Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Po pricked his finger for the third time in ten minutes.

It was not even a difficult hem.

That was the truly humiliating part.

The trousers were laid neatly across the worktable in front of him, dark fabric smoothed flat beneath his palm, the unfinished edge folded with the kind of precision Uncle Joei had drilled into him since he was young enough to sit cross-legged on the floor and pass pins up to the adults. Hemming was simple work. Repetitive. Familiar. Needle in. Needle out. Thread pulled smooth. Keep the stitches even. Keep the fabric steady. Do not let the seam pucker.

Po knew how to do this.

He could do this half-asleep.

He had done it half-asleep, actually, many times, usually during deadline season when freelance edits had eaten through his nights and Uncle Joei had needed an extra pair of hands at the shop the next morning.

But today, his hands would not listen.

The needle slipped again.

Po hissed softly and drew his hand back, staring at the tiny bead of red blooming on the tip of his finger.

“Seriously?” he whispered under his breath.

The shop around him carried on as if it had not noticed his slow descent into uselessness. The old ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, stirring the warm afternoon air without cooling it. Somewhere near the front, a standing steamer released a faint, steady breath, filling the room with the smell of damp heat and pressed cotton. Bolts of fabric leaned against the wall in quiet rows — navy, charcoal, cream, pale blue — catching little scraps of sunlight through the front windows. The bell above the door hung still. The street outside murmured with motorbikes, vendors, distant voices, the occasional sharp laugh drifting in whenever someone passed too close to the open entrance.

Everything was ordinary.

That was the problem.

The world had gone back to being ordinary as if Thame had not stood on that fitting platform yesterday.

As if Po had not seen him beneath the golden morning light, taller and darker and more impossible than memory had any right to allow. As if Thame had not smiled at Uncle Joei with that polished sweetness, like a respectable client, like a good boy from the past, like he was not the kind of man police officers lowered their voices around.

As if Thame had not taken Po’s wrist in his hand.

Po’s fingers tightened around the fabric.

Immediately, he regretted it.

The skin beneath his sleeve tingled.

Not a sharp pain. Not even the dull ache from the bruise anymore. That had faded mostly into a ghost of itself, yellowed beneath his skin, tender only when pressed too hard.

No.

This was different.

This was memory pretending to be sensation.

The place where Thame’s mouth—

Po swallowed.

He should not have been thinking about it.

He absolutely should not have been thinking about it.

Especially not here, in Uncle Joei’s shop, with the afternoon sun lying in warm squares across the floor and a pair of elderly customers murmuring over fabric samples near the front display. Not while he was supposed to be hemming a perfectly innocent pair of trousers. Not while Uncle Joei was less than fifteen feet away, measuring sleeve length for a client and humming cheerfully under his breath.

And yet.

His wrist tingled again.

Po stared down at the needle in his hand, but the shop blurred slightly at the edges.

If he closed his eyes, he could still remember it.

Everything.

The warmth of Thame’s fingers. 

And the scent of him.

That was the worst part.

Po could still remember Thame’s scent as clearly as if he had leaned close again.

Something expensive and warm. Amber, maybe. Smoke, but not harsh smoke. Something darker underneath, like leather left in sunlight, like cedarwood and clean skin and danger dressed in a tailored suit. It had clung to him quietly, not overpowering, not obvious, but impossible to forget once Po had noticed it.

He had noticed it too much.

He had noticed it when he stood close to take Thame’s measurements.

He had noticed it when his hands trembled around the tape.

He had noticed it when Thame lowered his head, and suddenly the entire shop seemed to narrow to the space between them.

Po shut his eyes for half a second.

The memory sharpened at once.

Thame’s breath against his skin.

The soft press of his lips.

The unbearable gentleness of it.

Po’s whole body had betrayed him in that moment. Not just a flinch. Not just surprise. A tremor had gone through him like someone had touched a wire hidden beneath his bones.

It had been years.

Years.

That should have meant something.

Time was supposed to dull things. Time was supposed to make old feelings safer, softer, easier to hold at a distance. Time was supposed to turn first love into memory, into fondness, into something you could smile about while folding clothes or hearing an old song in a café.

Time was not supposed to leave him sitting in Uncle Joei’s tailor shop with his cheeks burning.

Po opened his eyes quickly.

Too late.

His thoughts had already gone where they should not have gone.

Once, there had been no need to imagine Thame’s hands.

Once, he had known exactly how they felt.

Once, he had spent whole afternoons with Thame in bed, tangled in sheets, sunlight crawling lazily over their skin while the rest of the world felt impossibly far away. There had been no need to wonder about warmth then. No need to invent the weight of Thame against him, the press of his palms, the way his fingers curled at Po’s waist as though holding him carefully and wanting too much at the same time.

Po’s breath caught.

Heat flooded his face.

No.

Absolutely not.

He jerked upright so suddenly that the spool of thread rolled across the table and dropped onto the floor.

It bounced once.

Twice.

Then rolled beneath the table.

Po stared after it in horror, as though the thread itself had betrayed him.

What was he doing?

What was he thinking?

He was in Uncle Joei’s shop.

Uncle Joei’s shop.

Surrounded by fabric, customers, pins, steam, unfinished trousers, and an uncle who still called him nong luk when he forgot to eat. This was not the place to start thinking about Thame’s hands on his waist. This was not the place to imagine Thame leaning over him, warm and heavy, mouth at his throat, voice low enough to make his thoughts scatter.

Po pressed both hands over his face.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

Sure, he had not been sexually active in a long time.

A very long time.

An offensively long time, if he was being honest.

But that did not mean he could start behaving like a possessed person because his high school ex-boyfriend, who was apparently some kind of mafia boss, had kissed his wrist in the middle of a fitting.

It was one kiss.

One.

To his wrist.

His bruised wrist, yes.

With Thame’s hand wrapped around him like that, yes.

With Thame looking at him like something inside him had gone very quiet and very dangerous, yes.

But still.

Po lowered his hands slowly.

His face was still burning.

The needle lay abandoned on the fabric. The trousers were probably wrinkled now. Uncle Joei would notice. Uncle Joei noticed everything when it came to fabric and absolutely nothing when it came to life-threatening tension between his nephew and terrifying clients, apparently.

Po reached down for the fallen thread, still mortified, when a polite cough sounded from across the shop.

Po froze.

Every thought in his head crashed into a wall.

Slowly, he looked up.

Uncle Joei stood by the cutting table, one hand resting on the edge of it, brows lifted. His measuring tape hung around his neck, and his expression was not suspicious exactly, but it was close enough to make Po’s soul leave his body.

“Nong luk Po,” Uncle Joei said gently, “are you okay?”

Po sat up too quickly and hit his knee against the underside of the table.

Pain shot up his leg.

He barely managed not to yelp.

“I’m fine,” he said, far too quickly. “Very fine. Completely fine.”

Uncle Joei blinked.

Po smiled.

It felt horrible on his face.

The older man’s gaze drifted to the trousers, then to Po’s red cheeks, then to the needle, then to the thread currently lying on the floor under the table.

“Nong Po,” he said, voice slow with the patience of someone trying very hard not to laugh, “you have been hemming the same side for almost an hour.”

Po looked down.

He had, in fact, been hemming the same side for almost an hour.

Badly.

His stitches were not even straight.

A wave of shame washed over him so intensely that he wanted to crawl under the table and live there with the thread.

“I didn’t sleep well,” he muttered.

That was true.

It was not the whole truth, but it was true enough to count as a respectable lie.

Uncle Joei’s face softened immediately.

Of course it did.

That somehow made Po feel worse.

“You’ve been tired since yesterday,” Uncle Joei said. “And you barely ate lunch.”

“I ate.”

“You ate two bites of rice and stared at the wall.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were blushing.”

Po choked.

Uncle Joei smiled like a man who had seen too much in his lifetime and had decided to be kind about it.

Po turned back to the trousers with violent focus. “I’ll finish this.”

“No,” Uncle Joei said.

Po looked up. “No?”

“No.” Uncle Joei took the trousers gently from him before Po could protest. “Go get dinner.”

“It’s early.”

“It’s almost six.”

Po glanced toward the clock.

It was, unfortunately, almost six.

The afternoon had slipped away while he sat there thinking thoughts that absolutely did not belong near a sewing needle.

“I can finish before I go,” Po said weakly.

Uncle Joei gave him a look.

It was not a harsh look. Uncle Joei did not really do harsh. It was worse than harsh. It was soft and knowing and deeply impossible to argue with.

“Go,” he said. “Walk a little. Get dinner for us. And maybe tea from the stall near the corner.”

Po hesitated.

The thought of leaving the shop made his stomach tighten.

Ever since the bank, stepping outside alone had felt different. The city had always been noisy, always crowded, always a little too much during rush hour, but now every sudden movement made his shoulders tense. Every stranger walking too close made his hand twitch toward his bag. Every raised voice dragged him back to marble floors and gunpowder and fingers crushing his wrist.

But staying inside was not helping either.

Inside, there was Thame.

Not physically.

That would have been easier, maybe.

No — inside, there was the ghost of him standing on the fitting platform. His voice. His scent. His mouth against Po’s skin. His eyes lowering to the bruise like the entire world had narrowed to that one fading mark.

Po needed air.

Hot, humid, Bangkok air.

Air that smelled like street food and exhaust and rainwater instead of starch and steam and memory.

“Okay,” he said, standing too quickly.

His stool scraped loudly against the floor.

A customer glanced over.

Po pretended not to notice.

He brushed imaginary lint off his khakis, then reached for his bag hanging from the back of the chair. He was wearing cream khakis today, loose enough to be comfortable in the heat, with a white shirt tucked neatly beneath an open yellow button-down. The yellow shirt was soft from too many washes, its sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms before he remembered the bruise and tugged them down again.

He stared at the cuff for a second.

Then pulled it lower.

Uncle Joei noticed.

He always noticed the small things too late.

His smile dimmed by a fraction, but he did not ask.

Po was grateful for that.

Too grateful.

“I’ll get the usual?” Po asked, forcing lightness into his voice.

“And tea,” Uncle Joei reminded him.

“Tea,” Po repeated.

“And something sweet if the mango sticky rice lady is still there.”

“You said dinner, not dessert.”

“Dinner needs hope.”

Despite himself, Po smiled.

A real one this time, small but easier.

“Yes, Uncle.”

He slipped the strap of his bag over his shoulder and stepped toward the door. The bell above it chimed lightly as he pushed it open, and at once the heat swallowed him.

Bangkok in the late afternoon did not welcome anyone gently.

It pressed against him.

Warm and damp and alive, wrapping around his skin the second he left the shop. The sun had begun to lower, but the city still held the day’s heat in the pavement, in the walls, in the metal shutters of nearby businesses. Humidity clung to the back of his neck. His yellow shirt shifted against his arms with the faintest pull of sweat. Somewhere close, oil hissed in a pan. A vendor shouted over the sound of passing motorbikes. The air smelled of grilled pork skewers, fried garlic, sweet milk tea, wet concrete, and the sharp exhaust of traffic idling too long at the intersection.

Po stood under the shop awning for a moment and breathed.

In.

Out.

Normal.

Everything was normal.

A delivery rider swerved around a parked car, cursing under his breath. Two schoolgirls in uniform passed by sharing one umbrella despite the lack of rain. An old woman counted coins at the fruit cart. A cat with a torn ear darted beneath a parked scooter and vanished into shadow.

The sight of the cat made Po’s expression soften.

“Ah,” he murmured. “You’re early today.”

Not that it was the same cat.

Probably.

Maybe.

There were several strays around the shop, but one in particular lingered near the small side alley around the corner. A skinny thing with suspicious eyes and a tail that flicked like it was constantly offended. Po had started feeding it weeks ago without telling Uncle Joei, mostly because Uncle Joei would pretend to scold him and then secretly start buying better food for it.

The cat liked to wait near the bend where the main road narrowed into a quieter side lane, tucked between the tea stall and the back wall of a closed stationery shop. It was not exactly hidden, but it was out of the main flow of foot traffic, shaded by a crooked awning and half-blocked by stacked plastic crates.

Po usually left scraps there.

A little fish if he had any.

Sometimes chicken.

Once, half of his own lunch, because the cat had looked at him like he personally had caused every hardship in its life.

He had a small packet of dried fish tucked in his bag today.

He had brought it from home without thinking.

See? Normal.

He was just going to feed a stray cat, buy dinner, get tea, maybe mango sticky rice if Uncle Joei had emotionally manipulated him enough — which he had — then return to the shop. That was all.

Nothing strange.

Nothing dangerous.

Nothing involving Thame.

Po stepped out from beneath the awning and started down the sidewalk.

The city moved around him in restless pieces.

A motorbike passed too close to the curb, wind brushing against his open yellow shirt. Someone laughed loudly behind him and he flinched before catching himself. His fingers tightened briefly around the strap of his bag.

It’s fine, he told himself.

He kept walking.

The shop disappeared behind him by degrees. First the warm light in the window, then the hanging sign, then the familiar rectangle of the doorway. The further he went, the more the sound changed. The main road remained loud, but the corner ahead held a pocket of quieter air, the kind of narrow urban pause Bangkok sometimes made between one burst of chaos and the next.

Po reached into his bag and felt around for the packet of dried fish.

His fingers closed around it just as he turned the corner.

Then he stopped.

The cat was not there.

At first, that was all his mind registered.

The little space beside the crates was empty.

No narrow face peering out from beneath the awning. No suspicious yellow eyes. No flicking tail. No offended little meow demanding tribute.

Po frowned.

“Psst,” he called softly before he could stop himself. “Are you hiding?”

Something moved.

Po’s head lifted.

Not near the crates.

Further back.

Near the wall.

A man was there.

Po had not noticed him at first because he was crouched low in the strip of shade between the closed stationery shop and the side of the tea stall. His clothes were dirty, or maybe just wrinkled and sweat-darkened from too many hours outside. His hair hung messily over his forehead. His shoulders were hunched, one arm tucked close to his body, the other braced against the ground as though he needed help staying upright.

For one second, Po’s mind supplied an ordinary explanation.

Homeless.

Drunk.

Sick.

Someone sleeping off the heat.

Then the man shifted.

Po’s stomach tightened.

There was something wrong in the movement. Something jagged and too alert. The man’s head jerked up slightly, as if he had heard Po’s breath. His body went rigid all at once.

Po’s fingers tightened around the packet of fish inside his bag.

A cold thread of unease slid down his spine.

No.

No, absolutely not.

He was not doing this again.

He was not standing around in a half-empty side lane with a strange man who could decide at any moment that Po looked easy to rob. He was not going to be stupidly kind and get grabbed by the wrist again. He was not going to wait for the world to turn sharp.

Po took one careful step back.

Then another.

His heartbeat picked up.

The man moved.

Po turned his face away quickly, trying not to make eye contact, trying to look like someone who had somewhere to be, someone not worth noticing. His feet began moving faster before he gave them permission. The packet of dried fish crinkled loudly in his bag.

Just walk.

Do not run.

Running makes people chase.

Just walk.

The man made a sound behind him.

Not a word.

A gasp.

Sharp. Broken. Too loud in the narrow pocket of shade.

Po froze before he could stop himself.

The sound had not been threatening. That was what made him stop. It had not been the harsh bark of a man about to demand his wallet or the low mutter of someone trying to follow him. It had been fear. Raw, startled fear, the kind that cracked out of a person before they had time to hide it.

Slowly, Po looked back.

The man had staggered to his feet, or tried to. He was half-standing now, one hand pressed against the wall, body tilted unnaturally as if balance had become something he no longer trusted. His face was pale beneath the grime and sweat, eyes blown wide, mouth open around a breath that seemed stuck in his throat.

And he was looking directly at Po.

No.

Not looking.

Recognizing.

The difference slid down Po’s spine like ice.

For a second, he could not understand it. He had never seen this man before. He was sure of it. He would have remembered someone looking at him like that, with horror opening across his face so suddenly that it made him seem less like a stranger and more like a man seeing the shape of his own death.

Po’s fingers tightened around the strap of his bag.

The small packet of dried fish crinkled somewhere inside it.

The sound was absurdly loud.

The man raised his hand.

His only hand.

Po did not understand that detail immediately. His mind was too busy trying to make sense of the arm lifting too fast, the finger pointing toward him, the way the man’s whole body seemed to recoil even as he stared. Po took one step back, pulse kicking hard against his ribs.

Then the man’s lips moved.

At first, no sound came out.

Then, hoarse and cracked, he whispered, “Khun… Pawat?”

Po’s stomach dropped so violently it felt like the street had vanished beneath him.

For a moment, there was no heat. No traffic. No smell of fried garlic from the stall nearby. There was only his name in a stranger’s mouth and the sudden horrible certainty that the world had gone wrong again.

“How do you know my name?” Po asked.

His voice came out too quiet.

Too small.

The man’s expression collapsed.

That was the only word for it.

Collapsed.

Fear broke across his face with such force that Po forgot how to move. The man’s knees bent. His hand slid down the wall, leaving a faint smear of dirt behind. For one terrible second, Po thought he might fall onto the pavement.

Then the man folded into a wai.

Not neatly. Not respectfully. Desperately.

His single hand pressed awkwardly against his chest, head bowing low, shoulders shaking so hard the loose fabric of his shirt trembled with it. Sweat slid down the side of his face. His breathing came too fast, tearing through his throat in small, panicked bursts.

“Khun Pawat,” he rasped. “Please. Please, I’m sorry.”

Po could not move.

The street sounds thinned around him.

The hiss of oil from the tea stall seemed too far away. The traffic on the main road blurred into a dull, distant roar. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed, but the sound was wrong, as if it belonged to another city entirely.

Po stared at the man.

At his eyes.

At the shape of his face beneath the dirt and swelling.

Something in him recognized before his mind did.

The bank.

The gunshot.

Cold tile beneath his palms.

A hand clamping around his wrist.

A voice barking, Get the fuck up.

Po’s breath stopped.

The man seemed to see the moment recognition struck.

His face crumpled further.

“I didn’t know,” he said quickly. “I swear, I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know until after. Please. Please tell him I said sorry.”

Po’s fingers went numb around the strap of his bag.

Tell him.

The words should have meant something. They probably did mean something. Somewhere, in some calmer part of the world, there was sense to be made of them. There were questions he should have asked. Who? Why? How did you find me? What happened to you?

But fear did not leave room for questions.

