Chapter Text
Theo’s bags are made on autopilot, clothes shoved unceremoniously into his luggage as he dismantles his whole life into pieces small enough to be easily shipped all the way to Paris.
France used to be a place he looked forward to visiting every year, to spend his summers basking in the southern French sun, video calling Akk to show him around his favourite places – and on one particular vacation, dragging the other man around Parisian corners on his first and only trip outside Thailand.
That was, undoubtedly, Theo’s most cherished summer; the heat was just right, the bustling city streets just crowded enough that they could disappear into it, the company perfect. Never had Paris seemed to fit its ‘city of love’ title as much as it did when he roamed the streets with Akk by his side.
Now, France feels a tad too much like a dead-end, like the distance will allow for Akk to forget him, selfishly desiring to be the only one Akk ever loves and knowing he just can’t make the other man wait for him for who knows how long.
This has never been what Theo planned for his life – in his imagination, he goes on picturing a future shared with Akk, family dinners and late nights reading and playing like children well into their old age. He can’t keep Akk tied to him, however, no matter how long Akk has meant the world to him.
Theo doesn’t know when he’ll return, if ever, and to keep Akk in the dark seems unfair, to have something and then never get any closure when Theo’s the one putting a stop to their short-lived romance.
“Theo?” his mother walks into his room, bringing in another bag for him to fill. “Are you done with the rest of it?”
“Yes,” he nods slowly, staring at the boxes like they’re hazardous. There’s one thing he hasn’t quite managed to pack up yet, sitting atop his bed all lonesome: the fox pillow, its eyes following Theo like they’re Akk’s own.
Hooking their arms together, his mother glances over at the pillow, aware of how important it’s been for his through the years, the meaning of it being a piece of Akk that has always lived in his room. “You’re not taking it with you?”
He’s been pondering over it since he began packing; not having it around might hurt so much more than Theo can explain, but being forgotten is a thousand times worse. “No,” he shakes his head, leaning over his mother’s. “There’s someone who needs to keep it more than I do.”
---
Knocking on Akk’s door feels so strange. Usually, Theo would just walk in like the house is his as well; in a way, it is – Theo’s grow up here just as much as he’s done in his own house, these walls holding as many memories as the ones across the fence. Theo’s gonna miss it, gonna miss Im and Egg like they’re family, gonna miss the backyard and the dining room and Akk’s worn mattress.
The front door opens slowly, Akk standing on the other side like an apparition, like Theo isn’t really seeing him, but a long-gone memory. The fox pillow suddenly weighs like a whole brick wall in his arms, slumping Theo’s shoulders and making him want to cry once more.
“I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” Theo utters lowly, every word hitting painfully. “I thought you should have this.”
Akk doesn’t take the cushion at first, looking at it like he can somehow revert time to when he first gave it to Theo, when they were barely 10. “Don’t you want it anymore?”
“I do,” he answers without thinking twice, taking a step closer and then back, afraid to be too near. “I just want you to have it so you can remember me by.”
Akk’s eyes hold so much more than what Theo can decipher, than he can explain of his own feelings. “I’m not going to forget you, Theo. You’ve been in my life since it began.”
“Please.” Theo sounds so weak, like if Akk doesn’t accept the pillow, it means he won’t accept that Theo will love him forever, will come back even if he’s old and hope that against his better judgement, Akk waited.
Egg’s voice rings out from inside the house, leading Akk to look back before closing the door behind himself, leading Theo to the garden. They’ve always had their set places on the bench, the phantom marks of the football as it hit the wall, the shade of the tree they hid under when the sun got too much to bear.
They’ve always had the rose bushes to witness them, to watch them grow and dance around each other and come together, to watch them fall apart and prove to Theo that no matter how much he wished it, he can’t have Akk forever.
“Are you breaking up with me?” Akk asks without roundabouts, direct in the way he very rarely is, blunt in a way that digs through Theo’s chest.
“It’s unfair of me to keep you in a long-distance relationship when I don’t know when or if I’ll come back.” Theo can’t bring himself to look him in the eye, drawing invisible patterns over the bench’s surface.
“Theo,” if his name has ever sounded more pained, Theo can’t remember when that was. “Look at me, Theo.”
Gathering all the courage to lift his gaze, all that Theo can see is Akk, all he’s ever been able to see is Akk, filling up every space in his mind and every crevice of his heart – his broken, still beating heart. “I love you.”
Akk’s eyes fill with tears he doesn’t shed, at least not for now. “I’m going to wait for you, no matter what you say.”
