to his chest to hide his face. It’s basically the same position Chay had been in on the couch, just a little more upright and a lot more uncomfortable.
“You’re still here,” Chay says dumbly. It’s both a statement and a question.
Kim lifts his head from his knees and wordlessly hands Chay his phone.
It’s unlocked.
“Tell me who I am,” Kim says, not meeting Chay’s eyes.
If Chay had self preservation skills, he would just walk away, but he’s already heartbroken and he doesn’t see how it could get worse.
He takes Kim’s phone and slides down the side of the house to sit next to him. They must make an odd sight for any neighbor who happens to walk by, but Chay doesn’t really care.
“Well, first of all,” Chay says emotionlessly as he takes his initial assessment of Kim’s phone, “you don’t have any games, and I’m pretty sure that means you’re a monster.”
Kim snorts beside him, head still in his knees.
Chay pokes around, but there’s really not much to find. Generic wallpaper, mostly just the default apps anyone has to have to get around. He has social media apps, but they’re all linked to Wik profiles Chay is familiar with. His internet and message histories only go back two weeks, he must purge them regularly.
The only thing mildly of note is that Tankhun has sent dozens of texts in the last few days. Mostly indecipherable emojis, but getting more frequent with more and more question marks as Kim doesn’t reply.
Kinn only sent two messages, both from this morning. Tankhun’s going to come for you if you don’t respond to his messages soon. Let us know before you go dark. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m sending out a search team, I don’t care if you don’t want Pa to know we’re talking again.
If Kim had asked his brothers to ignore him where their father might see, that would explain why they were so weird at lunch today.
The fact that Kim sometimes talks to his brothers is the only interesting insight for a while. Chay is about to give up and tell Kim he’s absolutely no one at all until he gets to the encrypted storage. He has to pass the phone back to Kim for another long password, but then…
Neatly organized by subject matter is Kim’s life laid bare.
Chay finds Kim’s medical history, his college transcripts, and Wik’s contracts. Chay learns Kim has gotten too many stitches and he struggled in his Improvisational Music class and that Wik is contractually forbidden from saying his political views.
After all the personal information, Kim has folders for each family member and a few people of interest. Each person’s folder has a basic profile, photos going back to childhood, years worth of backed up emails and texts, and lists upon lists. Gift ideas for Kinn, Tankhun’s favorite TV shows, Mama’s family recipes, Conversational topics to avoid with Papa.
The lists are meticulously filled out, with dates and sources like Big let it slip Kinn has been shopping for a new watch or Khun talked about the dress in episode 13 for ten minutes, try and track down the designer
It’s…endearing. Chay honestly hadn’t thought Kim even liked his brothers, but apparently he takes detailed notes about everything they say.
He hovers over the folder labeled Porchay Pichaya Kittisawat. He’s already been searching through Kim’s phone for half an hour now, and Kim has lifted his head up from his knees to lean against the wall, but he’s just staring off into space and studiously not looking at Chay looking through his phone.
Chay taps into his file.
He’s immediately bombarded by photos of himself. There are scans of the polaroids, and the selfies he texted Kim, the guitar pick, and a few Chay doesn’t recognize that Kim must have taken of him during their tutoring sessions without Chay noticing.
There’s a folder labeled Songs for Chay with a dozen .wav files. He sees one named WDYS and the corresponding video and exits out of the folder to move on to the rest.
The spreadsheets are very bizarre to go through. There’s an encounter log, of all things. It was created on the day of their first tutoring session but has an entry for when they crossed paths at the open house. Subject very knowledgeable about Wik trivia that entry says. Does not have information about his brother’s mafia connections appears alongside their first tutoring session along with, Has a good ear for composition. He’s talented. He’ll have no problem getting in, even without my help.
Chay skips through their shared history to the latest entry. Saw Chay at the compound again. He looked happy. Avoided letting him see me, I didn’t want to upset him more.
There are other lists too. He has whole spreadsheets for Places to Take Chay, and Music Chay Would Like, and Chay’s Favorites with tabs for Restaurants, Food, Movies, Bands, and on and on. It seems like all the offhand comments or stray thoughts that Chay mentioned or texted have been documented thoroughly.
Chay thinks he should probably find it creepy, but it’s not so different from his idol wall and his own encyclopedic knowledge of Wik’s discography.
The last file he opens is an untitled spreadsheet that’s been edited recently. It has two sections, one labeled Reasons to Stay Away and Reasons to Try and Win Him Back.
Reasons to Stay Away has nearly two dozen entries. Reasons to Try and Win Him Back just has two. I love him and I miss him.
Chay passes the phone back wordlessly.
“Well, P’Kim,” he says, “I think you have a lot of love in your life after all. But mostly I’ve just learned you’re a big nerd.”
Kim glances at Chay out of the corner of his eyes. “It’s a well kept secret. My publicist says it could ruin Wik’s whole image if word were to get out.”
Chay rolls his eyes but the corner of his mouth twitches up. “Your secret is safe with me.”
They sit together for long minutes, and the weight of the enormous way Kim loves settles over him comfortingly. Kim squirrels it away, hides it, even from himself, but it exists. It looks nothing like the way Chay loves, no easy affection, no soft words. It’s systematic, and careful, and peculiar. But it’s no less real.
“Where do we go from here?” Kim asks eventually.
Chay leans back, letting his head rest against the side of the house. “I guess that’s up to you.”
Kim twitches noticeably from out of the corner of Chay’s eye. “What does that mean?”
“Tell me something about you,” Chay commands. “Something real.”
Kim thinks for a long moment. “I liked seeing you in my jacket yesterday.”
Chay has to laugh. “I already knew that, P’Kim.”
Kim’s lips twitch up in amusement, but then he falls to seriousness once again. This time when he speaks, his voice is low. “My father made me kill a man when I was thirteen, and that was the day I decided I was going to leave the family.”
Chay reaches his hand over to Kim’s and gives it a long squeeze.
“That’s a good start.”