Fear filled him too fast.

It rushed into his chest, into his throat, into the space behind his eyes until everything narrowed down to the man in front of him and the memory of a bank floor beneath his knees.

Po stepped back.

The man lifted his head too quickly.

“No, no, please—please don’t go.”

Po turned.

He did not think. His body chose before his mind did.

Po had only taken two steps when the man lurched forward.

It was not graceful. It was barely even a chase. It was the desperate, broken movement of someone too frightened to think clearly, too unsteady to move with purpose, too terrified to let the only person in front of him disappear. But Po did not know that. He did not have time to understand the shape of the man’s fear or the meaning of the words spilling from his mouth.

He only heard movement behind him.

Too close.

Too fast.

Then fingers caught the back of his yellow shirt.

The grip was clumsy. Weak, even. It snagged more fabric than flesh, twisting in the loose cotton of his open button-down and yanking him backward half a step. The pull snapped through his shoulders. The collar dragged against the back of his neck. His bag slipped down his arm, the strap biting awkwardly into his elbow. The packet of dried fish fell from his hand and hit the pavement with a small, ridiculous crackle.

For one suspended second, Po could not breathe.

The alley disappeared.

The heat disappeared.

The smell of fried garlic and exhaust and sweet tea vanished beneath something older, colder, uglier.

A room.

A wall at his back.

The sharp sting across his cheek before he had even understood Earn had raised his hand.

The ringing silence afterward.

Po remembered standing there with one palm pressed to his face, staring at the man he had trusted while his skin burned hot beneath his fingers. He remembered how stupidly quiet everything had become, how even the air had seemed to hold its breath. Earn had looked shocked too, at first. Then angry that Po had made him look shocked. Angry that Po had made him lose control. Angry that Po was staring at him like that.

Po had held his phone in his hand then.

He remembered that most clearly.

The cold rectangle of it against his palm. His fingers trembling around it. His thumb hovering over contacts he could not call, people he could not explain this to, a world he had already made too small for anyone to fit inside.

He had wanted someone.

Not in a clear way. Not in a logical way. Not even in a way he had allowed himself to name.

Just someone.

Someone who would come.

Someone who would see the mark on his cheek and believe him without needing the story to be neat. Someone who would stand between him and the thing that had just happened. Someone whose presence could make the room stop shrinking around him.

But there had been no one he could call.

His phone had felt useless in his hand.

A door with no handle.

A mouth with no voice.

Earn had apologized afterward. Of course he had. He had cried. He had held Po’s hand too tightly and said it would never happen again. He had said he was stressed. He had said Po knew how he got when he felt ignored. He had said Po should not look so scared because that made him feel like a monster.

And Po, still shaking, still burning, still holding a phone that could not save him, had believed just enough of it to stay.

Now, in the side lane behind Uncle Joei’s shop, the man’s fingers twisted harder into his shirt.

Po came apart.

“Let go!”

The sound tore from him before he recognized his own voice. It was too loud, too sharp, cracked open with the kind of terror that did not care who heard it. He jerked forward with everything in him. The fabric pulled tight, straining across his shoulders. For half a second the man’s grip held.

Then the cotton slipped free.

Po stumbled.

Caught himself.

Ran.

He did not look back.

He did not think about the man’s words. He did not think about the strange apology or the way his name had sounded in that hoarse, terrified voice. He did not think about the empty sleeve or the way the man had bowed. He did not think about anything that required understanding.

Understanding was too slow.

Fear was faster.

His sandals slapped against the pavement as he ran back toward the main road. His bag bounced against his side, twisted awkwardly where it had nearly fallen off his shoulder. The open yellow shirt flared behind him, the back still wrinkled where the man’s fingers had caught it. His white shirt clung damply to his chest. Sweat slid down the side of his neck, cooling too quickly in the wind of his own movement.

Behind him, the lane erupted.

A shout cut through the humid air.

Then another.

The heavy scrape of shoes against pavement.

A muffled cry, abruptly swallowed.

The low growl of an engine.

A van door sliding open.

Then shut.

Po heard none of it clearly.

It was all too far behind him, distorted by the rush of blood in his ears. He did not see the two men who stepped out from the shaded mouth of the alley the moment he ran. He did not see one catch the robber by the collar with such brutal efficiency that the man’s knees nearly buckled. He did not see the other clamp a hand over his mouth. He did not see the black van waiting by the curb, its windows dark, its engine running as if it had never expected to wait long.

He did not see the man dragged inside.

He did not see the van pull away.

Po only ran.

The city slammed back into him in pieces. Motorbike horns. A vendor shouting after him when he nearly knocked into a basket of limes. The hot-oil hiss of something frying. The sour-sweet smell of traffic. The glare of late-afternoon sunlight flashing off a passing car. A woman turning her head sharply as he rushed by. Someone asking if he was okay.

He could not answer.

His breath came too fast, scraping up his throat until it hurt. His chest felt tight enough to crack. Every inch of his skin crawled beneath his clothes, especially the place between his shoulder blades where the man had grabbed his shirt. It felt as if the hand were still there. As if the fabric still held the shape of fingers. As if the pull had gone beneath the cotton and found old bruises memory had hidden in his body.

By the time Uncle Joei’s shop came into view, Po’s vision had blurred at the edges.

The warm rectangle of the doorway. The hanging sign. The bell above the entrance. The bolts of fabric visible through the glass.

Home.

The word flashed through him automatically.

Then broke.

Because the shop did not feel like home in that moment. It felt too quiet. Too exposed. Too full of windows. Too close to the corner where the man had found him.

Po shoved the door open hard enough that the bell above it shrieked.

The sound startled him.

He flinched from it, one hand flying up toward his chest as the door swung shut behind him with a thud.

“Uncle?” he called.

His voice shook.

No answer.

The shop breathed around him in ordinary silence.

The steamer was off now. The afternoon light had shifted lower, lying in long amber strips across the floor. A pair of trousers remained folded on the worktable where Po had abandoned them. Uncle Joei’s measuring tape was gone from the chair. The navy sample book had been closed and stacked neatly beside a cup of tea, half-finished and cooling.

Po’s heart climbed into his throat.

“Uncle Joei?”

Still nothing.

Then he saw the small note on the cutting table, written in Uncle Joei’s round, hurried handwriting.

Went upstairs to check the laundry. Lock up if you leave.

Po stared at the note.

Uncle Joei was upstairs.

Safe.

Home.

Above the shop.

The relief that went through him was so sharp it almost hurt. His knees weakened for one second, and he had to catch himself on the edge of the nearest table. Fabric shifted beneath his hand. Pins rattled softly in their cushion.

He was inside.

The door was closed.

Uncle Joei was upstairs.

The man was outside.

Maybe.

Po turned sharply toward the glass door.

The street beyond it looked normal.

That was somehow worse.

People moved past the window in lazy, ordinary lines. A schoolboy carried a plastic bag of snacks. A delivery rider slowed to check his phone. A woman adjusted the strap of her sandal near the curb. The city had no visible wound. No sign that anything had happened. No proof that Po had not imagined the man, the grip, the apology, the empty sleeve, the way his name had sounded in a stranger’s mouth like a death sentence.

Po stepped closer to the door and turned the lock.

The click was small.

Too small.

He stared at it, suddenly unsure if it was enough.

His hands were shaking.

Badly.

He needed to call someone.

The thought arrived all at once, urgent and scattered.

Police.

Baifern.

Uncle Joei.

Someone.

Anyone.

His bag was still twisted halfway down his arm. He dragged it up onto the counter, fingers fumbling through the contents with frantic, useless movements. Receipts. Thread. Loose coins. Lip balm. A small packet of tissues. Keys. His wallet. His phone was not where it should have been.

Panic spiked.

“No, no, no,” he whispered.

He dumped half the bag onto the counter.

The phone slid out between a folded receipt and a roll of measuring tape, hitting the wood with a dull clack.

Po snatched it up.

His screen lit.

His reflection stared back at him in the dark glass before the phone unlocked.

Pale face.

Wide eyes.

Yellow shirt crooked, one shoulder pulled lower than the other.

His mouth slightly open as if he had been interrupted mid-breath.

Call the police.

His thumb hovered.

No.

What would he say?

A man from the bank found me. He grabbed my shirt. He knew my name. He kept saying sorry. He was missing a hand.

Would they believe him?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Would they come fast enough?

Would they already know? Would they look at him the way Officer Mick had looked at him, like Po had walked into the station carrying someone else’s shadow over his shoulders?

Baifern.

He could call Baifern. Baifern would pick up. Baifern would shout first and ask questions later and come immediately if Po sounded scared enough. She would make sense of him. She would be angry for him when Po could not be angry for himself.

His thumb moved.

Stopped.

His heart betrayed him before his mind could decide.

Thame.

The name rose from somewhere too deep to stop.

Not as a thought.

As a pulse.

As a reflex.

As the shape of an old wound remembering the hand that used to cover it.

Po squeezed the phone so tightly his fingers hurt.

Back then, Thame had not been there.

The memory came without mercy.

Not just Earn’s first hit, but the nights after. The second time. The third. The way fear changed shape once it learned the layout of a person’s apartment. The way Po had sat on bathroom floors with the faucet running so no one would hear him breathe. The way he had held his phone and stared at nothing. The way his chest had ached with a name he had no right to call anymore.

Thame.

Thame, who he had sent away.

Thame, who he had looked at through tears and told not to come after him.

Thame, who had stood there like Po had cut something living out of him and still listened.

Don’t look for me again, Thame.

The words returned now with the force of a slap.

Po’s throat tightened.

He had said them because he had been scared then too. Because everything between them had felt too big, too dangerous, too consuming for the boy he had been. Because loving Thame had felt like standing too close to fire and realizing he wanted to burn. Because he had not known what to do with a love that intense except run from it before it swallowed them both.

So he had made Thame promise not to follow.

And Thame had not followed.

For years, Thame had not been there.

When Earn’s voice got sharp.

When apologies became patterns.

When Po learned how to stand very still during someone else’s anger.

When he learned that some silences were safer than truth.

When he wished, with shame burning in his stomach, that he had never sent Thame away.

Po’s eyes stung.

The shop blurred.

Back then, he had not had Thame’s number.

Now he did.

That single fact sat in his hand like something impossible.

A door that had not existed before.

A line he could cross.

A mistake he could make again, or undo, or become trapped inside. He did not know anymore. He only knew that his body was still shaking and his heart was saying Thame with the same desperate rhythm it had once used in silence.

Po opened his contacts.

His thumb shook so badly he almost pressed the wrong name.

Thame.

Just his name.

Simple. Unadorned. Waiting.

Po stared at it.

Then pressed call.

The line rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Each ring seemed to stretch longer than the last.

Po stood frozen behind the counter, phone pressed to his ear, eyes fixed on the locked door. The glass reflected the shop behind him in faint layers — fabric bolts, wooden tables, the gold line of evening light across the floor — but all he could see was the alley. The man’s face. His hand in Po’s shirt.

The ringing continued.

Four.

Five.

Po’s breath hitched.

No.

The thought was small.

Childish.

Terrified.

No, please.

The call ended.

Po pulled the phone away and stared at the screen.

For one second, he did not understand.

Then the missed call notice appeared.

His chest went hollow.

Of course.

Of course Thame had a life. A business. An empire. Meetings. Men waiting for his orders. Rooms full of people who probably lowered their eyes when he spoke. He was not sitting somewhere waiting for Po to panic. He was not the same boy who used to answer texts in class within two seconds because Po had sent him a picture of a badly drawn cat in the margins of his notebook.

Po knew that.

He knew.

Still, the small, unreasonable hurt that opened inside him was immediate and humiliating.

His hand tightened around the phone.

He almost called Baifern.

Almost.

His thumb moved toward her name, then stopped again.

The memory of the man’s grip flashed through his body, so real that Po jerked slightly where he stood.

He called Thame again.

This time the line rang once.

Twice.

Then clicked.

“Phi Po?”

Thame’s voice entered his ear, low and familiar.

Not breathless. Not startled. Controlled. Polished. There was a faint distance beneath it, the sound of a man stepping away from one world but not fully leaving it behind. Po could almost imagine him in some glass-walled room, phone at his ear, dark eyes shifting away from men who had gone silent the moment he lifted a hand.

“I’m in a meeting right now,” Thame said. “Is everything okay?”

Po tried to answer.

Nothing came out.

His mouth opened, but his throat had gone tight around the fear. His breath stuttered once, twice, and then broke.

“Thame,” he said.

The name came out ruined.

On the other end of the line, something changed.

Po did not hear movement exactly. He heard absence. The faint background murmur died. The space around Thame seemed to still, as if an entire room had stopped breathing because Po’s voice had cracked on one word.

When Thame spoke again, every trace of distance was gone.

“Phi Po,” he said. “What happened?”

Po pressed a shaking hand against the counter.

The wood was cool beneath his palm. Solid. Real. He held onto it and still felt like he was falling.

“I don’t know,” he said, and once the words started, they would not stop. “I don’t know, I don’t know what happened. I was just going to get dinner because Uncle Joei told me to go and I went around the corner because the cat is usually there, the stray one, I feed him sometimes but Uncle doesn’t know, and I thought— I thought it was just someone sitting there, maybe drunk or sick or something, I don’t know, and then he looked at me and he knew my name.”

His voice rose.

He could hear himself becoming incoherent and could not stop.

“He said Khun Pawat. He knew me, Thame. I don’t know how he knew me. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t say anything. And then he was saying sorry and please tell him and I don’t know, I don’t know what he meant, and I was trying to leave, I swear I was leaving, I wasn’t trying to talk to him, and then I saw his face and I think—”

He swallowed hard.

The shop tilted slightly.

“I think he was from the bank.”

The silence on the other end was very quiet.

Not empty.

Quiet in a way that felt like something had lowered its head and gone still before striking.

Po did not notice the danger in it. He was too far inside his own panic.

“He kept saying he didn’t know and that he was sorry and please tell him he learned, and I don’t know who he meant, and I tried to go, but then he followed me.” His breath caught. “No, not followed. He—he grabbed me.”

Thame’s voice cut through the panic.

“He grabbed you?”

Po froze.

The words were soft.

Too soft.

Every part of Thame had sharpened around them, though his voice had not risen at all. It made the hair at the back of Po’s neck lift. Not because he was afraid of Thame. Not exactly. Because something in that question was so controlled it felt more dangerous than shouting.

Po rushed to explain.

“My shirt,” he said quickly. “He grabbed my shirt. Not my wrist. He didn’t grab my wrist, Thame, just my shirt. From behind. He pulled me back and I couldn’t breathe and I thought—”

His voice broke.

For one second, Earn’s apartment returned.

The burn across his cheek.

The phone in his hand.

No number to call.

Po pressed his lips together, but a small sound escaped anyway.

“I got scared,” he whispered.

Thame did not answer immediately.

When he did, his voice had changed again.

It was still low. Still controlled. But now it carried command so cleanly that Po’s shaking body reacted before his mind did.

“Where are you right now?”

“In the shop.”

“Is the door locked?”

Po looked at the door.

“Yes.”

“Where is Uncle Joei?” Thame asked.

Po blinked, dragging his gaze toward the narrow staircase at the back of the shop. “Upstairs. I think he went upstairs before I came back.”

“Good,” Thame said. “Listen to me carefully.”

Po nodded before remembering Thame could not see him.

“You are going to call him down only enough to hear you,” Thame said, voice low and steady. “You will tell him you’ll finish up downstairs. Tell him he should rest and eat first. Tell him you already locked the door because you don’t want any more customers tonight. Do not make him panic.”

Po’s fingers tightened around the phone.

“Thame…”

“Repeat it.”

Po went still.

“What?”

“Repeat what I told you.”

His voice did not rise.

It did not need to.

The command moved through Po’s panic like a thread pulled clean through tangled fabric. For one strange, frightening second, Po felt his thoughts quiet. Not disappear, not truly, but narrow. The world stopped being the man in the alley, the hand in his shirt, the empty terror in his eyes, the way Po’s own name had sounded like a warning.

The world became Thame’s voice.

Step by step.

Clear.

Certain.

Impossible to disobey.

Po swallowed.

“I call Uncle Joei down enough to hear me,” he said, voice trembling. “I tell him I’ll finish up downstairs. I tell him to rest and eat first. I tell him I locked the door because I don’t want more customers tonight. I don’t make him panic.”

“Good.”

The praise slipped beneath Po’s skin before he could defend himself from it.

His face warmed, shamefully, even with fear still crawling through him. He hated how that one word steadied him. Hated how quickly his body accepted it, how easily he leaned into the structure of Thame’s instructions as if they were hands placed carefully on either side of him, keeping him upright.

“Do it now,” Thame said. “Keep the phone with you.”

Po moved.

Not because he had decided to.

Not entirely.

It felt stranger than that. Softer. More frightening. Like his body had heard Thame’s voice and trusted it before his mind could catch up. Like some part of him had stepped out of the chaos and followed the sound without question.

Like the pied piper, a distant, hysterical part of him thought.

And still, he obeyed.

The shop seemed too quiet as he crossed it. The floorboards creaked beneath his sandals. Bolts of fabric stood in neat rows along the walls, their colors muted by the lowering evening light. The pair of trousers he had ruined earlier still lay across the worktable, the needle abandoned beside them, thread pulled loose in a crooked line. Everything looked exactly as it had before.

That made it worse.

The world should have looked different after fear.

It never did.

Po reached the narrow staircase at the back of the shop and lifted his face toward the upper floor.

“Uncle?” he called.

His voice cracked on the word.

He winced.

From above came Uncle Joei’s faint reply. “Po? You’re back already?”

Po squeezed his eyes shut for one second.

Thame’s voice remained warm against his ear, silent but present.

Waiting.

Po breathed in.

“Yes,” he called back, trying to sound normal and failing by just enough that he hated himself for it. “Uncle, can you rest upstairs? I’ll finish up down here.”

There was a pause.

“What about dinner?”

Po’s mind stuttered.

Dinner.

He had forgotten dinner.

The tea.

The cat.

The dropped packet of dried fish.

For one sharp second, the alley flashed back — the man’s fingers twisting in yellow fabric, the empty sleeve, the panic in his eyes.

Po’s breath hitched.

“Phi Po,” Thame said softly in his ear.

Not loud.

Not demanding.

Just enough.

Po clung to it.