“You can’t–”
“Theo.” Sounding more serious than Theo’s ever heard him be, Akk takes his hand in both of his, sliding closer over the bench until they’re touching from knee to shoulder. “I’ll wait because I want to, because I love you. Because you’re my best friend, and even if we’re never…” his voice dies out, taking a heavy gulp of air. “If we’re never like this again, you’ll still be my best friend, from the moment we met until the day we die.”
“Let’s hope that’s not soon, then.” Squeezing the hand holding his own, Theo slides his free palm over Akk’s cheeks, bringing the other man into a brief yet heartfelt kiss, hoping this can convey all the things stuck in his throat, all the words he spent years not saying and now feels he doesn’t have any time left to say. “You’ll always be the best person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet greater people.”
“No,” Theo shakes his head vehemently. “None of them can be greater, because they won’t be you. You’re not just my best friend, Akk.” Swallowing the nervousness, Theo presses their foreheads together, watches the setting sun shine behind Akk’s back. “You’re the love of my life. You don’t have to wait for me, but I’ll be waiting for you.”
---
Im and Egg are standing at the gate when Theo and his mother start packing up their suitcases into the car trunk, the older sister offering her help in settling the boxes of books on the driveway.
Theo stares back at his home’s façade, taking in a scenery he’s not sure when he’ll get to see again, now that the house’s officially for sale. Is it possible to miss a place you haven’t left yet? If yes, than he’s certain this longing feeling in his chest is precisely that.
One person isn’t here however, and it’s not his father – though Theo never pictured a life where his parents parted ways with each other, it’s not his paternal absence that he feels the most now, but the familiar face of his soulmate.
Even through the heartache of seeing his biggest example of true, unadulterated love fall apart, Theo can’t help but believe that even with the distance, they can find their way back together and be then as they are now.
“Akk had to work today,” Im whispers to him as she watches his likely forlorn expression, carrying a backpack down the stairs. “He wanted to be here.”
“I know,” Theo replies, doing his best to force a smile.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re not sad.” With a hand on his shoulder, she pulls him into a hug, one Theo welcomes greatly, hiding his face into her neck. Im has always felt like the older sister Theo’s never had, Egg his own little sibling; they’re Theo’s family too, grew up with him, teased him mercilessly, have seen his hopelessness with Akk and the way the two walked into the same path.
“I’m gonna miss you, Phi.”
Holding his face between her hands, Im gives him a watery smile. “We’ll miss you too, N’Theo. One of us more than the others, I believe.”
“P’Theo!” Egg runs in like a small hurricane, throwing her arms around his waist and holding him tighter than he could’ve imagined her capable of. “Don’t go!”
“Egg,” Im berates her, trying and failing to tug her away. “Let Theo breathe, you’re gonna crush him.”
“It’s okay,” he acquiesces, hugging her back just as tightly. “I’m sorry, Egg.”
“But what about P’Akk?” Her sad puppy eyes shouldn’t make him so miserable, yet they just have him feeling worse. “Don’t you love him?”
“Egg!” Im finally manages to detangle her younger sister from Theo, hands on her hips as she admonishes the other girl. “That’s not something you just ask people!”
“But P’Akk loves you!” Egg ignores the reproach, jutting out her bottom lip in a pout.
Patting her head, Theo tries to not let how awful he’s feeling impact her. “I love him too, Egg.”
“I’ll come back.” Theo doesn’t know when, if it’ll take months or years, but he knows he needs to see Akk again at some point in his life, if only to be sure that Akk’s been happy, even if it doesn’t involve him. “Not just for Akk, for you too.”
“Do you promise?” The hand held out to him feels less like a pinky-promise and more like a demand, that if Theo doesn’t return, Egg will hunt him down to the recesses to the Earth for her brother’s sake.
“Yes,” enveloping her finger with his, Theo swears more to himself than to Egg, swears to the walls of his childhood home and the books he’s read aloud to Akk and the drawings Akk has given through the years. “I’ll come back.”
---
His mother looks at him knowingly as he takes the window seat next to her, resting his head on her shoulder.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” she says, fixing the carding over him. “In case you changed your mind.”
“I’m sorry, mom,” he utters weakly.
Sliding his hand into hers, Theo feels like he needs his mother’s care now more than ever, and he hates how selfish he feels for making her pain all about himself. “What for, dear?”
“Not being a good son.”
“You are a good son, Theo.” With her fingertips to his chin, she lifts his head so their gazes meet. “I understand that your whole life is here, I wouldn’t be mad if you decided to stay.”
“But it’s not supposed to be about me,” he argues, feeling too much like a little kid. “I want you to be okay.”
“I am okay, dear. The divorce didn’t come as a surprise for me. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt; it only means that I know it’ll get better.”
“Will it?” Looking into the future’s the last thing Theo wants to do right now, seeking validation for his feelings in his mother.
