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Kao flicks the light on, streaming light into the little attic at the top of their house. He hasn’t been up here in a long time, apart from to procure a mop or some cleaning supplies from where Pete tends to hide them behind Achara’s old crib. He knows that Achara likes to come up here and think sometimes, do her homework in the old sofa tucked away into the corner, but Kao thinks it’s too dusty. He doesn’t like cleaning up here, because the air gets stale after a while, but Achara is out today and his mother had called about something she’d found of his when he was a teenager, so he’s spent the day in a nostalgic haze, sipping his coffee and staring at his laptop. Somehow, he’d found himself here, now staring at the dusty couch instead and the stack of old books from their university days on it that they thought they’d still need for some reason, and wonders how Achara manages to do her homework here. He stretches. He really needs to clear out the old bookshelf and take apart Achara’s crib -- she’s in grade school, and Kao’s not quite sure why they’ve put it off for so long.
Kao kneels down in front of the couch, frowning at the books as he shakes the dust off of them. He smiles as he sees they’re Pete’s old notebooks, leafing through the pages to see scribbled notes and little doodles in the corner. “Thermodynamic laws,” he reads out quietly, running his fingers over the familiar handwriting, “ If two systems are both in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. ”
He shakes his head -- it’s been a long time since he’s read anything about thermodynamics, it must have been back in first year. It fits, though. He flips the notebook closed and picks up another one, and rolls his eyes at the drawings of a small robot fighting off the sun. Pete has always been a child, even back in the second year of their mechanical engineering degree, so’s the looks from the topics. When he turns the page, however, he smiles again -- for at the corner of the page, Pete’s doodled himself and Kao -- he knows, because he always draws him with his round, black-rimmed glasses -- holding hands. Next to the little Kao on paper, Pete’s scribbled ‘that’s my boyfriend :)’
Sometimes he wishes he could let their younger selves know that one day they’d be married and have a daughter. To spare him some of the sadder and longer nights, at least.
He puts the notebooks on the floor, intending to sort through them later. When he peers over the couch, he spots a shoebox lying upside down, a very thin layer of dust on the surface, thinner than everything else in the attic. He still coughs when he picks up, brushing off the dust and flipping it over. Kao opens it to reveal -- postcards. Of all different shapes and sizes and colours, stuffed haphazardly into the box. He drops down against the sofa and frowns as he ripples through them, finding what seems to be the oldest one tucked into the back. He takes it out from the rest, turning it over to reveal a scene from Pattaya -- the beach and birds flying over the sea, the sun dipping into the soft horizon that separates the ocean and the sky. When he turns back over to see the back, he sees Pete’s unmistakeable handwriting, all scribbly and packed tightly together to fill the small amount of lines completely. It’s dated back to the summer in between third and fourth year, when the Cool Gang went on a road trip around Thailand together.
Kao squints to make out Pete’s handwriting. “We’re in Pattaya!” he reads out, smiling when he does. Pete’s enthusiasm never goes missed, even in writing. “It seriously feels so freeing having come out to our friends. We went around Pattaya today, stepping out to run into the sea. Thada pushed June over, Sandee took lots of photos -- it was grand. Kao seems happier, too. He’s smiling more. He looks handsome in the sun.”
He smiles, tucking the postcard back away. Pattaya seems like a lifetime ago.
“Stop, ‘Dee!” yells Kao, as he hides his face from the camera. The waves roll in against the shore with a crash, loud enough that he wonders how anything can be heard in Sandee’s video. “You’re gonna drop your phone!”
Sandee shakes her phone and sticks her tongue out at him. “We have to immortalise the moment,” she says, as she pans away to capture Thada chasing June into the sea. “Ai’Thada, be careful!”
She runs off after them, pressing her phone into Kao’s hand and dashing into the ocean to sneak up behind June and splash water onto him. Kao tucks the phone into his pocket and sits back down on the beach towel next to Pete, whose hair is freshly wet from the ocean water. He slings an arm around Kao, open and carefree, and smiles. “Do you want to go into the water?” he asks, jerking his head at the ocean.
Kao shakes his head, watching fondly as he looks back at the ocean, where Thada has June on his shoulders and is trying to wade away from Sandee the best he can. “Let’s stay here a little while longer,” he says, resting his head in the crook of Pete’s neck. “You having fun?”
Pete grins at him and moves his arm to his waist instead. “I am,” he says, leaning in, and Kao leans away, looking around. The beach is full, children’s screams piercing the air as families play volleyball around them. His gaze drifts back to his friends, halfway under the water and laughing. “Are you okay?”
When Kao looks back at Pete, he’s frowning, little lines dipping in between his eyebrows. Kao shakes it off and says, “I’m fine, don’t worry -- I, uh, just have to get used to being open still, I suppose.”
“There’s a lot of people here, huh?” says Pete, looking around. His grip on Kao’s waist tightens, but he doesn’t lean back in it. It’s moments like these that Kao realises the extent of his love for Pete.