“I’ll bring it up,” Po called, voice still thin. “Or you can eat first. I’m not that hungry. I just want to finish cleaning downstairs.”

Uncle Joei did not answer immediately.

Po could almost feel his uncle’s worry pressing down from the floor above.

“What happened?” Uncle Joei asked.

Po’s throat closed.

His eyes flicked instinctively toward the front windows.

“Calm down. I’m here with you,” Thame said at once.

Po turned away so quickly his shoulder brushed the wall.

It should have unsettled him, how fast Thame caught him. How easily he seemed to know the exact shape of Po’s fear without seeing him.

Instead, it steadied him.

“I’m okay,” Po lied. “I’m just tired. I locked the door because I don’t want more customers tonight.”

Another pause.

Then Uncle Joei said, softer, “Nong Po.”

The tenderness nearly broke him.

Po pressed his fingers against his mouth, holding in the sound that wanted to come out.

“I’m okay,” he repeated, smaller this time. “Please rest, Uncle. I’ll come up soon.”

Silence stretched.

Po stood at the bottom of the stairs with his phone pressed to his ear, one hand braced against the wall, heart beating too quickly beneath his white shirt. The shop behind him felt too large. Too quiet. Too full of places someone could look through.

Then, finally, Uncle Joei sighed.

“Okay,” he said. “But call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

“Lock properly.”

“I did.”

“And eat something.”

Po’s eyes burned.

“I will.”

He would not.

They both probably knew that.

But Uncle Joei let him have the lie.

A floorboard creaked above as his uncle moved away from the stairs. Po stood there for a moment longer, listening to the faint sound of him retreating into the upstairs living space, the soft clink of dishes, the muted scrape of a chair.

Safe.

Uncle Joei was safe upstairs.

Po had done what Thame told him.

The realization should have frightened him.

It did, somewhere.

But mostly, horribly, it made him feel steadier.

He lowered the phone closer to his mouth. “I told him.”

“I heard. Very good,” Thame said.

Po’s stomach tightened.

Of course he had.

“Now check the front door again.”

Po turned immediately.

The movement was automatic.

Too automatic.

He noticed it and still did not stop.

He walked through the shop like someone following a song only he could hear. The bell above the front door hung still. The glass reflected the room back at him in faint amber layers. Po kept his head lowered, just as Thame had told him earlier, avoiding the window, avoiding the street, avoiding the possibility of seeing anything else he could not survive.

His hand reached for the lock.

Turned it.

Checked it once.

Then again.

“Locked,” he whispered.

“Back door.”

Po moved through the shop, past the cutting table, past the shelves of thread, past the half-finished trousers he had been hemming before the whole world tilted sideways. The back door was near the storage area, old wood reinforced with a newer lock Uncle Joei had installed last year after a nearby shop had been broken into.

Po checked it once.

Then again.

“Locked.”

“Good. Now move away from both doors and sit somewhere not visible from the street.”

Po looked around.

The safest place seemed to be behind the counter, low enough that the front window would not frame him clearly. He lowered himself onto the small stool there, knees weak, phone pressed so tightly to his ear that it hurt.

“I’m sitting.”

“Where?”

“Behind the counter.”

“Can anyone see you from outside?”

Po glanced carefully without lifting his head too high.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Good.”

There was that word again.

Good.

Po shut his eyes, breath trembling out of him.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

The quiet should have been uncomfortable.

Instead, it held.

Po could hear faint movement on Thame’s end now. A door opening. A low voice saying something Po could not make out. Then silence again, sharp and immediate, as if Thame had cut the world away from the call.

“Are you hurt?” Thame asked.

Po looked down at himself.

His yellow shirt was wrinkled where the man had grabbed it. One button had come loose. His wrist was covered. His hands were shaking.

“No,” he said.

Then, because Thame’s silence made lying feel impossible, he added, “I don’t think so.”

“Did he touch your skin?”

Po’s breath caught.

“My shirt,” Po said again. “Only my shirt.”

“Did he pull you hard enough to hurt your shoulder?”

“I don’t know.”

“Move it.”

Po shifted his shoulder carefully.

The muscles ached, but not sharply.

“It’s okay.”

“Your wrist?”

“He didn’t touch my wrist.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Po went silent.

His gaze dropped.

His sleeve had ridden up slightly while he ran, exposing the faint edge of the old bruise. He pulled it down immediately.

“It hurts a little,” he admitted.

Thame’s breathing changed.

Barely.

Po would not have noticed if he had not once known that breathing better than his own.

“From before?” Thame asked.

“Yes.”

The answer came out small.

Another silence.

This one felt darker.

Then Thame said, “I’m coming to you.”

Po’s fingers tightened around the phone.

“You don’t have to,” he whispered, even though everything inside him recoiled from the words.

Thame’s reply was immediate.

“Yes, I do.”

No room for argument.

No room for politeness.

No room for Po to retreat into the habit of making himself less inconvenient.

Thame did not ask if Po wanted him there.

He did not ask if it was okay.

He simply said it as fact, and Po, who should have bristled, who should have felt cornered, only felt something inside him sag with relief.

“Do not open the door,” Thame said. “Only for me. Repeat it.”

Po’s throat bobbed.

“I don’t open the door.”

“For anyone,” Thame said.

“I don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Only?”

Po’s cheeks warmed.

It was ridiculous.

Terrible.

The world was terrifying and his shirt still felt like it had someone else’s hand twisted in it, and still the shape of Thame’s voice pulled obedience from him like it had been waiting beneath his skin for years.

“Only you,” Po whispered.

“Again.”

Po closed his eyes.

“I only open the door for you.”

“Good boy.”

The words landed low and devastating.

Po’s breath caught before he could stop it.

For one second, fear and memory and shame and relief tangled so tightly that he could not separate them. He hated how the words steadied him. Hated how they made his panic soften around the edges. Hated how badly he wanted to hear them again.

Thame said nothing about his reaction.

That somehow made it worse.

“Stay on the phone,” Thame said. “Do not hang up.”

“Okay.”

“If anyone knocks, you do not answer.”

“Okay.”

“Phi Po.”

Po opened his eyes.

“Yes?”

“You are safe until I arrive.”

The sentence should not have worked.

It should not have been enough.

A locked door, an empty shop, and a man on the phone should not have been able to push back the fear crawling beneath Po’s skin.

But Thame said it like a law.

Like the world itself would be corrected for disobeying him.

Po believed it before he could stop himself.

His eyes burned again.

He pressed his free hand over his mouth, breathing through his nose, trying not to make a sound. The counter smelled faintly of wood polish and old cloth. The floor beneath his sandals was cool. Somewhere upstairs, Uncle Joei moved softly, one careful footstep after another.

Outside, the street continued.

Inside, Po sat behind the counter with his crooked yellow shirt and shaking hands, phone pressed to his ear, Thame’s voice holding the line open between them.

He did not know what was happening.

He did not know why the man had known his name.

He did not know why fear kept appearing in the places where his life used to be ordinary.

He only knew that years ago, after the first time someone hurt him, he had held a phone and wished for a number he no longer had.

Now he had it.

Now Thame was coming.

And the part of Po that should have been afraid of what that meant was too exhausted, too shaken, too human not to be grateful.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Po sat behind the counter with his knees drawn close, the phone pressed so tightly to his ear that the edge of it had begun to ache against his skin. His breathing had slowed, but not enough. It still caught every few seconds, snagging on invisible things — the grip on his shirt, the man’s voice, the empty terror in his eyes, the way his own name had sounded like something dangerous when someone else said it.

On the other end of the line, Thame stayed silent.

Not absent.

Never absent.

Po could hear the faint sound of him moving through the world — a door opening, a low command murmured away from the receiver, the soft shift of fabric, the distant hush of men falling quiet around him. It should have made Po feel worse, maybe. It should have reminded him that Thame was not ordinary anymore, that he belonged to rooms Po did not understand and men who obeyed him too quickly.

Instead, Po clung to every small sound.

Proof that Thame was there.

Proof that someone had heard him.

Proof that, this time, when fear opened its mouth and swallowed him whole, his voice had reached someone.

His fingers curled tighter around the phone.

The words rose before he decided to say them.

Small.

Broken.

So honest they hurt.

“Thame?”

“I’m here,” Thame answered at once.

Po squeezed his eyes shut.

His throat burned.

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

The admission seemed to take something out of him. His shoulders folded inward as soon as the words left his mouth, like he had been holding himself upright only by refusing to say them. A tremor moved through him again, quieter this time, deeper. Not the sharp panic of running, but the aftershock. The place fear went once the body realized it had survived.

“I’m scared, Thame,” he said again, softer, almost ashamed.

For one breath, there was nothing.

Then Thame’s voice came through the phone, low and absolute.

“I know.”

Po swallowed hard.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“You don’t need to understand it right now.”

“But—”

“Right now, you only need to listen to me.”

Po’s breath trembled.

He hated how badly he needed that.

He hated how easily the words slipped past the panic and settled somewhere beneath his ribs, steady and commanding and warm in a way that made his eyes sting.

Thame’s voice lowered.

“Breathe, Phi Po.”

Po tried.

It came out uneven.

“Again.”

Po inhaled shakily.

“Good.”

A tear slipped down Po’s cheek before he could stop it. He wiped it away quickly, almost angrily, though no one was there to see. His face felt hot. His chest hurt. His wrist ached beneath his sleeve, and the place where the man had grabbed his shirt still crawled like the touch had soaked through the fabric and into his skin.

“I don’t want him to come back,” Po whispered. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the robber or Earn. 

“He won’t.”

The answer was immediate.

Too immediate.

Too certain.

But Po was too frightened to question it.

He only pressed the phone closer.

“How do you know?”

Thame was quiet for half a second.

Then he said, “Because I said so.”

The words should have terrified him.

Maybe later, they would.

Maybe when the panic loosened and his thoughts returned in full, Po would hear the darkness tucked beneath that calm certainty. Maybe he would wonder what kind of man could promise safety like that and make it sound less like comfort than law.

But right then, sitting behind Uncle Joei’s counter with his heart still shaking itself apart, Po only lowered his forehead to his knees and breathed.

Because Thame had said the man would not come back.

And Po believed him.

He believed him so easily it hurt.

Po did not realize how much time had passed.

Time had become strange inside the shop. It no longer moved in minutes. It moved in breaths, in instructions, in the low sound of Thame’s voice coming through the phone and anchoring him one small command at a time.

He sat behind the counter with his knees drawn close and his phone pressed to his ear, his other hand curled tightly into the hem of his yellow shirt. The fabric was still wrinkled from where the man had grabbed him. Every time his fingers brushed that place, a crawling sensation moved over his skin, and his breath caught again.

Thame heard it every time.

“Phi Po,” Thame said through the phone.

Po squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m here.”

Po nodded, even though Thame could not see him.

“Focus on my voice.”

“I’m trying,” Po whispered.

“I know. Breathe slowly.”

Po drew in a breath.

It shook too much.

“Again,” Thame said.

Po tried again.

The shop around him felt too quiet. The cutting table sat beneath the warm overhead light, fabric folded neatly across it like nothing in the world had changed. The trousers he had been hemming earlier were still there, one side unfinished, the needle abandoned beside them. The air smelled of starch, wood polish, old cotton, and Uncle Joei’s tea cooling somewhere upstairs. Outside the glass storefront, Bangkok moved in muffled pieces: a motorbike passing, shoes against pavement, the distant call of a vendor closing up for the evening.

Every sound made Po flinch.

Every shadow outside the glass felt like it might become a person who knew his name.

“Po,” Thame said.

The sound of his name stopped him.

Not harshly.

Completely.

“Just my voice.”

Po pressed the phone tighter to his ear. His hand trembled so badly the edge of the phone clicked faintly against his earring.

“Nothing else,” Thame continued. “You hear me. You breathe with me. That’s all.”

Po swallowed hard.

“Okay.”

“Good.”

The word slid under his skin with a warmth he did not have the strength to fight. He hated how much it helped. He hated how quickly his body leaned toward Thame’s certainty, how the panic inside him quieted not because he understood anything, but because Thame sounded like he did.

Before Po could answer, something tapped against the front glass.

Three soft knocks.

Po jolted so hard his knee hit the underside of the counter.

Pain flashed up his leg, sharp and immediate, but fear was faster. His heart slammed against his ribs. The phone almost slipped from his hand. For one terrible second, every thought vanished except the alley and the hand in his shirt and the man saying please, please, please.

“Phi Po,” Thame said through the phone.

Po froze.

The voice was in his ear.

But it was also outside.

Po lifted his head slowly.

Through the darkened glass storefront, beyond the faint reflection of the shop lights and the rows of fabric behind him, stood Thame.

Po forgot how to breathe.

Thame was beneath the weak glow of the streetlight, phone still held to his ear, one hand lowered from the glass after knocking. Evening had settled fully by then, turning the world outside into layers of black, gold, and passing headlights. In that darkness, Thame looked almost unreal.

He wore a maroon suit.

Not bright. Not loud. Deep maroon, dark enough that the shadows nearly swallowed it, but rich enough that whenever light moved across him, the color surfaced like wine beneath glass. The jacket sat perfectly across his shoulders, the cut clean and severe, every line of him controlled. His hair was styled away from his face, though one strand had loosened slightly near his forehead. The rings on his fingers caught the streetlight when his hand shifted around the phone, silver and dark stone flashing briefly in the humid night.

Po stared at him through the glass.

Thame’s eyes were already on him.

Not searching.

Not surprised.

On him, as if there had never been anything else worth looking at.

“Open the door,” Thame said softly through the phone.

Po moved before the instruction finished settling.

He scrambled up from behind the counter too quickly, one hand still holding the phone against his ear. The stool scraped behind him. His shoulder clipped the edge of the counter. He barely felt it. The shop blurred around him, wood and fabric and light rushing past as he hurried toward the front.

His fingers fumbled at the lock.

Once.

Twice.

The metal would not turn properly because his hand was shaking too hard.

“Slowly,” Thame said in his ear.

Po sucked in a broken breath.

“Breathe first.”

Po inhaled.

“Good. Now unlock it.”

Po obeyed.

The lock clicked open.

The sound was small, but it moved through him like release.

He pulled the door inward.

The bell above it rang brightly, almost cruel in its cheerfulness.

Cold air from outside slipped into the shop, carrying the night with it. Heat from the pavement. Exhaust. Rain hanging somewhere far off in the clouds. The faint spice of street food from the corner. And beneath all of that, as Thame stepped closer, something warmer, darker, familiar in a way that made Po’s chest ache.

Thame’s scent.

Amber.

Smoke.

Clean skin.

The leather-warm trace of him that had haunted Po since the fitting.

Thame had not even lowered the phone yet. It was still at his ear, his mouth parting as if he meant to say something else, maybe another instruction, maybe Po’s name.

Po did not let Thame finish whatever he had been about to say.

The moment the door opened, the moment the humid night air slipped into the shop and brought Thame’s scent with it, something inside Po gave way.

He stepped forward and threw himself into Thame’s arms.

It was not graceful. There was no careful pause, no hesitation, no attempt to pretend he was composed. One second Po was standing in the doorway with the phone still in his hand, and the next he had crossed the small distance between them like his body had been waiting for permission to collapse.

His arms went around Thame’s shoulders first, clumsy and desperate. Because they were nearly the same height, Po did not have to tuck himself beneath Thame’s chin or press his face to his chest the way some smaller, sweeter person might have. Instead, he fit against him differently. More dangerously. More intimately. His face went straight into the side of Thame’s neck, his nose brushing warm skin just beneath his jaw, his mouth pressing helplessly against the place where Thame’s pulse beat slow and steady.

For one breath, Po forgot everything.

The alley.

The man.

The hand at the back of his shirt.

The terror in that broken voice.

All of it vanished beneath Thame’s warmth.

Thame smelled like smoke and amber and the faint clean bite of expensive cologne, but beneath that, under the polished darkness of him, there was something familiar enough to hurt. Warm skin. Clean fabric. A trace of leather from the car or the suit or the life Po did not understand. The scent surrounded him the second he pressed close, and Po’s whole body reacted as if it had been waiting years to remember this.

His fingers twisted into the back of Thame’s maroon jacket.

The fabric was smooth and expensive beneath his hands, too fine to be gripped so harshly, but Po could not loosen his hold. He clutched harder, fistfuls of suit jacket trapped between trembling fingers, as though someone might drag him backward if he did not hold on with everything he had.

Thame’s arms closed around him.

Immediately.

No pause.

No question.

One arm wrapped around Po’s waist, firm and sure, pulling him fully against him until there was no space left for fear to slip between their bodies. The other hand settled on Po’s back, palm broad and warm between his shoulder blades, exactly over the place where the man’s grip had left its ghost in the wrinkled yellow fabric.

Po flinched.

Thame felt it.

Of course he did.

His hand stilled for half a second, then softened. He did not pull away. He did not ask. He only changed the pressure, spreading his palm more carefully across Po’s back, not touching like he was checking damage, but like he was covering it. Like his hand could erase what another hand had done just by being steadier, warmer, more certain.

“Phi Po,” Thame murmured.

Po shook his head against his neck.

He did not know what he was refusing. The name. The comfort. The fact that he was crying. The fact that Thame was here. The fact that all of this was real and Po had no way to survive it except by holding on to the man he should probably be running from.

His breath came hot and broken against Thame’s skin.

“I’m sorry,” he choked.

Thame’s arm tightened around his waist.

“Don’t apologize.”

Po made a small sound, wounded and breathless, and pressed his face deeper into the crook of Thame’s neck.

That was worse.

Better.

Both.

Thame was warm there. So alive. His pulse brushed faintly against Po’s cheek, steady in a way Po’s own heart was not. Po could feel the slight movement of Thame’s throat when he spoke, the low vibration of his voice before the words fully reached the air.

“Just breathe.”

Po tried.

Failed.

Thame’s hand began to move.

Slowly.

Carefully.

His palm slid down the length of Po’s back, over the yellow shirt, smoothing the fabric where it had bunched and twisted from the grab. He moved with almost unbearable gentleness, but there was nothing uncertain about it. Each stroke was controlled, deliberate, grounding. Down his spine. Back up between his shoulder blades. Then down again, slower this time, as if Thame was teaching Po’s body that the touch on his back was no longer a threat.

Po trembled harder.

Thame held him through it.

“Focus on this,” Thame said softly, his mouth close to Po’s ear. “My hand. My voice. Nothing else.”