The captain’s voice plays over the speakers, warning the passengers that the plane’s about to take off, and Theo’s stomach drops down into the centre of the Earth. He’s never been afraid of flying, yet the fear grips him now of all times, as his world spins upside down into a different version of reality.
Faster and faster, the plane starts to speed through the take-off runway, the scenery outside blurring as Theo readies himself to a new life, when all of a sudden something goes wrong.
The plane shakes like an earthquake's hit it, the aircraft staff falling forward with the rolling tray running away from her hands and spilling all its contents over the aisle. People scream in fright, a man starts crying in the row behind them, his mother gripping onto him like her life’s flashing before her eyes.
Panicked himself, the captain tries hard to keep everyone calm through the intercom, yet it’s easier said than done, when it seems like not a single person on board understands what’s going on.
Through the window, Theo can see that the plane's going far too fast, derailing out of its set take off path, smoke rising out of the propeller at a worrying rate.
A shadow crosses over the windowpane and from his seat, Theo’s able to witness a person’s silhouette as it stands atop one of the plane’s wings. It’s shape’s familiar, immediately striking him in the chest.
The shout he means to let out gets stuck in his throat, needing Akk to stop thinking he’s invincible right this second, before something worse than a stab wound finds its way to him.
Akk can’t read his mind, however, and goes on walking over the wing flaps even as they try to send his flying away, repeatedly shooting webs against the plane’s body to keep himself stable, tying the threads to others he aims at the ground in a tangled mess that starts, miraculously, to slow down the craft as it barrels towards airport buildings.
It doesn’t work as fast as Akk seems to be expecting, and the plane begins to change course, speeding sideways and hitting a hopefully empty warehouse with its right wing.
If people were screaming before, now they’re outright bawling, kept glued to their seats only by the seat belts and nothing else. Theo holds onto his mother as she holds onto him, her eyes wide as she watches the figure out the window desperately covering the metal in webs.
The plane spins once, twice – and with a loud screech of tires on the landing, it halts, the wing broken and the carcass splitting in half, sending a portion of the passengers flying back towards the tail. There’s an awful smell in the air, like something’s about to burn up, and the two halves rise high above the ground, making it nearly impossible to escape.
Akk jumps inside through the newly-made opening, scanning the surroundings as he seems to map out where every person might be. He’s grown into this vigilante shit – months of practice have made him a real hero, one Theo can’t afford to lose.
The airplane crew are doing all the can to keep the calm, even as people don’t want to listen to them at all, a sea of oxygen masks looming over everyone’s head making seeing what’s going on a difficult task.
Theo starts making his way to Akk without even thinking it through, moving against the crowd as passengers and crew alike pile up at the back of the aircraft. His mother's cries ring in his ears yet his mind is blank, all that he registers being Akk's figure as he gets closer.
The litany of speeches Theo recited about safety and risks and carelessness plays back to himself like the cruellest form of I told you so, one false step that has Theo losing his footing and falling through the gap between one row of seats and the next.
Fighting never prepared him to hold on for dear life to an airplane seat, the ground underneath farther away than he imagined and his fingers slipping without finding a solid grip.
Is this how he’s meant to go out? Like the tragic hero of a sappy novel, falling to his death in an out-of-control airplane?
Thoughts fly through his brain, nothing and everything all at once, incapable of holding himself to safety for too long as his hand lets go on its own, wind flapping around him like a tornado as he descends, expecting the impact that never comes, his body light like air as he floats, held up by a single thread.
Lungs filling with oxygen like a blast to the ribcage, Theo opens his eyes with a startle, Akk’s fists whitened as he grips onto the web keeping Theo afloat with all his strength and then some. Under his hooded visage, Theo sees the agitation, the set of his shoulders and the shaking of his hands, and he’s safely in danger, saved yet again by the one person he’ll never stop worrying about.
“Let me go!” he yells out, tugging on the web, suddenly at war with Akk to have him give Theo up. “Save them!”
“No!” Akk’s voice reverberates with a mix of anger and terror. It’s unlike anything Theo’s ever heard from him; he sounds absolutely devastated, the plane breaking like the world’s ending around him.
“I’m one person, there are dozens of them. They’re more important.”
“I can save everyone!” Theo doesn’t know if Akk’s shouting at him or at himself, his body moving up slowly, whatever superhuman strength Akk’s gained not enough to hoist him properly.
“You can’t…” Theo whispers, the web impossible to undo. “It’s okay, hey!” Akk looks at him, really looks at him, eyes wild and face open, and for the first time in their entire lives, they see each other for who they truly are, bound by a thread nothing can saw through. “Save. Them. Let me go.”