He could kiss him if he now, if he wanted. Pete, at his core, has always been patient. Maybe he doesn’t understand Kao’s underlying fear, or the way he looks around when Pete offers him a hand sometimes — but he still gives him the initiative, the chance to start. Kao settles into his soft hold, always tight enough to ground him and always loose enough to pull away. As June shakes the wet hair out of his face and Thada jumps onto his back, Kao leans over and, without looking, kisses him quickly. When he pulls away, Pete is smiling, rivalling the sun itself. Kao’s always thought that one of the most attractive things about him is his smile, and the way it bursts out in small, quiet moments.
“Let’s go into the water,” says Pete, standing up and tugging his hand. “I wanna go sneak up on June.”
“You’re ridiculous sometimes, you know?” says Kao, but he lets himself be pulled up. It’s summer, he’s on holiday, he’s got time off of school and work, and most importantly, he’s at the beach with his boyfriend and best friends. He can allow himself this small moment of peace. “Watch our, Sandee!”
Kao can’t hide his smile as he puts the postcard behind the others, back into its spot. “Sap, Pete,” he mumbles as he ripples through the others. It’s been a little over two decades since they’ve been together, since they’ve come out to their parents and friends. It’s now that Kao is able to hold his hands in public without looking around, able to take Achara to the playground without deeming it necessary to catch the look on every parent’s face. Better late than never, he supposes, as he pulls out another postcard. It’s tilted up to catch a leaf from a tree falling in the middle of Bangkok, and another memory flashes in front of Kao’s eyes.
“That café looks nice, what do you say we go inside?” says Kao, pointing to the building. People are milling about inside, and while Bangkok doesn’t get particularly cold in the winter, sometimes the wind picks up a chill and gives him a shiver. He turns back to Pete sitting on the bench, bundled up in his jacket. “Pete?”
Pete buries his nose inside of his jacket. “Let’s stay here for a while longer,” he says, reaching out to Kao, who sighs fondly and sits down with him. It’s been a while since they’ve been able to go out together, their jobs eating up so much of their free time in the past few days. Kao is happy when he gets to lay in bed with Pete at the end of the day, seeking his warmth under the covers and drifting off to sleep knowing someone is next to him. Pete, however, had insisted they go out today for a walk around Bangkok. He slings an arm around his shoulder and looks at him.
“It’s nice today, isn’t it?” he says, and Pete smiles at him.
“It’s always nice with you,” he replies, reaching out to pinch Kao’s cheek. Kao ducks his head and throws out a fake punch -- it doesn’t hit, of course. “Come on, Kao!”
“Cheesy,” says Kao, but settles up into him anyway. They don’t go into the café for a good half hour, enjoying the passing cars and the comfort of each other’s presence, before Kao complains about the cold and Pete is itching for some coffee to get him running again.
Kao taps the postcard against his hand as he reads out quietly, “Today Kao and I walked around Bangkok. I feel like I haven’t seen him in weeks. Sometimes I look at him and think about how I want to spend the rest of my life with him.” Kao squints at the postcard and then the scribbled date in the corner, smiling when he realises it was just a couple of weeks before they ended up proposing to each other. He laughs under his breath, fingers automatically picking out the next postcard that looks interesting, putting the old one back. The next one is dated back to a couple years after they got married, right before they adopted Achara, and Kao could recognise the scene of trees and the setting sun anywhere.
“Mork, that’s my T-shirt!” yells Pete, taking off running after him. Kao shakes his head. He doesn’t know he can run like they’re nineteen again and still have energy flowing deep in their blood. He leans back on the beach towel next to Sun instead, who’s watching Mork with a fond little smile. Thada is off somewhere getting drinks for everyone with Kitty, whereas Sandee and June are playing a violent game of frisbee right next to them. Kao keeps a close watch on where it’s flying.
“Is it really okay for you to leave the café closed?” asks Kao, poking Sun. His gaze drifts down to him.
“It’s a couple of days for the weekend, Kao,” says Sun, putting his sunglasses back on. “It’s fine. I can take a break.”
Kao smiles. “That doesn’t sound like the Sun I once knew back in my first year of university,” he says, and Sun rolls his eyes at him.
“Are you anything like you were in your first years of university right now?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Kao has to admit he has a point. “It seems crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, years later, and we’re all on this beach together.”
“That’s friendship for you, P’,” says Kao, snatching Pete’s T-shirt out of Mork’s hand as he comes running past. Mork stops on the sand and looks back at him with betrayal as Pete takes it out of Kao’s hands and crows in triumph, causing Mork to chase him down into the ocean. He beams after them and looks back at Sun. “Thank you.”
Sun blinks. “For what?”
“Back in third year, when Pete and I were going through that rough patch,” he says, swallowing, “you know? Thank you for being there. I mean, your advice kind of sucked, but still -- you covered for me a lot.”