Po’s fingers clenched in his jacket.

Thame’s other hand tightened at his waist in response, not enough to hurt, but enough to hold. The pressure went through Po like an answer.

Here.

You are here.

I have you.

Po’s knees weakened.

For a terrifying second, he thought he might actually sink to the ground. His body felt too loose and too tight at once, hollowed out by panic and flooded with relief. But Thame felt that too. Before Po could fold, the arm around his waist pulled him closer, taking more of his weight without making it obvious. Thame shifted one foot back, steadying them both, and Po let himself be held because he had no strength left to pretend he did not need it.

He cried into Thame’s neck.

Hot tears slid down his cheeks and disappeared against Thame’s skin, dampening the edge of his collar. Po wanted to be embarrassed. Some distant part of him knew he should be. He was standing in the doorway of Uncle Joei’s shop, in the middle of Bangkok, clinging to Thame like a frightened child and crying against his throat.

But Thame did not make him feel foolish.

Thame did not pull him away to look at him.

He did not tell him to calm down.

He only held him tighter.

That somehow broke Po more.

His arms locked harder around Thame’s shoulders.

When Thame shifted slightly, perhaps to guide him inside, Po panicked. His grip sharpened at once, fingers digging into the back of Thame’s jacket, his body pressing closer in instinctive refusal.

“No,” Po whispered.

The word came out ragged.

Thame went still.

For one suspended second, the city seemed to quiet around them.

Then Thame’s hand slid up Po’s back again, slower than before.

“I’m not letting go,” he said.

Po squeezed his eyes shut.

The relief was immediate and humiliating.

He hated how much he believed him.

He hated how easily Thame’s words slid under his fear and became something solid enough to lean on.

“I’m not,” Thame repeated, lower this time. “Breathe, Phi Po.”

Po dragged in a shaking breath against his neck.

The inhale brought Thame’s scent deeper into him.

Smoke.

Amber.

Warm skin.

Memory.

He shuddered.

Thame’s fingers flexed once at his waist, rings cool for a brief second through the thin fabric of Po’s shirt before his palm warmed the place again.

“Again,” Thame murmured.

Po obeyed.

Another breath.

Then another.

They stood that way for longer than they should have. Long enough for the night air to settle around them. Long enough for Po’s sobs to become unsteady breathing. Long enough for the first violence of panic to drain from his muscles, leaving only aftershocks that moved through him in faint tremors.

Thame’s hand never stopped moving.

It traced calm into him.

Over his back.

Along his spine.

Up to his shoulders, where Po held so much tension that Thame’s palm paused there, firm and warm, until the muscles slowly gave beneath him.

Po’s face stayed hidden in his neck.

He could not look up yet.

Looking up would make it real in a different way. It would mean seeing Thame’s face, seeing whatever expression had come over him, seeing the maroon suit, the rings, the darkness behind him. It would mean remembering that this man was not only the boy Po had once loved. He was something else now too. Something powerful enough to make strangers tremble and police officers lower their voices.

But here, with his face pressed into the crook of Thame’s neck, Po could pretend for a few more seconds.

Here, Thame was only warmth.

Only arms.

Only the voice that had stayed on the phone when Po could not breathe.

Thame lowered his head.

Po felt the movement before the kiss came.

A slight shift of breath.

A pause near his hairline.

Then Thame pressed his mouth to Po’s forehead.

Softly.

So softly that Po almost missed it.

Almost.

The kiss landed near the edge of his hair, warm and careful, nothing like possession and somehow more devastating because of it. There was no force in it. No demand. Just the brief, gentle pressure of Thame’s mouth against his skin, a silent reassurance pressed into him where panic had left him raw.

Po’s breath caught.

Then broke again.

A smaller sob escaped him, muffled against Thame’s neck.

Thame’s lips lingered for one extra second.

Then he drew back only enough to rest his cheek lightly against Po’s hair.

“I have you,” he said.

Po’s fingers loosened, then tightened again immediately, as if his body rejected even the suggestion of release.

Thame let him.

“Okay,” Po whispered, though nothing was okay.

His voice was wet and small.

Thame’s hand moved down his back again.

“Good.”

Po swallowed hard.

That word again.

It should not have undone him the way it did. It should not have warmed something low beneath the fear, something tender and ashamed and unbearably relieved. But it did.

Thame seemed to feel the way Po softened against him.

His arm tightened at Po’s waist.

Not much.

Just enough.

Po breathed into the side of his neck and let himself be held there, trembling in the circle of Thame’s arms, while the world outside rearranged itself around them without his notice.

He did not notice the blond man standing several steps away, gaze sharp and body still.

He did not notice the black Aston Martin waiting by the curb, engine purring beneath the street noise.

He did not notice the small signal the blond man gave with two fingers, or the way shadows moved back from storefronts and parked cars, men retreating into the night as if Thame’s presence had redrawn the boundaries of the street.

Po noticed only the place where Thame’s hand held his waist.

The slow caress down his back.

The warmth of Thame’s neck beneath his cheek.

The fading pressure of the kiss still burning softly on his forehead.

And when Thame finally murmured, “Inside, Phi Po,” Po shook his head once, instinctively, his arms tightening again.

Thame did not force him.

He only turned his face slightly, lips brushing Po’s hair.

“I’m coming with you,” he said. “I’m not leaving you outside.”

Po stayed frozen against him for one more breath.

Then, slowly, still clinging, still refusing to fully let go, he nodded.

Thame kept one arm around his waist as he guided him back through the doorway.

Not behind him.

Not ahead of him.

With him.

Po moved because Thame moved, his cheek still close to Thame’s neck, his fingers still gripping the back of his suit. The bell above the door chimed softly as they stepped inside together.

This time, the sound did not make Po flinch.

Thame’s hand was still on his back.

Thame’s warmth was still against him.

For now, that was the only world Po could bear to know.

The shop smelled the same as it had before, of fabric dust and starch and wood warmed by the day, but with Thame inside it, the air changed.

It was not dramatic.

No lights flickered. No doors slammed. No one spoke from the shadows.

And yet the room seemed to understand him.

Thame stepped in, and the shop became smaller. Quieter. More contained. The glass storefront no longer felt like a weak barrier between Po and the street. It felt like something Thame had already claimed control over. Even before he turned the lock behind them, even before his eyes swept once across the room and catalogued every doorway, every window, every line of sight, Po felt the shift.

The click of the lock sounded final.

Po’s shoulders dropped.

He had not realized how high he had been holding them.

Thame noticed.

Of course he noticed.

“Sit,” he said softly.

Po looked at him.

The word was not harsh. It did not need to be. There was no force in it, and somehow that made it harder to disobey. Po’s body had been following Thame’s voice since the phone call, step by step, breath by breath, until his own thoughts had gone quiet around it.

So he sat.

There was a small stool near the counter, the same one he had been using earlier while ruining the hem of a customer’s trousers because he could not stop thinking about Thame’s mouth on his wrist. Now he lowered himself onto it carefully, knees close together, hands curled uselessly in his lap.

His yellow shirt still sat crooked on his shoulders. One side had slipped lower where the man had grabbed it. The white shirt underneath clung damply to his skin. His face felt hot and tight from crying. His nose was running. His eyes burned. His breath still came unevenly no matter how much he tried to slow it.

It was humiliating.

Everything about it was humiliating.

Po looked down at his hands.

He could not stop them from shaking.

Thame stood in front of him.

For a moment, he did nothing.

Po felt the weight of his gaze. Not roaming. Not carelessly looking. Studying. Reading. Taking inventory with a precision that made Po feel both exposed and strangely safe. Thame looked at his face first, then his shoulders, then the wrinkled fabric of his shirt, then his hands.

His expression did not change.

That made something in Po’s stomach twist.

“Thame,” Po began, though he had no idea what he meant to say.

Thame reached toward the counter and picked up a clean cloth from the folded stack Uncle Joei kept for wiping chalk marks and dust from fabric. It was pale cotton, soft from use, neatly pressed despite its purpose. Thame held it between his fingers for a second, then turned back to Po.

“Look at me,” he said.

Po’s breath caught.

He looked up.

Thame stepped closer.

The maroon of his suit looked darker inside the shop, almost burgundy beneath the warm overhead lights. His rings glinted when he lifted the cloth, silver catching amber light. Po’s eyes followed the movement before he could stop himself. Those hands. He remembered them around his wrist. At his waist. On his back outside the shop, holding him together when he had been too scared to stand properly.

Now one of them came to his face.

Po went still.

Thame touched the cloth to his cheek.

Gently.

So gently that Po almost cried again from that alone.

The first pass wiped away the wet track beneath his eye. The second caught the tears still clinging to his lashes. Thame moved slowly, carefully, his free hand hovering near Po’s jaw without grabbing, without forcing him still. He did not rush. He did not comment on the tears. He cleaned Po’s face as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to stand there in Uncle Joei’s tailor shop wiping panic from Po’s skin.

A fresh tear slipped out anyway.

Po tried to turn his face away.

Thame caught it with the cloth before it could fall.

“No more crying,” he said.

The words were quiet.

Almost tender.

But they landed like command.

Po’s lower lip trembled.

He sniffled despite himself, small and miserable, and immediately regretted it.

Thame’s gaze dropped to his nose.

Po’s eyes widened.

“No,” he said hoarsely.

Thame’s brow lifted by the smallest degree.

Po clutched at his own dignity with both shaking hands. “No, don’t—”

Thame wiped his nose.

Po made a wounded sound.

“Thame.”

It came out as a whine, thin and embarrassed and far too familiar. The kind of sound he had not made around anyone in years. The kind of sound he used to make when Thame fussed over him too much after school, when he scolded Po for skipping meals or staying up too late, when he wiped sauce from the corner of Po’s mouth and acted as if Po would die without supervision.

Thame’s mouth softened.

Only for a second.

Then it was gone.

“You were crying,” he said simply.

“I know, but you don’t have to wipe my nose.”

“I do if you will not.”

Po’s face burned.

The shame of it should have been unbearable. Maybe it would have been with anyone else. But Thame’s voice was so steady, his movements so matter-of-fact, that the embarrassment had nowhere sharp to land. It dissolved into something smaller. Softer. Almost helpless.

Po sniffled again, quieter this time.

Thame wiped once more, impossibly gentle.

“There,” he said.

Po looked down immediately.

His cheeks were flaming now for an entirely different reason.

The cloth disappeared from his line of sight. Thame set it aside, then reached for Po’s hands.

Po did not think before flinching.

It was small.

Barely there.

But Thame felt it.

His fingers stilled before they fully closed around Po’s.

The room seemed to lose temperature.

Po’s heart stumbled.

“It’s fine,” he said at once, too quickly. “I’m fine. It’s not— I think I just scraped it when I ran, or maybe when I hit the crate. I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

Thame did not answer.

That made Po talk faster.

“It’s really nothing. He didn’t grab my hand. He grabbed the shirt. I think maybe I fell against something, or maybe the wall, I don’t know. I didn’t even notice until now, so it can’t be that bad. It doesn’t hurt much. Really.”

Thame’s eyes lowered.

Po followed his gaze.

There was a scrape across the heel of his palm, thin but raw, the skin reddened where he must have caught himself against the wall or pavement when he stumbled. A small bead of blood had dried near the edge. It was not serious. It was barely an injury. Nothing compared to the bruise that had once marked his wrist.

But Thame looked at it as if the world had offended him personally.

His eyes darkened.

Not dramatically.

Not with visible rage.

Something worse.

They went still.

Po’s mouth kept moving because silence suddenly felt dangerous.

“I didn’t even know it was there,” he said, voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make this bigger. I know it’s small. It’s just a scratch. I probably did it myself when I ran, so it’s not even—”

“Phi Po.”

Po stopped.

The sound of his name cut cleanly through the anxious explanation.

Thame looked up.

“Do not defend the wound.”

Po’s lips parted.

No words came.

Thame’s voice softened, but his eyes remained dark. “It does not need to be severe to matter.”

Po stared at him.

Something inside him went very quiet.

He did not know what to do with that sentence.

For so long, every hurt had needed to justify itself. Every bruise had needed to be bad enough. Every fear had needed evidence. Every flinch had needed a reason that did not make him seem dramatic, inconvenient, fragile, too much. He had learned the habit so deeply that it came out before he noticed it, a frantic little offering.

It’s nothing.

It’s fine.

It doesn’t hurt.

It was my fault anyway.

Thame held his scraped hand as if he had heard every lie beneath the words.

Po’s throat tightened.

Thame reached for another cloth, this one smaller, then took the bottle of antiseptic from the shelf beside Uncle Joei’s sewing supplies. Po watched him move through the shop as though he had always belonged there. As though Uncle Joei’s things, Po’s things, the small domestic mess of thread and fabric and tea had all made space for him the moment he entered.

He poured a little antiseptic onto the cloth.

“May sting,” he said.

Po blinked.

“Okay.”

Thame cleaned the scrape slowly.

It did sting.

Po’s fingers twitched, but Thame’s hand held his steady. Not tightly. Never enough to hurt. Just enough that Po did not pull away before the wound was clean.

The sting sharpened, then faded into a dull warmth.

Po found himself watching Thame’s face instead of his hand.

There was something strange about seeing him like this. Thame in a maroon suit that probably cost more than half the shop’s monthly rent, rings glinting under Uncle Joei’s soft lights, standing before Po with blood on a cloth.

Thame finished cleaning the scrape and pressed a fresh fold of cloth over it for a moment. His thumb rested along the side of Po’s hand. Warm. Steady. The touch dragged Po back into that dangerous, quiet place again, where his thoughts thinned and everything in him began listening for what Thame would say next.

Thame noticed that too.

His gaze lifted to Po’s face.

Po swallowed.

There it was.

That trance-like stillness he hated and craved in equal measure. The feeling of being overwhelmed until his mind stopped trying to run in every direction and simply fixed itself on Thame. On his hands. His voice. His eyes. The calm certainty of him.

Thame took Po’s chin between his fingers.

Not roughly.

Two fingers beneath it, thumb light near the curve of his jaw, raising his face with such careful authority that Po followed before he had time to think about it.

Their eyes met.

Po’s breath caught.

Thame stood close enough that Po could see the tiny details of him now: the faint shadow at his jaw, the smooth knot of his tie, the darkened line of his lashes, the controlled softness of his mouth. He smelled like smoke and amber again. Warmer inside the shop. Closer. Almost dizzying.

“Now,” Thame said, voice low. “Tell me from the start what happened.”

Po blinked.

“What?”

“From the start.”

“I already told you.”

“You told me while you were panicking.”

Po’s face heated.

Thame’s thumb shifted once, barely touching the edge of his jaw.

“I want to know clearly.”

Po stared at him, startled by the steadiness of it.

Thame’s gaze did not move from his.

“You can start with the cat.”

For some reason, that nearly broke him again.

The cat.

Po had forgotten he had mentioned the cat. He had babbled it into the phone between half-sobs and broken breaths, a ridiculous detail in the middle of terror. But Thame had remembered. Thame had held onto it. Thame had listened so completely that even the smallest, stupidest thing Po had said had stayed with him.

Po’s throat tightened.

“The cat,” he repeated faintly.

“Yes.”

Po looked down at their hands.

Thame let his chin go, but did not step back.

His presence remained close. Solid. Unavoidable.

Po drew a shaky breath.

“I went out because Uncle told me to get dinner,” he began slowly. “And tea. He wanted tea from the stall near the corner. I was going to get mango sticky rice too because he pretends he doesn’t want dessert but he always wants dessert.”

His voice wavered on the last word.

Thame said nothing.

He only listened.

Po rubbed his thumb nervously against the edge of his scraped palm until Thame’s fingers closed around his wrist, stopping the movement.

Po stilled.

Not his bruised wrist.

The other one.

Still, the touch caught him.

Thame’s eyes flicked to him, silent warning and silent comfort at once.

Po swallowed and continued.

“I had dried fish in my bag because there’s this cat near the side lane. It’s not really my cat. It’s mean, actually. It hates everyone. But it waits for me sometimes, and I don’t think Uncle knows I feed it.”

A faint, almost impossible softness moved across Thame’s face.

Po looked away before it could undo him.

“So I went around the corner,” he said. “I thought I would leave the fish there first and then buy food. But the cat wasn’t there. There was a man instead. I thought maybe he was sleeping or sick, so I was going to walk away. I didn’t want to stare.”

His fingers curled slightly.

Thame’s hand tightened around his wrist, grounding him.

Po breathed.

“Then he looked at me. And he said my name.”

Po’s throat worked around a swallow.

“At first, I didn’t know him,” he said, voice trembling. “Not properly. His face looked different. He looked… worse. But then he started talking, and I saw his eyes, and I knew.”

His fingers tightened around Thame’s sleeve.

“It was him,” Po whispered. “The same man from the robbery. The one who grabbed my wrist.”

Thame went very still.

Po did not notice the full danger of that stillness. He was too caught in the memory, too shaken by the certainty of it now that he had said it aloud.

“I know it was him,” Po said, softer. “I didn’t want it to be, but it was.”

The shop seemed to still around the words.

Po’s voice became thinner.

“He said Khun Pawat. But I didn’t know him at first. I didn’t. I was just scared because he knew my name, and then he started saying sorry.”

Thame’s expression remained controlled.

Too controlled.

Po watched him carefully, suddenly afraid of what his own words might do.

“He kept saying weird things,” Po whispered. “He said please tell him. Please tell him I said sorry. Please tell him I learned. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know who he was talking about.”

Thame’s eyes lowered.

For one second, something in his face shifted.

Not anger.

Not exactly.

Something like pain, shaped carefully into guilt.

He let out a slow breath.

Po went still.

“Thame?”

“This is my fault,” Thame said quietly.

Po blinked.

The words struck him so cleanly that, for a moment, he did not understand them.

“What?”

Thame looked down at Po’s hand still cradled in his own. His thumb brushed near the scrape, not touching the raw skin.

“This is my fault,” he repeated, softer this time. “I’m sorry, Phi Po.”

Po stared at him.

Thame looked ashamed.

Truly ashamed.

His gaze was lowered. His mouth had gone tight at the edges. The confidence that usually seemed built into his bones had dimmed into something heavier, more human. For the first time since he had arrived, Thame did not look untouchable. He looked like a man standing before someone he had failed.

Po’s chest tightened in immediate alarm.

“No,” he said quickly. “No, Thame, what do you mean?”