“Never!” Mustering a force his enhanced muscles don’t possess, Akk sticks his feet between the seats and hauls Theo upwards, sending him flying up and catching him at the very last second with both arms wrapping around his waist.
Theo has his eyes scrunched shut, afraid of opening them and seeing he’s not in Akk’s embrace at all, instead smashed against the tarmac below.
“Theo…” Akk breathes out, voice airy, and it feels dreamy and real and everything in between, Theo’s eyelids fluttering open to take in the sight before him.
They have no time to bask in the glory of salvation, of not being literally dead – the plane continues to creak, the screams get louder, and Akk places him as out of harm’s way as he can before he’s jumping over the seats to help people get off the aircraft.
Theo’s mother stares at him in both worry and awe, the glint in her eyes telling him she already knows it’s Akk that’s come to their rescue, and she looks proud of Akk, like she wants to kill Theo for nearly getting himself killed, Theo’s sure he’ll get the scolding of a lifetime later.
Firefighter truck sirens ring closer and closer, passengers being led out of the wreckage slowly, one of the crew holding herself up against Akk’s side as he helps her move with her likely sprained ankle. Theo’s still filled with fear, heart racing madly, so hard he feels it might jump out, but Akk looks back at him, settling the nerves how he’s always been the only one to be able to.
And Theo knows they’ll be alright.
---
Akk’s nowhere to be seen when everyone that was once within the plane is led back into the airport’s waiting room.
Theo searches for him like he’s lost his mind, looking around and down and up and still not finding the other man, when he’s certain he’d recognise him in any crowd. Seeking and hide they seem to play, not even a glimpse of Akk anywhere to calm the speeding of his breathing.
“Dear,” his mother settles her hands on his shoulders, sliding them up to cup his cheeks. “It’s him, right?” Speechless, Theo nods, eyes shutting to try and tune out the cacophony of the airport. “Thank you,” she whispers, though she’s apparently not talking to Theo at all. “Take care of him, will you?”
“Always,” Akk’s voice resounds from the left, and Theo throwing himself at him before his brain’s even understood the other man’s next to him, a wet laugh bursting out of him at the oof Akk lets out as he’s crushed in a bear hug. “Are you okay?”
Staining Akk’s shirt with his tears, Theo slaps him on the arm. “You’re such an idiot.” Raising his head, Theo looks deeply into his eyes, “I love you so much.”
The sound of a throat being cleared comes from somewhere behind them, his mother standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. “Were you planning on telling me about this?"
Shrugging, Theo winds his arms around Akk’s neck, not willing to let him go any time soon. “Can’t a guy be selfish for once?”
“Once?” Akk asks with a cocked eyebrow.
“Shut up,” Theo mutters in return, feeling the blush creep over his nape and onto his ear.
His mother’s face melts into a smile, her whole demeanour changes as she gazes between them. “Are you happy?” Theo nods without thinking twice. “Good. Are you happy, Akk?”
Turning his stare onto Theo, Akk prolongs the silence just to see him squirm impatiently. “Very.”
“Let’s go home, then,” she claps her hands together with a tone of finality. “We all need to rest.”
Confused, Theo steps away from Akk to talk to his mother in a low voice. “But the next plane–”
“Oh, we’re not getting in any planes,” she deadpans, pulling out her phone. “I think your grandmother will kill me if I show up in Paris after an accident.”
Completely flabbergasted, Theo doesn’t know what to say besides, “We’re not going to France?”
“No,” she shakes her head, taking his hand in hers to keep his attention on her. “Your life’s here, Theo. And so is mine. Running away won’t make me feel better, but staying might.”
“Mom,” he insists, torn between wanting to celebrate that he gets to stay and needing make sure his mother’s not making any harsh decisions on his behalf. “I don’t want you to give up on things because of me.”
“Who said it’s because of you? Akk’s very happy, isn’t he? I’m not gonna take that away from him.”
They’re laughing and they’re crying and Theo has never felt so at home than right now, with his two favourite people in the world, safe and sound and loved.
Lifting him up into a bridal carry, Akk starts walking far too fast for the airport, Theo’s mother hot on his heels. “Let’s go home, Nong Theo.”
“’Nong Theo’, my ass.” With a smack to Akk’s head, Theo can’t even pretend to be mad, giggling like he’s hit the jackpot.
“Theo!”
Like a scolded little kid, Theo tries to hide his smile behind his hand. “Sorry, mom.”
Leaning down to whisper into his ear, Akk sends shivers down his spine and lights up his world and is the centre of his universe. “Told you I’d wait.”
“Told you I’d always love you.” A long kiss is pressed to Akk’s cheek, another to his lips when no one’s looking. “My hero.”