Sun grins at him and punches his shoulder lightly. “Like you said,” he says, “that’s friendship for you.” He looks up. “Hey, there are Kitty and Thada!”
Kao sits back, smiling, as he watches Thada and Kitty give out everyone’s drinks. He didn’t ask for anything, so it surprises him when Thada walks up to him and hands him his favourite drink, ruffling his hair as he does so. When Kao raises an eyebrow at him, he shrugs and says, “I thought you might be thirsty. Don’t worry, I paid.”
For some reason, it makes Kao swallow a sudden lump in his throat. “Thanks, Thada,” he says, gripping the bottle tight and safe against his chest.
Kao doesn’t flip the postcard over on that one, keeping his emotions to himself. He thinks it was then when he really realised how much influence his friends held over his life. Back when he and Pete weren’t talking -- it was them who held him together, and still it’s them he has dinner with every week. Even though June gives him a headache sometimes and Thada can nag and Sandee can be brutally direct, he can’t imagine his life without June shouting that they’re the Cool Gang! every once in a while. His friends have become such a part of his heart that they stick in his blood, in the beat of his heart, his hands picking up the phone at least once a day to call one of them and talk about the latest gossip at work, his feet automatically taking him to Thada’s last class for the day so that they can drive home together, his brain snapping to the Blue Sky Café every time he wants a coffee.
He shakes those thoughts off and makes a quick reminder to talk to his friends today, before flipping through to the most recent one. The postcard is of Japan in the snow, beautiful and aching, and he smiles at it.
“Por, look!” says Achara, bundled up in a jacket and a beanie, scarf wrapping long against her neck and her hands gloved, pointing at the white landscape. “It’s snow!”
“Snow!” agrees Kao, leaning down to pat Achara’s shoulders. “Go on, tii rak, why don’t you try and build a snowman with Pa?”
Achara looks at him with wide eyes and tugs at Pete’s leg. “Pa, let’s build a snowman!” she says, and she’s already tearing off to the patch of untouched snow before Pete can give her a response. Pete looks at him and shrugs, following as her yells of excitement pierce the air. Kao swallows the love brimming in his throat and walks after his little family. Achara is trying fervently to roll up a big ball of snow and Pete seems to be trying to help her to push it around, to find snow dense enough to be able to stick together.
Kao leans down and cups a small pile of snow into his hands. Without thinking about the consequences, he flings it at the back of Pete’s coat, splattering and hitting his half bare neck. He stops rolling up the ball, looks around at Kao in shock, and says, “So this is how you want to play.”
Childish fear strikes into Kao’s heart for all of two seconds before Pete is scooping up more snow and smushing it into his face, and Achara takes this as an opportunity to giggle and abandon her snowman, trying to throw snowballs at them. Kao can’t protest about potential hypothermia as his husband and daughter turn against him and start pelting him with snowballs, laughs drifting through the air as he gets completely annihilated.
He’s never been colder, but he’s also never been happier.
Kao blinks the sudden wetness in his eyes away and turns the postcard over. Very quietly, like he’s disturbing someone in the room, he reads, “Japan is the nicest place we’ve been to so far. It’s cold, and Kao is warm. Achara seems to be having fun playing in the snow, and that’s all that matters to me. Today before Kao got up, I found a gray hair when I was washing my face. I’ve always thought I wouldn’t want to get old -- but I think now I’ve realised: I don’t mind getting old as long as it’s with him.”
Kao doesn’t even have time to wipe his tears away when he hears footsteps shuffling up the stairs. He hurriedly tucks the postcards away into the box as Pete pokes his head around the door. His hair is sleep-mussed and he looks tired, but he still manages a genuine smile when he sees Kao, almost as if he can’t control it. “Hey,” he says, yawning, “I was looking for you -- “ He breaks himself off once he sees Kao, and a frown settles between his eyebrows. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” says Kao, brushing away at his eyes as Pete sits down next to him. The box stays hidden where Kao had shoved it behind the sofa. “The dust in here, that’s all.”
“If you’re sure,” says Pete, and he brightens, circling his pinky finger around Kao’s. “I’ll make breakfast! Come down, we can clear up here together afterwards.”
Kao nods and says, “Go on down, I’ll be down in a minute.”
Pete presses a kiss to his forehead and hums Kao’s favourite song to himself as he makes his way back down, the telltale clatter of the kitchen whirring to life as he reaches it. Kao sits, just for a minute, on the sofa and looks at his hands. He’s come so far from when he was just eighteen and aching. He glances back at the box -- he never knew Pete had been keeping it all of these years, but perhaps he doesn’t need to, in the end. Pete has his postcards and his memories, and Kao has his journal and his own memories. He smiles at the shoebox, returns it back to the place where Pete had left it, and thinks about the life they have ahead of them. They can watch Achara grow up, spend time with their friends and family every week, go on holiday again, and most importantly, come home to each other every night.
Kao flicks the light switch off before going downstairs. He’s got the rest of his life to spend with Pete, after all. There’s nothing to worry about.