Thame lifted his eyes to him.

“I should have considered this possibility.”

“What possibility?”

“That someone would try to use you.”

Po’s lips parted.

Thame’s voice remained quiet, threaded with restrained self-reproach. “Your name is at the top of the list. People know what that means, even if you don’t. Some know enough to fear it. Some know enough to think it can be useful.”

Po’s brows drew together.

“I don’t understand.”

“I think,” Thame said carefully, as if every word cost him, “it was probably someone looking for favor with me.”

Po’s confusion deepened.

“With you?”

Thame nodded once, his expression grave. “Someone may have found the man from the bank. Someone may have thought bringing him near you, making him apologize, showing me that they had punished him, would earn gratitude. Influence. Permission. Something.”

The explanation settled slowly into the shop.

Po did not know what to do with it.

It sounded awful.

It sounded possible.

It sounded like the kind of thing that belonged to Thame’s world, the world of lists and frightened police officers and men who dropped money bags because of a name. A world Po still did not understand and did not want to understand, but one that had already reached into his life and grabbed the back of his shirt.

Thame’s fingers tightened slightly around Po’s hand.

“I should have prevented it,” he said. “Your name being where it is made you visible to people who should never have known how to reach you. That is on me.”

Po shook his head before Thame even finished.

“No. No, that’s not—”

“It is.”

“No, Thame.”

“Phi Po.”

“No,” Po said again, stronger this time because the sight of Thame looking ashamed made something inside him panic in an entirely different way. “You didn’t make him come there. You didn’t make him grab me.”

Thame’s eyes flickered.

Just once.

So quickly Po might have imagined it.

Then the guilt returned, smooth and devastating.

“I made your name powerful enough that men think touching it will change their lives.”

Po went quiet.

Thame’s voice lowered. “That is not a small thing.”

Po did not know what to say.

He should have been frightened by that sentence. Maybe some part of him was. But it was buried beneath the shock of seeing Thame like this, the same Thame who moved through rooms like he owned the air, now standing in front of him with shame softening the hard lines of his face.

Po’s heart twisted.

“No,” he whispered. “No, don’t look like that.”

Thame blinked.

Po reached for him before he thought better of it.

His fingers caught the edge of Thame’s sleeve, light and uncertain. The fabric was smooth beneath his fingertips. Thame’s gaze dropped to the touch immediately.

Po almost pulled away.

Thame did not let him.

His hand turned, gently capturing Po’s fingers before they could retreat.

Po’s breath caught.

“Phi Po,” Thame said quietly.

Po shook his head.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he said, voice trembling again. “I don’t understand the list. I don’t understand why people know my name. I don’t understand why everyone keeps acting like I’m something I’m not. But you didn’t—”

His throat tightened.

“You came,” Po finished helplessly.

Thame’s expression changed.

Po did not have the strength to read it.

“You came when I called,” he whispered.

The shop fell silent.

For a moment, the only sound was the faint hum of the lights above them and the muffled movement of Uncle Joei upstairs.

Thame looked at him.

Really looked.

And Po, still sitting on the stool with his tear-streaked face, crooked yellow shirt, scraped palm, and heart too tired to guard itself properly, looked back.

Thame lifted Po’s hand and pressed his mouth near the uninjured edge of his palm.

Not on the scrape.

Beside it.

A careful kiss.

A quiet apology.

A new mark made of warmth instead of pain.

Po’s eyes fluttered.

Thame lowered their hands but did not let go.

“I came,” he said. “And I will keep coming.”

Po’s breath trembled.

Thame’s voice softened.

“Every time.”

Po looked down because if he looked at Thame any longer, he would cry again.

Too late.

Another tear slipped down his cheek.

Thame reached for the cloth once more.

“No more crying,” he murmured.

This time, when he wiped the tear away, Po did not turn his face.

He let him.

Now the shop had settled around them again.

The warm lights hummed softly. Fabric waited in dark rows along the walls. The city pressed against the glass, blurred by reflection, but Thame stood between Po and the door like nothing outside could cross unless he allowed it.

For the first time since the alley, Po’s lungs began to remember their own shape.

Then Thame’s phone rang.

The sound cut through the quiet sharply.

Po flinched.

Thame’s hand tightened around his for half a second before easing again.

“It’s mine,” he said.

Po nodded quickly. Too quickly.

“Right. Yes. Of course.”

Thame looked at the screen.

Whatever he saw there made his expression return to that controlled blankness Po had started to recognize as something dangerous. Not anger. Not annoyance. Not quite. More like the door of a room closing.

Po’s stomach twisted immediately.

Work.

Of course it was work.

A meeting. A shipment. A restaurant. One of the countless things Thame had left behind because Po had called him crying like he was still seventeen and helpless. The embarrassment rose so fast Po nearly pulled his hand away.

Thame answered.

“Yes.”

His voice changed.

Not much. Enough.

The softness he had given Po did not disappear entirely, but it folded inward, hidden beneath something colder and more efficient. Po looked down at his own lap, at the crooked fall of his yellow shirt, at the bandage around his palm.

He heard only fragments.

“No.”

A pause.

“Move it.”

Another pause.

“Not there. I said not there.”

The words were quiet, but they made the air around Po feel thinner.

He should not be here for this.

He should not be listening to this.

He should not be sitting in his uncle’s shop while Thame handled whatever dark machinery existed behind his name. He should not have dragged Thame away from that world for something that was probably already over, something Po had panicked about because he could not think straight.

The apology gathered in his mouth before the call ended.

Thame hung up with one smooth movement.

Po spoke immediately.

“I’m sorry.”

Thame’s eyes returned to him.

Po swallowed.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting. Or whatever that was. I know you’re busy, and I know this was probably— I mean, I got scared, but maybe I overreacted. I don’t know. He grabbed me and I just—”

He stopped.

His fingers curled into his lap.

The words came anyway, smaller now.

“I got scared when he grabbed me because it reminded me of…”

Po cut himself off so abruptly that the silence seemed to hit both of them.

Thame went still.

Not visibly at first. Not in any way someone else might notice. But Po was close enough to see it in the sudden quiet of his body, in the way his hand stopped moving, in the way his eyes sharpened without becoming cruel.

Po’s heart kicked.

He had almost said Earn.

He had almost opened that door.

He had almost placed that ugly, old thing in the middle of the shop between them.

His mouth went dry.

“It reminded me of nothing,” he said quickly. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Phi Po.”

“No, it’s not important.”

“Look at me.”

Po did not.

His eyes stayed fixed on his own hands.

Thame moved closer.

The shift was small, but Po felt it as if the whole room had changed. A shadow fell over his lap. The scent of amber and smoke warmed the air between them. Then Thame’s fingers touched his face.

Carefully.

One hand cupped Po’s cheek, thumb resting lightly beneath the damp track where tears had dried. The touch was gentle enough that Po could have moved away.

He did not.

Thame tilted his face upward.

Not by force.

By certainty.

Po looked at him.

Thame’s eyes were dark.

Not cold now.

Worse, maybe.

Focused.

“You will call me,” Thame said.

Po blinked.

“What?”

“If you are scared, you will call me.”

Po’s breath caught.

Thame’s thumb moved once against his cheek, slow and controlled.

“You will not decide that I am busy. You will not decide that your fear is inconvenient. You will not decide that something is too small to tell me.”

Po stared at him.

The words entered him one by one.

He wanted to protest. The instinct rose immediately, familiar and practiced.

But you are busy.

But it might be nothing.

But I don’t want to bother you.

But I already left you once.

But I told you not to look for me.

But I don’t know what right I have to call.

Thame seemed to hear every answer before Po could give it.

His fingers tightened very slightly along Po’s jaw.

Not enough to hurt.

Enough to hold his attention.

“Promise me.”

Po’s throat worked around a swallow.

“Thame…”

“Promise me.”

The second time was softer.

That somehow made it harder to refuse.

Po’s eyes burned again, not with the same panic as before, but with something older. Something tired. Something that had lived for years beneath all the practical parts of him.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he whispered.

Thame’s expression changed.

Only for a second.

A shadow passed through his eyes, dark and wounded and quickly buried.

“You are not a bother.”

Po’s lips parted.

Thame leaned closer, still holding his face.

“You never were.”

The words struck too deeply.

Po’s breath shook.

There had been a time when he would have believed that without effort. When Thame’s attention had felt like sunlight on his skin, constant and warm and impossible to question. Then life had happened. Fear had happened. Earn had happened. Silence had happened. Po had learned how to make himself smaller in every room he entered, how to apologize before anyone accused him of taking up space.

And now Thame was looking at him like the very idea offended him.

Po’s voice came out thin.

“But what if it’s nothing?”

“Then I will come for nothing.”

Po went still.

Thame did not smile.

“If you are afraid,” he said, “I will come.”

Po’s eyes filled again.

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

The answer came without pause.

Absolute.

As if there was no world in which it could be otherwise.

Po tried to look away, but Thame’s hand kept his face gently in place.

“Promise me, Phi Po.”

Po swallowed.

His heart was beating too hard.

“I promise.”

Thame’s gaze did not move.

“Say it properly.”

Po’s cheeks warmed.

The command stirred something in him despite everything, that old helpless pull toward Thame’s voice, toward the shape of him when he decided something and expected the world to follow.

Po whispered, “If I’m scared, I’ll call you.”

“When?”

Po’s breath trembled.

“If I’m scared,” he repeated, “I’ll call you right away.”

“Good.”

The word slipped beneath his skin again.

Po closed his eyes for half a second.

Thame’s thumb brushed the corner of one eye before the tear there could fall.

“No more crying,” he murmured.

Po let out a broken little laugh, wet and embarrassed. “You keep saying that like I can control it.”

“You can try.”

“I am trying.”

“I know.”

Thame’s voice softened on the last words.

Po opened his eyes.

For a moment, the shop felt suspended around them. The warmth of the lights. The quiet upstairs. The closed door. The darkness beyond the glass. Thame’s hand on his face, steady and warm, as if touching Po like this was not something fragile or shocking but an old right patiently reclaimed.

Po should have been afraid of how much he wanted to lean into it.

He did anyway.

Only a little.

Enough for Thame’s eyes to darken in a way Po did not know how to read.

Then Thame released his face.

The loss of his hand was immediate.

Po tried not to show it.

Thame noticed anyway.

“We should get you home,” he said.

Po blinked, startled by how quickly the world changed shape again.

“Home?”

“Yes. You need rest.”

“I can go by myself.”

“No.”

The answer was immediate.

Po’s brows lifted faintly.

Thame’s gaze held his.

“You are not going anywhere alone tonight.”

A part of Po should have argued.

Another part of him was too tired to even pretend.

He looked toward the stairs. “Uncle Joei…”

“I’ll speak to him.”

Of course he would.

Thame did, with the same smooth respect as before. He called up gently, explained that he would take Po home and make sure he arrived safely. Uncle Joei worried. Po heard it in every question, every pause, every careful attempt not to press too hard when Po already looked close to breaking again.

Thame answered all of it.

Calmly.

Patiently.

With the quiet confidence of a man who expected to be trusted and somehow made it easy.

Po stood beside him while he did, arms wrapped around himself, feeling too young and too exposed. When Uncle Joei finally agreed, telling Po to text when he reached home and to eat something before sleeping, Po promised both things.

He doubted he would manage either.

But he promised.

A few minutes later, Thame guided him out of the shop.

The street outside was darker now.

Quieter too.

Po noticed that only vaguely. The road seemed emptier than before, the usual evening clutter thinned around the shop. No one loitered near the tea stall. No shadow moved too close to the corner. Even the traffic felt distant, held back by some invisible border Po could not see.

He did not ask.

He did not have the energy.

The Aston Martin waited at the curb, sleek and black beneath the streetlights, its surface reflecting the city in broken streaks of gold and red. Po slowed when he saw it, sudden awareness flickering through his fear.

Thame’s hand settled lightly at the small of his back.

Not pushing.

Guiding.

Po got in.

The inside of the car smelled like leather, cold air, and Thame.

That last part was almost too much.

Po sank into the passenger seat, hands folded carefully in his lap, staring at the dashboard while Thame rounded the car and slid into the driver’s side. Outside, the blond man stood near the curb, talking quietly into a phone. Po looked at him for half a second, but his mind was too full to keep the detail.

Thame started the car.

The engine purred softly beneath them.

For a while, they drove in silence.

Bangkok passed outside the windows in streaks of light and shadow. Street vendors packing up for the night. Couples on sidewalks. Motorbikes slipping between cars. Neon signs bleeding color across wet patches of pavement. The city looked normal again from behind tinted glass.

Po hated that.

Normal should have waited.

Normal should have had the decency to stop after what happened.

His fingers twisted together.

Thame noticed without looking away from the road.

“Breathe,” he said.

Po inhaled.

Then exhaled slowly.

“Good.”

Po’s lips pressed together.

He watched the city blur past.

The silence felt different in the car. Smaller. More private. The fear had dulled into exhaustion now, but beneath it was something else, something soft and uncertain that had been growing since the first moment Thame picked up the phone.

Po looked at Thame’s profile.

The passing streetlights slid across his face, touching his cheekbone, his jaw, the line of his mouth. One hand rested on the steering wheel. The rings on his fingers glinted faintly whenever the car passed beneath a brighter light.

Po’s heart twisted.

“Thame?”

“Yes?”

His answer came immediately.

“If I call you…”

Thame waited.

Po swallowed.

“If I call you because I’m scared, you’ll come.”

“Yes.”

“But…”

The word sat in his mouth for too long.

Thame glanced at him again. “But?”

Po looked down at his lap.

“Can I call you even if I’m not scared?”

The question came out so quietly that for a moment he thought maybe Thame had not heard it.

The car seemed to quiet around them.

Po regretted the question immediately.

His shoulders curled inward, embarrassment flooding him hot and quick. It sounded needy. It sounded ridiculous. It sounded like something he had no right to ask after years of silence, after being the one who had sent Thame away, after all the things he did not know how to fix.

He rushed to soften it.

“I mean, not all the time. I know you’re busy. I just mean sometimes.”

Thame glanced at him.

A small smile touched his mouth.

Not the polished smile from Mars.

Not the cold one Po had glimpsed at the edges of things he did not understand.

This one was soft.

Almost boyish.

So familiar that it hurt.

“You can call me whenever you want,” Thame said.

Po’s throat tightened.

“Whenever?”

“Whenever.”

“What if you’re in a meeting?”

“Then I leave the meeting.”

Po stared at him.

Thame’s eyes returned to the road.

His voice remained calm.

“As many times as necessary.”

“Like I used to before.”

Thame’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

It was small.

So small anyone else might have missed it.

But Po saw.

The rings shifted. His knuckles flexed once against the leather. The car continued moving smoothly, but something inside it changed, the air drawing tight around the words Po had not meant to say aloud.

“I didn’t mean…” he began.

“You did.”

Po’s breath caught.

Thame’s voice was not angry.

That made it worse.

“I used to wait for your calls,” Thame said.

Po looked at him.

Thame’s eyes stayed on the road, his profile lit in passing fragments by the streetlights. His mouth was calm, but his grip on the steering wheel had not fully loosened.

“Even when you called for nothing,” he continued. “Especially then.”

Po’s chest hurt.

He remembered.

God, he remembered.

Calling Thame because the sky looked strange outside his window. Calling because he had seen a cat steal fish from a vendor. Calling because his pen exploded in class and his fingers were stained blue. Calling because he was bored. Because he was sleepy. Because he wanted to hear Thame laugh. Because there had been no reason at all except that Thame would answer, and Po had loved being someone Thame answered for.

His eyes burned.

“I called a lot,” he whispered.

“You did.”

“I was annoying.”

“No.”

Thame said it so immediately that Po’s heart clenched.

“You were mine to answer.”

Po went still.

The words were quiet.

Soft, even.

But they settled into the car with a weight Po could feel beneath his ribs.

Thame seemed to realize what he had said only after it was already between them. His fingers flexed once on the steering wheel, then loosened.

Po looked down quickly.

His face was hot.

His throat felt too full.

When they reached Po’s apartment building, the car stopped by the curb.

Po stared up at the familiar entrance.

His building looked exactly the same as always. Old paint near the doorway. One flickering light above the intercom. A row of mailboxes visible through the glass. Someone had left an umbrella leaning near the wall even though it had not rained yet.

Home.

Again, the word felt fragile.

Thame turned off the engine but did not get out immediately.

Po looked at him.

“You’re not coming up?” he asked before he could stop himself.

The question startled them both.

Po’s face warmed.

“I mean— I didn’t mean—”

Thame’s expression softened.

“I’ll stay here until you’re inside.”

Po swallowed.

“Okay.”

Thame reached into his jacket and took out his phone.

“Text me as soon as you enter your apartment.”

Po nodded.

“And lock the door.”

“I will.”

“Repeat it.”

A small, breathless laugh slipped out before he could stop it. It startled him, light and weak and disbelieving in the quiet car.

“I’m not a kid, Thame.”

Thame looked at him.

For one second, the years thinned.

Not disappeared.

Never that.

But thinned enough for Po to see the boy beneath the man. The Thame who used to walk him to the bus stop and complain when Po forgot his umbrella. The Thame who once packed extra snacks because Po always said he was not hungry and then stole half of Thame’s food. The Thame who used to text, did you get home? and then call if Po did not answer quickly enough.

Thame’s voice softened.

“You used to forget before.”

Po’s smile faltered.

The words were gentle, but memory moved through them.

Po had forgotten to text sometimes. On purpose, occasionally, just to make Thame fuss. He would come home, shower, throw himself on the bed, and ten minutes later his phone would ring.

Phi Po.

Are you home?

Did you lock the door?

Did you eat?

Po used to laugh then. Used to tell him he worried too much. Used to call him dramatic and secretly love every second of being cared for so openly.

His fingers tightened around the food bag.

“I didn’t forget that much,” Po said quietly.

“You did.”

“I was busy.”

“You were careless.”

Po looked at him, offended despite the ache in his chest.

Thame’s mouth curved faintly.

“With yourself,” he added.

The offense dissolved.

Po looked down.

Thame’s voice became quiet again. “Repeat it for me.”

Po swallowed.

“I’ll go upstairs,” he said. “I’ll text you as soon as I enter my apartment. I’ll lock the door.”

“And?”

“And I’ll eat something.”

“And?”

Po blinked.

“What else?”

Thame’s gaze held his.

Po’s heart gave a small, painful twist.

He knew.

“If I get scared,” he whispered, “I’ll call you.”

“When?”

“Right away.”

Thame’s expression softened in a way that made Po’s chest ache.

“Good.”

Po looked away before the word could undo him completely.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved.

The engine hummed beneath them. Outside, a couple walked past under one umbrella though it still had not rained. The lobby light flickered. Po could feel Thame’s attention on him, steady and patient, making no demand except the ones he had already given.

Po opened the door.

Cooler night air slipped into the car.

He stepped out carefully, food bag held against his chest, phone in his other hand. Before closing the door, he leaned down slightly and looked back in.

“Thame?”

“Yes?”

Po hesitated.

There were too many things he could say.

Thank you.

I’m sorry.

I missed you.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Instead, he said, “You’ll answer?”

Thame’s gaze did not move from his.

“Always.”

Po nodded once.

Then he closed the door.

He walked toward the building without looking back at first, because he knew if he did, he might not want to go inside. His legs felt steadier now, though exhaustion still dragged at every step.

At the entrance, he looked back.

Thame was watching.

Not casually.

Not politely.

Watching like he would memorize the exact second Po disappeared from view and punish the world if anything interrupted it.

Po’s fingers tightened around his phone. He lifted his hand slightly.

A tiny gesture.

Thame’s gaze softened.

He entered the building.

The lobby smelled faintly of detergent, dust, and someone’s dinner from upstairs. The elevator waited at the end of the short hall, doors scratched and dull under fluorescent light. Po pressed the button and turned automatically toward the glass entrance.

Through it, across the curb, Thame’s car remained there.

Waiting.

The elevator arrived with a tired ding.

Po stepped inside.

Just before the doors slid shut, he looked one last time.

Thame was still watching him.

The doors closed.

Po released a breath he had not realized he was holding.

When he reached his floor, he walked quickly to his apartment, unlocked the door with clumsy fingers, and stepped inside. The familiar darkness greeted him. His couch. His shoes near the wall. His editing desk with too many cables. A half-empty water bottle on the table. Everything ordinary. Everything untouched.

He closed the door. Locked it. Then checked the lock again.

Only then did he text Thame.

I’m inside. Door locked.

The reply came almost immediately.

Good. Eat something. Then rest.

Po stared at the message.

His chest ached.

He typed, then deleted, then typed again.

Thank you for coming.

This time, Thame’s reply took a few seconds longer.

Always.

Po sat down on the floor beside the door because his legs suddenly could not hold him.

Downstairs, Thame remained in the car until the message appeared.

I’m inside. Door locked.

The screen lit his face in the darkness of the Aston Martin.

For a moment, he only looked at the words.

Then his mouth curved.

Small.

Soft.

Almost tender.

But in his eyes, beneath the softness, something darker glinted.

Satisfaction.

Not because Po had been afraid.

Not because he had cried.

Not because someone had touched him and paid for it.

Because Po had called.

Because Po had promised.

Because Po had asked if he could call even when he was not scared.

The net had tightened by one more thread.

Thame looked up toward the building, toward the floor where Po’s apartment light had just flickered on.

His smile deepened by a fraction.

Then he started the car.

The Night Before

By evening, the city had sunk into a slow, glittering dark.

From the outer roads, Bangkok shimmered in fragments — traffic dragging ribbons of red and white across wet asphalt, towers blinking against the skyline, rooftop signs burning in expensive colors above streets that never truly slept. Somewhere far below, people were still gathering in lounges, counting cash behind counters, moving through kitchens and private rooms and quiet back entrances with Mars stamped invisibly across the whole machinery of their lives.

Thame did not look at any of it.

He sat in his home office with the curtains drawn halfway across the windows, the city reduced to softened light through dark glass. This was not the office Po had visited at Mars Lounge, all polished intimidation and carefully curated power. It was not the one at the top of Sephere Tower either, where men in tailored suits waited outside frosted doors and entire floors fell silent when he crossed them.

This office belonged only to him.

It sat deep within the private wing of his home, past hallways guarded by men who did not need to be told twice, behind a door no guest entered without permission. The walls were dark paneled wood, almost black beneath the low amber lighting. The shelves held no decorative awards, no staged relics meant to impress investors or visitors. They carried books, locked cases, neatly arranged files, and a few objects that mattered for reasons no one else would understand.

The room was quieter than the rest of his empire.

Safer.

This was where Thame did not need to glance at reflective surfaces before sitting down. Where he did not track the placement of every body in the room. Where he knew every camera angle, every entry point, every breath of movement before it ever reached him.

This was the only place in the world that asked nothing of him.

And yet tonight, for the first time in years, it felt restless.

Thame sat behind his desk with one hand resting beside his laptop, his thumb lightly brushing the edge of a silver ring as footage played across the screen in muted silence.

Solstice.

Table twelve.

Phi Po.

The camera angle was wide enough to take in the table, the partition of greenery behind it, the warm wash of candlelight across porcelain plates. Po sat in the chair nearest the carved screen, dressed in black in a way that had caught Thame off guard when the first alert reached him. The henley had fit him too well. The open collar had revealed the pale slope of his throat, the small hollow above his collarbone. His hair had been styled deliberately, soft around his face and slightly longer at the nape, making him look at once older than Thame remembered and painfully, beautifully familiar.

Thame had watched him arrive once already.

Then again.

Then a third time.

The footage continued now from later in the evening, after the complimentary dishes had been delivered. Po was looking down at the spread before him, still and quiet, while his friend spoke animatedly across the table. Candlelight traced the line of his cheek. His lips parted slightly when he recognized the dishes. His expression changed with such open, unguarded sweetness that Thame’s mouth had curved before he could stop it.

He had remembered.

Of course he had remembered.

There had never been a version of his life in which Po became forgettable.

The door opened without a knock.

Thame’s gaze lifted from the screen at once.

Nano stepped in first.

He never entered hesitantly. That was one of the reasons Thame kept him closest. Nano knew the shape of the rooms he walked into, knew which silences required waiting and which required speaking. Tonight, he wore a black shirt beneath a dark suit jacket, hair pushed back from his forehead, expression composed enough that anyone less familiar with him would have mistaken him for calm.

Thame knew better.

Something had been completed.

Behind him came the others.

Jun entered with the same languid, almost careless grace he carried everywhere, shoulders relaxed, face unreadable. He had the kind of beauty that disarmed people before they registered the knife hidden beneath it. Dylan followed beside him, taller, quieter, with his sleeves rolled to the forearms and a faint trace of boredom settled over his features, as if whatever violence had filled his afternoon had been mildly inconvenient at best. Pepper came last, closing the door behind them with a soft click, eyes already on Thame, waiting.

His most trusted.

The few men who could enter this office unannounced and leave breathing easily.

Thame leaned back slightly in his chair.

He said nothing.

He did not need to.

Nano stopped before the desk. “P’Thame,” he said. “It’s done.”

The words landed in the room without decoration.

Thame’s lips curved.

Not warmly.

Not in any way Po would have recognized from Uncle Joei’s tailor shop that morning.

This smile was thin and cold and cruel at the edges, a small show of satisfaction from a man who rarely needed to raise his voice to make others afraid.

“Good,” he said.

Jun tilted his head faintly. Dylan gave a careless shrug, one shoulder rolling back.

“The man was just a crybaby,” Dylan said, tone flat with disinterest. “Begged before Jun even touched him.”

Jun’s mouth moved, not quite a smile. “He cried after too.”

“Loudly,” Dylan added.

Thame’s gaze did not shift from Nano. “And the release?”

“Arranged,” Nano replied. “Tomorrow afternoon, as discussed.”

“Move it.”

Nano paused.

Only for a fraction of a second.

It was the kind of pause most men would have missed. Thame did not.

“To where?” Nano asked.

Thame’s eyes lowered briefly to the frozen image on the laptop screen.

Po, in candlelight.

Po, smiling because he had been fed properly.

Po, unaware that the hand which had closed around his wrist in that bank no longer existed as it once had.

“Near the tailor shop,” Thame said.

The room stilled.

Not dramatically. No one drew a breath too sharply. No one looked shocked. The men in this room had seen enough of Thame’s devotion over the years to know that there were very few lines he would not cross where Po was concerned.

Still, something shifted.

Pepper’s gaze flicked toward him. “You want Khun Pawat to see him.”

It was not a question.

Thame looked at him.

“Yes.”

The answer was quiet.

It carried no shame.

Nano’s jaw tightened, barely. “P’Thame.”

There were very few people in the world who could put warning into his title and remain standing.

Nano was one of them.

Thame’s eyes moved to him.

Nano chose his next words carefully. “Khun Pawat may not react the way you want him to.”

A faint curve touched Thame’s mouth.

There it was.

The assumption everyone kept making. That Thame wanted Po pleased. That he wanted gratitude. That he expected Po to see a ruined man in the street and understand immediately that the violence had been an offering laid at his feet.

No.

Thame knew Po better than that.

Po would be horrified.

His eyes would go wide, his face would lose color, his hand would go instinctively to the wrist. He would think too quickly, too gently. He would feel guilt before satisfaction, fear before relief. He might even hate Thame for it, for a little while.

That was acceptable.

Hatred could be met. Fear could be answered. Anger could be drawn close and held until it stopped shaking.

Distance was the only thing Thame would not accept. 

“He will react,” Thame said.

Nano went silent.

Thame leaned back in his chair, the low office light catching briefly across the edge of his ring.

“That is enough.”

The answer landed with a weight none of them mistook.

Pepper’s voice came more carefully this time. “Do you want it staged openly?”

“No.”

Of course not.

Thame had no interest in spectacle. Spectacle was vulgar. Spectacle made people careless. This needed to appear like coincidence, like one of those small accidents of city life that only revealed its design if one already understood who had arranged the street beneath it.

“Not in front of the shop,” Thame continued. “Across the street. Near enough for Po to notice. Far enough that Uncle Joei does not.”

Dylan tilted his head slightly. “And the man?”

“Disoriented,” Thame said. “Frightened. Alive.”

Jun’s mouth barely moved. “Visible?”

Thame’s eyes cooled.

“Yes.”

No one needed to ask what he meant.

The hand that had closed around Po’s wrist would be gone. The absence of it would speak more clearly than any message Thame could send. It would tell Po what had been done. It would tell the man why it had been done. It would tell anyone watching closely enough that the list was not symbolic, not old sentiment left to rot in some forgotten channel.

It was law.

Po’s law.

Even if Po did not yet understand that.

Pepper nodded once, already filing the logistics into place. “He’ll be released along the side road near the tea stall. There’s enough foot traffic for it to seem ordinary, but not enough to create a crowd.”

“Good.”

“Timing?”

Thame’s gaze lowered briefly to the screen again.

The frozen image of Po seemed too tender for the conversation surrounding it. His lips were parted faintly, his eyes lowered, the restaurant’s candlelight softening every line of him. He looked untouched by the machinery already moving around him, unaware that men had lost sleep, blood, and pieces of themselves because Thame had seen a bruise fading beneath his sleeve.

Thame’s jaw did not tighten.

He had learned long ago that anger wasted energy when precision could do the work better.

“Late afternoon,” he said. “Uncle Joei sends him out often after lunch.”

Nano’s gaze sharpened again, but he said nothing.

They all knew what the words meant.

Thame knew Po’s routine. Obviously he did.

He knew the tailor shop rhythm well enough by now. Morning fittings. Midday quiet. Uncle Joei’s tea forgotten until it went cold. Small errands after lunch when the shop needed thread, buttons, lining, paper, food, something minor enough that Po would offer to go before anyone asked him twice.

Po liked to be useful.

Thame had always loved and hated that in equal measure.

“He will leave the shop,” Thame said. “He will see him.”

“And if he walks away?” Dylan asked.

Thame’s mouth curved faintly.

“He won’t.”

Po would stop.

Po would look.

Po’s conscience would catch on the wrongness before his fear could pull him away. His soft heart would force him to understand what his mind might prefer not to see. He would recognize the man’s eyes first, perhaps. Or the voice. Or the way the man folded immediately at the sight of him, trembling into a wai he had no right to offer.

And then Po would understand.

That was the point.

Not to frighten him for the sake of fear. Not to punish him for leaving. Never that. Po had already punished himself enough with years of absence, with loneliness, with men who had been allowed near him only because Thame had kept his promise too well.

No.

This was instruction.

Po had seen Thame’s softness. The food. The call. The tailored patience at Uncle Joei’s shop. 

Now he would see the rest.

The part of Thame that did not forgive hands that hurt him.

The part that had built Mars not as a luxury brand, not as a front, not merely as an empire, but as a system of reach. A system of consequence. A world with eyes and teeth and memory.

Po could not return to Thame and keep only the boy from the car.

That boy still existed. Thame knew he did. Po drew him out in humiliating flashes — a smile too soft, a teasing line, the urge to fuss, to feed, to touch gently where another had hurt him.

But the boy had grown.

The boy had learned what happened to gentle things when power did not stand around them.

The boy had become a man who could make certain the world thought twice before laying even a careless finger on Po again.

Thame wanted Po to know that.

Needed him to know it.

Because if Po was going to come back, he would come back to the truth.

All of it.

Pepper’s voice cut lightly into the silence. “Do you want him told?”

Thame looked at him.

Pepper clarified, “The man. Do you want him to know Khun Pawat may see him?”

A slow, cruel stillness settled over Thame’s expression.

“Yes.”

Jun’s gaze lowered for half a beat.

Dylan’s mouth twitched.

Nano remained perfectly still.

Thame’s voice stayed level. “Tell him if he approaches Po, speaks loudly enough to draw attention, or does anything except apologize from a distance, he loses more than the hand.”

Pepper nodded. “Understood.”

“And Pepper.”

“Yes, Thame?”

“Make sure he understands why he is being allowed to walk at all.”

Pepper’s eyes sharpened. “Because Khun Pawat should see the lesson.”

“No,” Thame said softly.

The correction was quiet enough to make the room colder.

Pepper went still.

Thame’s gaze slid back to the laptop screen.

Po’s frozen smile looked almost shy beneath the restaurant lights.

“Because Phi Po is soft-hearted,” Thame said. “If the man is dead, Po will mourn a life he never asked to carry.”

No one spoke.

Thame’s thumb moved once against his ring.

“So let him live,” he continued. “Let him be afraid. Let him apologize. Let Po see that I can stop at punishment when I choose to.”

The mercy in it was twisted.

Thame knew that.

He did not care.

Po would hate blood spilled too close to him. He would blame himself for death. He would carry it in those wide eyes, tuck it beneath his ribs, and make room for guilt that did not belong to him. Thame would not give him that.

But fear?

Fear could be useful.

Fear could teach without staining Po’s hands too deeply.

Fear could make Po come to him.

That, more than anything, was the true shape of the plan.

Sweetness made Po blush and look away.

Fear would make him look directly.

Either way, Thame only needed him looking.

“Khun Pawat may be upset,” Nano said quietly.

“He will be.”

“You’re certain you want that?”

Thame’s gaze remained on Po’s image.

Po, who had walked into Mars.

Po, who had given him his number.

Po, who had answered his call.

A tenderness moved through him then, dark and possessive and absolute.

“I want him to understand,” Thame said.

Nano did not ask what.

He already knew.

Thame wanted Po to understand that returning to him had consequences.

Not punishment.

Consequences.

The world had been rearranged the second Po said his name again. Men would live or suffer according to rules they had once ignored. Doors would open. Tables would appear. Calls would be answered. Old enemies would be found. New routines would be watched. Every place Po stepped would become part of the map Thame had spent years refusing to cross.

Po had come back.

And Thame, patient for too long, had begun closing the distance.

“Arrange it,” Thame said.

Pepper bowed his head. “Yes, Thame.”

That should have ended it.

The matter of the first man was handled. The second would be found. Orders had been given, and in Thame’s world, that meant the future had already begun arranging itself accordingly.

But Pepper did not move.

The hesitation was slight. Barely there. A pause too long before he lowered his gaze, a shift of weight that would have meant nothing in anyone else. But Thame’s office was not a room where small things went unnoticed.

Nano caught it first.

His eyes flicked once toward Pepper, sharp and brief.

Jun’s posture changed by a fraction.

Dylan’s hand, which had been resting loosely against his thigh, went still.

Thame looked at Pepper.

The warmth in the room seemed to drain without any visible reason.

“Speak,” he said.

One word.

Pepper’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slim black folder. He did not place it on Thame’s desk. His fingers remained around its edge, grip controlled, as though the information inside had weight beyond paper.

“There is another matter,” he said carefully.

Thame said nothing.

Pepper’s eyes lowered to the folder, then lifted again. “It came through one of the monitoring channels this morning. I had it verified twice before bringing it to you.”

Nano’s expression did not change, but his gaze sharpened.

Thame leaned back by the slightest degree. “And?”

Pepper paused.

It was not fear of speaking. It was fear of what the name would do once released into the room.

“Earn is back in Bangkok.”

Silence.

Not the ordinary kind. Not the polished, obedient stillness Thame preferred in his office. This one arrived like a blade sliding between ribs, clean and cold.

No one moved.

Even the muted footage on the laptop seemed suddenly too bright in the corner of the room — Po seated in candlelight, face softened toward dishes chosen for him, unaware of the name now hanging in the air behind Thame.

Thame’s expression did not change.

That was what made Nano straighten.

There was no tightening of the jaw. No visible shift in posture. No hand curling into a fist. Thame remained seated exactly as he had been, one hand resting near the laptop, his gaze fixed on Pepper with unnerving calm.

Only his eyes changed.

Whatever warmth had lingered there from watching Po disappeared so completely it felt as though it had never existed.

“Say that again,” Thame said.

Pepper swallowed once. “Earn returned to Bangkok four days ago.”

Thame held his gaze.

“Four days,” he repeated.

“Yes, Thame.”

“And I am hearing about it now.”

The sentence was spoken softly.

Pepper’s shoulders did not drop. He had too much discipline for that. But something in his face drew tighter.

“We flagged the entry initially,” he said. “He was not considered an active concern until he landed on Thai soil. The second we confirmed his landing, I pulled every movement associated with him and had the report compiled.”

Nano glanced at Pepper, not reproachful, but keenly aware of how narrow the line beneath his feet had become.

Thame said nothing.

Pepper continued because stopping would have been worse.

“He has been staying at a serviced residence in Sathorn. Minimal security. No indication he knows he is being watched.”

A faint smile touched Thame’s mouth.

Not amusement.

Recognition.

“At last,” he murmured.

The words were so quiet that no one else in the room should have heard them.

They all did.

Earn.

The name had lived too long in Thame’s files.

The man who had placed his hands where he had no right. The man who had taken Po’s softness and taught him to fold inward beneath anger, to disappear into silence, to apologize before anyone accused him of anything. The man Baifern still remembered because Po had gone quiet around him in ways that left marks even after the relationship ended.

Thame had known.

Of course he had known.

He had known during the years he kept his distance because Po had once looked him in the eye with tears bright along his lashes and told him never to come looking again. He had known when Po started dating Earn. Known when dates turned into patterns. Known when the reports shifted from harmless updates into things that made the blood in his body cool.

Cancelled plans.

Po missing work.

A bruise once glimpsed near his shoulder in a photograph taken outside of his work, mostly hidden by his shirt collar.

A neighbor reporting raised voices through a wall.

Baifern appearing at Po’s apartment unannounced the next morning and not leaving for hours.

Thame had read every line.

And done nothing.

Not because he did not want to.

Because Po had asked him not to look for him again, and Thame, in the one way that mattered, had obeyed.

He had held himself back until restraint became a private form of mutilation. He had watched another man make Po afraid inside his own life and told himself that crossing the distance Po demanded would only prove that Po had been right to leave him.

So Earn had remained alive.

Untouched.

Unaware that his name was kept in a file no one else in Bangkok would have survived long enough to earn.

Then Po walked back into Mars.

Po asked for him.

Po said his name.

Po took his number.

Po answered when he called.

The boundary Thame had built his restraint around had cracked open with Po’s own hands.

And Earn, unfortunately for himself, had returned just in time.

“Bring him to me,” Thame said.

Pepper’s grip on the folder eased by a fraction, because an order, however terrible, was easier than waiting in silence.

“Tonight?”

Thame looked at him.

Pepper corrected himself immediately. “Tonight.”

“Alive,” Thame added.

Dylan’s gaze flickered.

Jun’s mouth went faintly still.

Pepper nodded once. “Understood.”

A beat passed.

Then Thame said, “Do not frighten him too badly before he arrives.”

The room remained silent.

But the cruelty of it settled with perfect clarity.

Not mercy.

Preservation.

Thame wanted Earn conscious enough to understand whose hands had finally closed around his life.

His gaze drifted back to the laptop.

The footage from Solstice had looped to the moment Po returned from the restroom, walking toward his table with the faintest change in his face. His steps were controlled, but Thame recognized the softened eyes, the slight pink lingering at the tips of his ears, the way his fingers brushed almost unconsciously against the side seam of his trousers before he sat.

He had always been easy to read after Thame touched him.

Even through a phone call, apparently.

There had been no cameras in the restroom. Thame had told him that, and it had been true. He would not insult Po with a lie over something so small.

But Solstice was one of his establishments, and cameras watched the corridors, entrances, tables, service stations, exits. Cameras watched the spaces where important people moved. Where dangerous people entered. Where money exchanged hands. Where things could turn ugly if left unseen.

And Po—

Po had always been the one person Thame wanted in view.

“Pepper,” Thame said without looking up.

“Yes, Thame?”

“You flagged the reservation.”

Pepper nodded. “Baifern Kopkasem placed it under her own name. Her profile was linked to Khun Pawat’s file. I had Solstice hold the request instead of rejecting it.”

The restaurant had been full for days. Solstice’s opening week had been booked so quickly that half the city’s socialites had spent the better part of forty-eight hours trying to bully their way onto its list. A reservation placed one day before would never have cleared on its own.

But Pepper had seen Baifern’s name.

Had recognized the connection.

Had let the table open.

“Good work,” Thame said.

Pepper’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, pleased by the acknowledgment. “I thought it best to approve it quietly. If Khun Pawat had learned it was facilitated, he might not have come.”

“He would not have,” Thame said.

Po was careful about gifts when he noticed them. Too careful. Too ready to retreat from anything that felt like too much. It was one of the reasons Thame preferred influence over spectacle.

A door opened at the right time.

A reservation approved.

A favorite meal disguised as generosity extended to everyone in the room.

Po accepted things more easily when they did not look like they had been placed directly into his hands.

For now.

“He came,” Thame added, gaze still on the screen.

That was what mattered.

He watched as Po sat again, as his eyes lowered to the unexpected dishes before him, as Baifern pointed excitedly at one plate after another. Po’s lips moved. Thame could not hear him from the muted footage, but he did not need to. He had heard enough from the call. Enough to know Po had been startled. Enough to know he had understood.

The food had not been a grand gesture. Thame had no interest in grandness for its own sake.

It had simply been correct.

Po went somewhere under Thame’s name, so Po was fed properly. Po looked overwhelmed, so he was given something familiar. Po had come into Mars without warning, and Thame had not been there to receive him. The least the restaurant could do was remember what belonged on his table.

A quiet satisfaction settled in his chest as Po finally smiled.

Small.

Lowered.

Almost shy.

Thame paused the footage there.

The room went still around the frozen image.

No one spoke.

Nano’s eyes flicked briefly toward the laptop, then back to Thame. He had seen the reports. He knew whom Thame watched, whom he had called, whose name had quietly begun moving again through the arteries of Mars after years of lying sealed but never erased.

Still, Nano said nothing.

Smart.

Thame rested one elbow against the arm of his chair, gaze fixed on the screen.

Po had come back on his own.

That fact had settled into him with a weight almost luxurious in its certainty. Thame had not gone looking first. He had not sent flowers to the tailor shop or appeared outside Po’s building or placed himself directly in the path of a life he had once been ordered to leave untouched.

Po had walked into Mars Lounge.

Po had asked for him.

Po had said his name.

That changed things.

Thame was not a boy anymore, waiting at school gates and aching to make one more excuse to see him. He had learned patience. He had learned control. He had learned how to build worlds large enough that people entered them before they realized whose air they were breathing.

And now Po had stepped back into his.

Nothing would take him away again.

Not distance.

Not time.

Not another soft-faced liar who mistook Po’s kindness for weakness.

Not Po himself, if he tried to retreat behind politeness and uncertainty and the idea that what had passed between them could be packed back into memory.

Thame would not force him.

He did not need to.

He would simply remain.

At the restaurants Po passed. At the shop he worked in. In the number saved in Po’s phone. In staff who knew his name before he spoke it. In little acts of care shaped so closely around him that eventually Po would stop flinching at Thame’s presence and begin expecting it instead.

He would surround Po with himself so gradually, so completely, that one day Po would look up and realize Thame had become familiar again.

Necessary again.

Home again.

The thought brought the faintest curve to his mouth.

Across the desk, Nano continued speaking in a low voice about a shipment that was coming. Jun and Dylan listened with the calm readiness of men for whom violence was not chaos but procedure.

But the room itself seemed to draw the eye elsewhere.

Past the burnished edge of the desk.

Past the glass paperweight near Thame’s right hand.

Past the polished silver pen lying perfectly parallel to a sealed folder.

Toward the second-to-last drawer built into the side of his desk.

Locked.

Undisturbed.

Ordinary, to anyone who did not know better.

Inside, beneath miscellaneous acquisition files and old property reports placed there as camouflage, lay a record so meticulously preserved it bordered on devotion.

Po Pawat Nuenganan.

The first file was clinical in appearance. Addresses. University information. Past workplaces. Client histories where they could be traced. Emergency contacts. Changes in routine. Photographs collected over years, some public, some not. Uncle Joei’s tailor shop was there. Baifern Kopkasem’s name was there. Past boyfriends were there. Earn’s page was thicker than it should have been, its margins crowded with more annotations than any other.

There were notes on the year Po worked part-time at Lumi, a matcha shop hidden on a side street near his university. The records listed his usual shifts. Tuesdays after class. Friday mornings when he did not have lectures. Occasional weekends when another staff member called out.

Thame had known the first week Po started.

He had never gone himself.

That would have been breaking the boundary Po had drawn.

Instead, one afternoon, a man in plain clothes had walked into Lumi and ordered the iced matcha latte Po had prepared most often for customers when they asked what he recommended.

Extra whisked.

Less sweet.

A drink Po had made with patient hands, concentrating just slightly as he worked because even ordinary tasks received his full attention when he cared about doing them properly.

The cup had been delivered to Thame forty minutes later.

The ice had already begun to soften. The foam had thinned.

It had not mattered.

Thame drank every drop.

The empty cup, rinsed clean and dried, now sat in that drawer wrapped in tissue paper far too carefully for something made of clear plastic and printed branding. The faint logo from Lumi remained visible along one side. A meaningless object to anyone else.

To Thame, it was proof that Po had once held something, made it, passed it forward into the world — and without knowing, placed it into Thame’s hands.

There were records from Haus of Bloom too.

A job Po took later, part-time again, when Lumi changed ownership and his schedule shifted. He had learned to wrap bouquets there, to trim stems cleanly, to pair flowers by color with that same quiet, concentrated care he gave to everything.

He had never known that several orders for “custom arrangements” came from men employed by Thame.

Never known that bouquets built beneath his fingers had been delivered not to faceless clients, but to Thame’s private residence and personal offices.

Thame had kept them until they wilted.

Then, from the ones Po had made himself, he preserved what he could.

Pressed petals lived in envelopes tucked behind the file.

Pale hydrangea.

A yellow tulip petal.

The deep velvet scrap of a dark blue rose.

Thin fragments of leaves pressed flat between archival paper, fragile and ridiculous and treasured more carefully than documents worth millions.

There were newer pages as well.

Po no longer worked at cafés or flower shops. He helped Uncle Joei at the tailor shop, slipping into the familiar rhythm of hems, fittings, errands, and fabric samples whenever freelance work left him room. He took editing jobs from clients who praised his eye for detail and recommended him quietly onward.

He overworked.

He undercharged more often than he should.

Once a month, almost without fail, he received one larger project — corporate videos, event edits, promotional reels, documentary cleanups — the kind that paid enough to steady his finances without appearing suspiciously generous.

Po had never known that those monthly jobs came through layers of distance carefully built by Thame.

A production assistant hired by a consultant who subcontracted through a company ultimately indebted to Mars. A recommendation planted here. A budget quietly approved there. Enough separation that Po could take the work proudly, invoice it honestly, receive payment without suspecting whose hand had opened the door.

Thame had told himself it was practical.

Po was talented.

Po deserved work.

Po would reject money if he knew where it came from, but he would never reject compensation for labor he had earned.

So Thame made sure there was always labor available.

The most recent project had been one of those.

A long editing contract. Well-paid. Issued with a physical cheque because the client “preferred traditional accounting for outside contractors.”

Po had taken that cheque to the bank.

Thame had known about the job. Known the payment had been delivered. Known Po would deposit it eventually.

He had not known which branch Po would choose.

He had not known there would be a robbery.

If he had, every man involved would have vanished long before Po stepped through those doors.

Still, the chain unsettled something even in him.

A job Thame had arranged led to a cheque.

A cheque led Po to the bank.

The bank led Po back to him.

Fate, perhaps, if one believed in that kind of thing.

Thame preferred to believe in consequence.

Every movement created another. Every choice opened a door. He had spent years touching Po’s life only at the outermost edges, never close enough to violate the words Po had once spoken to him with tears bright in his eyes.

Don’t look for me again, Thame.

He had obeyed.

And somehow, despite it, Po had found his way back through a path Thame himself had laid without ever intending it to lead there.

The locked drawer contained all of that.

The file.

The reports.

The matcha cup.

The pressed flowers.

A dried scrap of ribbon from a bouquet Po had wrapped crookedly in his first week at Haus of Bloom, kept because Thame had seen it and known Po must have worried over the uneven fold.

An old receipt from Lumi.

A copy of Po’s first freelance portfolio page printed out and preserved, though the site had long since been redesigned.

A life watched from afar.

Not because Thame had forgotten how to live without him.

Because he had refused to.

“Anything else?” Thame asked at last.

Nano straightened. “No, P’Thame.”

“Then go rest.”

The dismissal was soft.

Immediate movement followed.

Jun turned first, unhurried as ever. Dylan followed with a last glance toward the laptop, curiosity hidden beneath indifference. Pepper tucked the black folder back inside his jacket and bowed his head before retreating.

Nano lingered half a second longer.

Thame did not look at him.

“Say it,” he said.

Nano’s mouth tightened.

Then, carefully, “Khun Pawat is the one who you have been waiting for?”

The room went quiet.

Thame looked up.

The air changed.

Nano did not step back. That was why Thame valued him. He feared correctly, but he did not fear uselessly.

“Yes,” Thame said.

For a single moment, something almost human moved through his face.

Then it was gone.

“He is the reason any of this exists.”

Nano lowered his gaze.

There was nothing more to say after that.

He left.

The door closed behind him with a soft, final click.

At once, the office became still.

Not empty.

Never empty. Not with Po’s face paused on the laptop. Not with his name locked in the drawer. Not with years of him tucked beneath Thame’s hand, just out of sight, waiting.

Thame remained unmoving for a long moment.

Then he reached for the silver case near the edge of his desk.

The click of it opening sounded too loud in the silence.

He drew out a cigarette, placed it between his lips, and lit it with the kind of calm that made violence seem patient.

Flame caught.

Smoke unfurled.

He leaned back in his chair, the leather giving softly beneath him, and inhaled.

The first drag burned down his throat.

He held it there.

Then exhaled slowly.

Smoke curled upward in pale ribbons, blurring the paused image of Po on the screen until the candlelight became haze, until Solstice softened into another kind of gold entirely.

Morning light.

Soft, dusty, falling through the windows of Uncle Joei’s tailor shop.

The memory returned with such clarity that Thame could almost smell it again: pressed fabric, starch, old wood warmed by the sun, the faint metallic bite of pins held too long between teeth, and beneath it all, something cleaner.

Softer.

Po.

Finding the tailor shop had not been difficult.

It had, in fact, been insultingly easy.

One hand into that second-to-last drawer. A few pages lifted. The address of the small shop Po returned to whenever freelance work loosened its hold on him or whenever, according to older records, he needed somewhere to occupy his hands.

Thame had read it once years ago.

Again two days after Po visited Mars.

And that morning, he had gone.

Thame had wanted to see those wide, startled eyes in person again.

The boba-ball eyes Po had made at him when he walked into the shop and found Thame standing on the fitting platform. The way he had frozen mid-apology, mouth slightly open, breath caught, as though he had wandered straight into a dream and could not decide whether he wanted to wake.

Then, impossibly, Po had pinched himself.

Thame had nearly laughed.

He had watched every movement: the cautious lift of Po’s hand, the brief press of fingers into his own skin, the soft little wince when it hurt. He had tracked it automatically, attention narrowing on Po’s arm, then on his face, catching the embarrassment blooming there when he realized Thame had seen.

So sweet.

Still so sweet.

He could command a bank full of armed men into fear without speaking. He could send people to their knees with a tilt of his chin. He could sit with men twice his age and watch their mouths dry as they waited for his approval.

And still Po could walk into a room, pinch himself because Thame stood in front of him, and make something in Thame’s chest warm in a way nothing else could.

The shop had smelled faintly of starch and fabric steam. Sunlight had slanted through the windows, settling along Po’s hair, catching the soft curve of his cheek. Uncle Joei had called Thame a sweet boy, and for one rare moment, Thame had almost been tempted to laugh himself.

A sweet boy.

He had seen Po’s face when the words landed. The shock. The suppressed hysteria. The effort it took not to glance between Thame and his uncle as though wondering whether the world had finally lost its mind.

Thame had enjoyed that far too much.

He had enjoyed saying, “It’s Thame for you. As Phi Po’s uncle.”

He had enjoyed watching Po go still.

Enjoyed it even more when Uncle Joei asked if they knew each other and Po, poor thing, forgot speech entirely.

So Thame had answered for him.

“Phi Po and I go way back. We know each other very well.”

He had meant for the words to land.

They did.

Po’s eyes had flickered, pupils widening almost imperceptibly. His throat had moved beneath the open collar of his shirt. He had looked away too fast, but not before Thame caught the flush rising along his cheekbones, the small hitch in his breath, the sudden distant quality of his gaze as something remembered took hold of him.

Thame had known exactly where his thoughts went.

Because his had gone there too.

To younger years and locked doors.

To stolen afternoons that had begun with whispered excuses and ended with evening light fading gold through half-drawn curtains. To Po sitting too close at first and then not close enough, to nervous laughter dissolving into silence when Thame’s hand found his. To kisses that started careful because Po was always careful, until they deepened and his restraint began slipping piece by piece.

Thame remembered the way Po’s breath would change before anything else.

A quiet hitch.

A soft inhale held too long.

His lashes lowering when Thame leaned closer, his fingers clutching at fabric as though he needed something to anchor himself to while Thame pressed warmth beneath his jaw and felt him tremble. Po always tried to stay composed, even with Thame. Tried to swallow the sounds that rose in his throat, tried to turn his face away when affection overwhelmed him, tried to pretend that he was not melting under every touch.

It never lasted.

The cigarette burned slowly between Thame’s fingers.

Smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

His mouth curved faintly at the memory, but there was nothing innocent in it.

Po had always been contradiction.

Shy, until he forgot to be.

Gentle, until feeling made him fierce.

Soft-spoken, until Thame drew his name from him in a voice that barely sounded like speech.

And Thame—

Thame had always wanted too much.

He had wanted Po’s smile and Po’s attention and Po’s trust.

Then his time.

Then his hands.

Then his future.

Then every version of him no one else had earned the right to see.

Time had not cured that hunger.

It had refined it.

Made it patient.

Made it dangerous.

That morning, when Uncle Joei returned with the navy sample book tucked beneath one arm, already humming to himself as he flipped through fabrics with the deep satisfaction of a craftsman handed an important commission, Thame had known before the older man even spoke.

“Po,” Uncle Joei had said, as if asking for the most ordinary thing in the world, “come help me finish Khun Thame’s measurements.”

Po had gone still.

Thame had seen every part of it.

The way his shoulders tightened first. The way his fingers curled around the strap of his bag. The way his gaze shot to Thame, then away, then back again, helplessly pulled. His throat moved once.

“Me?” Po had asked.

Uncle Joei had looked faintly amused. “Yes, you. You know how.”

“I know,” Po had said quickly. “I just…”

His voice trailed off.

He was standing barely a few steps away from the platform, but he looked as though Uncle Joei had asked him to cross a room full of fire.

Thame had stood very still.

That was the only kindness he could offer then.

Stillness.

Patience.

The illusion of control.

Inside, restraint had stretched thin enough to hurt.

He had spent years knowing Po through distance. Through reports and fragments, through photographs that never captured enough, through secondhand information that told him where Po was but never how the air changed around him.

None of it had prepared him for the reality of Po this close again.

Not the nervous tilt of his head.

Not the uncertain line of his mouth.

Not the faint scent of soap and warm skin that reached Thame the moment Po stepped nearer with the measuring tape in his hands.

It was unbearable in its simplicity.

Po smelled like morning.

Like cotton dried in sunlight.

Like clean skin.

Like the faint sweetness of whatever product Baifern had put in his hair the night before, already softened by sleep and rushing and Po’s own warmth.

The scent reached Thame quietly, almost innocently, and then lodged itself somewhere under his ribs with the violence of memory.

For one absurd, savage second, Thame wanted to step down from the platform, close his hands around Po’s waist, and pull him in until that scent was no longer something he had to catch by accident.

He did not.

He lifted his arms when Po asked.

“Chest and shoulders first,” Po had murmured, mostly to the notepad Uncle Joei had handed him.

His voice was careful.

Too careful.

Thame watched him come closer.

Po climbed onto the edge of the fitting platform as though each movement had to be negotiated with himself first. The measuring tape slipped between his fingers, white against his skin, numbers dark and precise. He kept his eyes lowered to it, avoiding Thame’s face with such stubborn focus that Thame almost smiled.

Almost.

Then Po reached around him.

The tape passed across Thame’s shoulders first. Po moved with practiced care, the kind that came from years of helping in the shop, but his hands betrayed him.

They trembled.

Only slightly.

Not enough for Uncle Joei to notice from across the room.

Enough for Thame to notice immediately.

Po’s fingertips brushed the seam of his jacket. The touch was barely there, interrupted by layers of fabric, but Thame felt it with insulting clarity. He felt the line of Po’s knuckles near his shoulder blade. Felt the warm drift of Po’s breath when he leaned closer to check the tape. Felt the tiny hesitation before Po pulled the measurement snug.

Thame had been obeyed by men who feared him. He had watched entire rooms rearrange around his silence. He had learned to master his body until even rage could pass through him without touching his face.

And yet Po’s trembling fingers around a measuring tape nearly undid him.

“Shoulders,” Po said under his breath.

The number came out quietly, followed by the soft scratch of pencil against paper.

Thame looked down at him.

A piece of hair had fallen near Po’s cheek. It curved against his skin, loose and inconvenient. Po did not move it away because both hands were occupied.

Thame wanted to.

He wanted to tuck it behind Po’s ear. Wanted to let his fingers linger. Wanted to see if Po would go still again, if his lashes would lower the same way they used to when Thame touched him without warning but with care.

Instead, Thame remained motionless.

By a thread.

Po turned back with the tape gathered between both hands. “Chest next.”

“Of course,” Thame said.

Po’s ears turned pink.

The words had been harmless.

Deliberately harmless, even.

But Po heard the shape of Thame’s voice and reacted anyway, color rising before he could stop it.

Thame’s mouth softened.

Still so easy.

Still so honest when caught off guard.

Po stepped closer again. There was no way to take this measurement without closing the space between them, and they both knew it. He reached around Thame’s torso with careful arms, bringing the tape behind his back first, then forward across his chest. His knuckles skimmed over Thame’s shirt as he adjusted the line. His face was lowered, lashes dark against flushed cheeks, mouth pressed into concentration.

Thame looked past him toward the mirror.

The reflection showed them too clearly.

Po standing close, almost tucked into the space in front of him.

Thame’s arms lifted slightly.

Po’s hands at his chest.

The unfinished jacket framing them both in charcoal and shadow.

Uncle Joei at the cutting table behind them, happily absorbed in his sample book, humming as though the air had not turned thick enough to touch.

Po tugged the tape into place.

His fingers brushed Thame’s side.

Thame’s jaw tightened.

Po noticed.

Of course he noticed.

He always had.

Even when they were younger, Po had pretended not to see the effect he had, but his eyes always gave him away. They flicked up now, catching Thame’s gaze in the mirror.

For one suspended second, neither of them moved.

Then Po looked back down too quickly.

“You’ve…” he began.

Thame waited.

Po’s grip on the measuring tape tightened. He looked as if he regretted speaking the instant the word left him.

Thame lowered his voice. “I’ve what, Phi Po?”

Po swallowed.

The movement traveled down his throat in a way Thame followed before he could stop himself.

“You’ve grown,” Po said finally.

Silence.

Then Uncle Joei hummed, entirely unaware, and turned another page of fabric samples.

Thame looked at Po’s burning face and felt amusement coil through him, dark and warm and almost indulgent.

“I would hope so,” he said. “It has been years.”

“I know that,” Po said quickly. “I meant…”

He stopped.

Thame tilted his head slightly. “You meant?”

Po’s lips parted, then closed again.

The blush deepened.

“You know what I meant,” he muttered.

“I’d like to hear you say it.”

Po looked up at him sharply.

The expression nearly ruined Thame. Half scandalized, half helpless, those round eyes wide with accusation, as though Thame was the one behaving unfairly when Po had been the one to stand close enough to make him forget his own restraint.

“Thame,” Po whispered.

It was supposed to be a warning.

It landed like surrender.

Thame smiled, small and controlled. “I was only asking for clarification.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“No?”

“No.”

There it was.

That tiny spark beneath the softness. That line of resistance Po always found when Thame teased too close.

It had been one of the things Thame loved most about him when they were boys. Po could be shy, careful, almost painfully gentle, but he was never empty. Never passive. He folded under affection, yes, but not without feeling.

Not without fire.

Thame let him have the small victory.

Po took the measurement, read the number, and stepped back so quickly his heel caught near the platform edge.

Thame moved before thought.

His hand closed around Po’s wrist.

Lightly.

So lightly.

Not to trap.

Not to bruise.

Never that.

His fingers settled with the care of someone touching a thing already hurt, enough to steady him before he slipped, enough to keep him close for one heartbeat longer.

Po gasped.

The sound went through Thame like a struck match.

Po looked at his wrist first, then at Thame’s hand around it, then up at Thame’s face. His eyes were wide, startled, breath caught high in his chest. Instinctively, he glanced over his shoulder toward Uncle Joei.

Uncle Joei was busy comparing two shades of navy lining, humming under his breath and making notes with his pencil, utterly delighted by the prospect of such a large commission.

Po tried to pull back.

Thame did not tighten his grip.

He only looked at him.

Po stilled.

That, too, was dangerous.

Not because Thame liked obedience from Po. Obedience was too small a word for what passed between them.

It was trust that destroyed him.

The way Po halted not because he was forced, but because he recognized Thame’s touch and waited, trembling, to understand what it meant.

Thame lowered his gaze.

The sleeve of Po’s shirt had shifted up just enough.

The bruise was almost gone.

Almost.

The worst of the color had faded, the deep violet softened into pale yellow and shadow, but the outline remained if one knew where to look. A faint echo of fingers pressed into skin that had never belonged beneath any hand but one gentle enough to be invited.

The old heat in Thame vanished.

Something colder replaced it.

Po felt the change. His breath trembled. “Thame…”

Thame turned his wrist over with the same careful hold.

The inside of Po’s wrist faced the warm light.

There it was.

Fading.

Healing.

Not enough.

A mark did not need to be fresh to be unforgivable.

Thame stared at it, expression smoothing into stillness so complete it became its own kind of violence. The shop sounds thinned around him. Uncle Joei’s humming. The street outside. The rustle of fabric. All of it fell away beneath the pulse he could feel under Po’s skin.

Alive.

Soft.

Too easy to hurt.

Po’s voice was barely there. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

A lie.

Maybe not completely. Maybe the bruise itself had dulled, the ache mostly gone.

But Po had still tugged his sleeve down at the door. Still hidden it from Uncle Joei. Still flinched when attention came too close.

Thame’s thumb moved beneath the mark, not touching the bruise itself.

“Good,” he said.

His voice sounded gentle.

It took effort.

Po’s eyes searched his face, uncertain and too open, as though trying to reconcile the man holding his wrist with the boy who used to fuss over sun-warm cheeks in the backseat of a car. Thame wondered if Po understood, even a little, what that mark had done to him.

What it had awakened.

What had already been set in motion because of it.

He hoped not.

Not yet.

Thame lowered his head.

Po’s breath caught so sharply it almost sounded like pain.

The kiss landed exactly where the outline of the bruise remained.

Soft.

Brief.

A vow pressed into fading damage.

Po trembled.

Not just his hand.

All of him.

A shiver ran visibly through his body, from wrist to shoulder, down his spine, up into the breath that broke silently behind his lips. His eyes fluttered half-closed before snapping open again, as though he had not expected his body to betray him so completely in the middle of Uncle Joei’s shop.

Thame lingered for half a second longer than mercy required.

He could feel Po’s pulse against his mouth.

Fast.

So fast.

His own control frayed at the edges.

He wanted to turn the wrist, kiss the center of the palm, pull Po down from the platform’s edge and close the distance properly. He wanted to follow that tremor back to its source. He wanted to ask if Po still remembered how he used to shake when Thame touched him gently enough to make refusal impossible, how he used to look at Thame afterward with accusation and wanting tangled together in those wide eyes.

But Uncle Joei was there.

And Po was trembling.

And Thame had promised himself he would not take more than Po could survive receiving.

So he lifted his mouth from Po’s skin.

Slowly.

Then released him.

Po snatched his wrist back to his chest as though trying to keep the sensation from spilling out of him. His fingers wrapped around the place Thame had kissed. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth slightly open, his gaze fixed somewhere near Thame’s collar as if looking at his face would be too dangerous.

For several seconds, the only sound was Uncle Joei turning another page.

Then the older man looked up, holding two fabric swatches between his fingers.

“Po,” he said cheerfully, “this navy or the darker one?”

Po startled so badly Thame almost smiled.

Almost.

“I…” Po blinked at the swatches as though they were written in another language. “The darker one.”

Uncle Joei nodded, pleased. “Good eye.”

Po did not look at Thame again.

Not directly.

But for the rest of the fitting, his hand kept drifting back to his wrist.

And every time it did, Thame remembered the tremor that had run through him.

Remembered the pulse beneath his mouth.

Remembered, with a satisfaction too dark to be tender, that Po had not pulled away until Thame let him.

In the office, the cigarette burned low between Thame’s fingers.

The city glittered beyond the half-drawn curtains, distant and obedient, unaware of the small private smile forming on his mouth.

Po had come back frightened.

Po had come back confused.

Po had come back looking for answers.

Thame would give them to him.

Not all at once.

Never all at once.

Po startled easily when truth arrived too loudly. He needed gentleness first. Familiar food. A soft voice over the phone. A kiss where someone else had hurt him. A table prepared before he arrived. A door opening exactly when he needed it.

Then the harder lessons.

The slow realization that Thame’s tenderness and Thame’s cruelty were not opposites.

They were the same devotion, turned in different directions.

Thame took one last drag from the cigarette and crushed it into the ashtray.

On the laptop, Po’s paused smile remained.

Small.

Private.

Thame reached forward and resumed the footage.

Po’s smile moved.

Thame watched it happen again.

His mouth curved..

The cigarette burned down slowly.

Thame did not move to ash it.

He watched the ember eat through paper by degrees, orange brightening, dimming, brightening again with every quiet breath he allowed himself. Smoke gathered between his fingers first, thin and pale, then rose in lazy ribbons toward the ceiling. It softened the edges of the office. Blurred the hard lines of the desk. Turned the paused image of Po on the laptop into something half-seen, half-dreamed, his smile glowing faintly behind the veil like a memory trapped beneath glass.

The room smelled of tobacco now.

Tobacco, leather, warm metal from the lighter still lying open near his hand, and beneath it the colder scent of paper — old files, sealed envelopes, ink, dust caught inside locked drawers.

Evidence.

Devotion.

Obsession, if one wanted to be crude about it.

Thame exhaled through his nose, slow enough that the smoke curled back toward him before breaking apart.

He had spent years telling himself that distance was a form of mercy.

Po had asked him for distance, and Thame had given it to him.

Not peace.

Never peace.

Peace would have meant letting go.

He had given Po space instead, which was different. Space could be measured. Space could be watched. Space could be mapped with addresses, routines, job changes, bank deposits, café shifts, flower orders, late-night taxis, names that came too close and names that stayed harmlessly at the edges.

Space was not absence.

Absence was what Po had wanted.

Thame had never been capable of giving him that.

The smoke thickened in front of him, turning the office into a private weather system, one made of ash and heat and old restraint. He sat inside it and thought of Earn.

Earn’s name did not make him angry in a sudden way.

Sudden anger was for men with little control.

Thame’s anger had aged.

It had fermented in silence, darkened year by year until it no longer felt like rage at all. It felt clean. Almost holy. A cold, perfect certainty that some men were alive only because Po had once cried while asking Thame to leave him alone.

That was the part that made his mouth tighten around the cigarette.

Po’s words had protected Earn.

Po would never know that.

He would never know how many times Thame had read the reports and sat perfectly still afterward, hands relaxed on the desk, voice even, face calm enough to fool everyone except the men who had to clean up what followed.

Because the rage had needed somewhere to go.

It had moved through Bangkok quietly.

A man who broke his girlfriend’s wrist outside a club owned by Mars had disappeared for three days and returned unable to use his own hand without trembling.

A broker who liked making frightened girls apologize on their knees had been found weeping in the back room of a karaoke bar, his mouth full of blood and promises.

A businessman who raised his palm to a server in one of Thame’s restaurants lost three teeth before dessert reached the table.

Small men.

Ugly men.

Men who were not Earn but carried pieces of him in the way they touched softness and expected it not to bite back.

Thame had punished them all.

Not because Po would ever know.

Not because it helped.

Because Earn was protected by a sentence Po had spoken years ago, and Thame had needed the world to bleed somewhere.

The cigarette’s ash lengthened.

Still he did not move.

It hung from the end in a fragile gray column, delicate as bone dust, threatening to fall.

Thame looked at it and thought of restraint.

How pretty it looked from a distance.

How easily it collapsed when touched.

He had obeyed Po’s words so carefully that people had mistaken it for morality.

It had never been morality.

It had been possession forced to kneel.

A devotion ordered to stay outside the door.

A hunger made to watch through windows.

And now the door had opened.

Not because Thame broke it.

Because Po had walked through it.

That difference mattered.

It would matter later, when Po’s eyes went wide with accusation. When his mouth trembled around questions he did not want answered. When he looked at Thame and saw not only the boy he had loved, but the shape of every invisible hand that had guided him back.

Thame would let him be angry.

He would let him shake.

He would let him call it manipulation if he found the word

If he ever found out that is.

But deep down, where Po was honest in ways his mouth was not, he would know.

Thame had not dragged him across the line.

He had only moved the world until the line stood beneath Po’s own feet.

A reservation appearing at the right moment.

A familiar dish arriving before hunger could become discomfort.

A call placed when loneliness had already loosened his guard.

A bruised man released where Po’s soft heart could not look away.

Earn returning just in time to become the shadow Po would run from.

Work when money thinned.

Protection when danger came too close.

Open doors.

Soft voices.

Care arranged with surgical precision.

A net did not need to look like rope.

Sometimes it looked like relief.

Sometimes it looked like someone remembering what you liked to eat.

Sometimes it looked like safety arriving so naturally that you forgot to ask who sent it.

That was what Thame was building around Po.

Not a cage.

Cages frightened gentle things.

A cage made them bloody themselves against the bars.

No, this had to be finer than that.

It had to be air.

It had to be weather.

It had to be the quiet rearranging of a world until Po could no longer tell where chance ended and Thame began.

Every road would remain open.

That was important.

Po could leave the restaurant.

Po could ignore the call.

Po could refuse the car.

Po could choose not to ask questions.

Po could step around every piece Thame placed before him.

And still, eventually, there would be another road.

Another door.

Another moment when fear pressed too close and Thame’s name became the nearest shelter.

Choice was a delicate thing.

People valued it most when they did not realize how easily it could be shaped.

Thame knew better than most. He had built an empire on the art of leaving men with only one reasonable option and letting them thank him when they took it.

Po would be no different.

No.

That was not true.

Po would be different.

Po would be handled with care.

With tenderness.

With patience so deep it had teeth.

Thame would not shove him.

He would tilt the floor beneath him degree by degree until Po began moving on his own.

Until every answer led to Thame.

Until every fear led to Thame.

Until every kindness had Thame’s fingerprints hidden beneath it.

Until Po’s world became so saturated with him that absence would feel unnatural.

The ash finally fell.

It dropped soundlessly into the tray, breaking apart on impact.

Thame watched the small collapse with dark satisfaction.

Years of restraint had looked like that too.

Whole, until it wasn’t.

He lifted the cigarette again and inhaled.

The burn filled his lungs.

For one suspended second, there was only smoke and heat and Po’s face glowing dimly on the laptop screen.

Then Thame exhaled.

Slow.

Controlled.

Almost tender.

Po would come to him on his own.

And when he did, when he arrived with his wide eyes and trembling questions and that wounded softness he still tried so badly to hide, Thame would be waiting exactly where Po expected him to be.

Calm.

Patient.

Open-handed.

As though none of it had been arranged.

As though Po had found his way there alone.

As though Thame had not spent years learning every road in his life just so he could one day make all of them lead home.

The cigarette burned close to the filter.

Thame crushed it into the ashtray at last, grinding the ember down until the orange glow disappeared.

The office darkened by a fraction.

On the laptop, Po’s smile remained.

Thame reached forward and touched the edge of the screen with two fingers, not quite touching Po’s face, only the glass that held it.

Cold.

Of course it was cold.

Everything was cold except the wanting.

His reflection hovered faintly over Po’s image in the dark screen haze, their faces layered together by smoke and glass.

Thame looked at them for a long moment.

Then his mouth curved.

Small.

Devout.

Terrible.

“Come back to me, Phi Po,” he murmured.

The words disappeared into the smoke.

A prayer would have asked.

An order would have demanded.

This was neither.

This was certainty.