Work Text:
sarawat promises that he’ll get used to it, but tine never does.
‘it’ referring to the crowd of girls that have become sarawat’s permanent shadow. and since tine is always hanging around sarawat somewhat between a lost puppy and a model-material arm-candy (it really depends on how he’s feeling about himself that particular day), it’s become a new fixture in his life, too.
“seriously, wat,” he grumbles softly, “they’re taking a lot of photos.”
sarawat pretty much ignores him. he’s seated by his side on the bleachers of the soccer field, the evening having come and swept them up in its soft forgiving coolness. the heat from earlier that day had finally died down. sarawat is sweaty and hot in his soccer jersey, just the way that tine likes.
soccer practice had just ended, and tine promised to wait for him since he’d spent his day studying in the library. he got tests coming up — and tine is that person that really wants to do well. like, he likes doing well. getting good grades, coming up top of the class.
there’s the pressure his family puts on him, but then there’s also just tine being tine. which means really smart, sarawat thinks. tine tells him about the law cases he studies sometimes — and sarawat just knows from the way he talks about them he really cares. not just in a ‘learn some big law jargon and throw in a “section 7 chapter 2.3.8a” to flex’ kind of way. tine is smart and likes knowing things.
his big-brained buffalo.
but as it is, his smart boyfriend is sitting next to him while he catches his breath — and they’re not even doing anything — but he’s bothered. there’s a group of girls at the back, right outside the field fence, gazing at them, somewhat lovingly and creepily.
tine looks everywhere but at them. he doesn’t think any of them are too fond of him, anyway.
they are, after all, ‘team sarawat’s wives’, not tine’s.
or not really — they’re not, because he’s sarawat’s wife. as sarawat likes to call him. tine doesn’t even remember getting proposed to. but if he had something against being called that he would’ve made it known already.
(he thinks that’s how it works. so he secretly hopes sarawat never stops calling him that even though he makes a dirty face each time he does.)
“you’re right, they should stop with the photos,” sarawat says after a while. his voice is indifferent, as always. but there’s a little glint in his eyes that tells tine he’s up to something. it’s kind of like when you do something really stupid and really bad — like knock your elbow against a bottle of drink you didn’t bother to screw tight after taking a sip — and the three seconds before that feels just. long. and the neural activity in your brain slows down, or maybe they’re just making a point at each connection, to say ‘hey. you’re really stupid. and something bad is gonna happen.’
now sarawat gets that look in his eye. and tine feels the seconds slowing down, again, and he knows sarawat is going to do something.
“don’t tell them off,” tine splutters hurriedly in case sarawat does something stupid, like yell at his fans. not that sarawat is ill-tempered — he’s actually so good, tine thinks. but he could get a bit impulsive when tine’s involved.
sarawat raises an eyebrow at him.
tine sighs, “don’t make them mad.”
“hmm,” sarawat shrugs. they’ve never really talked about this — if it’s normal or okay that sarawat just comes with all this. like, some people come with emotional baggage, and some people come with a lot of moneys. (like, a lot.)
sarawat comes with a lot of… girls? who are nice, okay, tine knows they’re not actually evil or anything. but it’s just. weird. like, sarawat is his boyfriend, and people know that now. (even tine, yes, thank you very much.)
but the fans — sarawat’s wives — never really go away. if they were seriously hoping to become sarawat’s wife, well, they’re not gonna, for now at least, because there’s a tine here, living in his house. and they cook for each other. they have matching bracelets. they kiss and make out. and they do all the sexy wifey husbandry stuff. so yeah.
they just kinda follow them around and take photos and talk about them on instagram and twitter. tine tries not to read too much of them because he’s sure at least one of them is trying to hex him via a direct message. or they’d be telling him mean stuff about him not being sarawat’s type.
tine likes sarawat. like, a lot. and after a lot of, well, this and that and crying and more crying in the first year of university, he figured out sarawat likes him back, too. so, no, he’s not really about to let a bunch of people on the internet with fake profile pics tell him to leave sarawat.
(seriously, he’d cried too much for this.)
but they’re just… there. and it’s something because it bothers tine sometimes. he’s not sure if it’s jealousy (and of who really?) or if it’s just. you know. the blatant lack of privacy sometimes. but it makes him feel uncomfortable sometimes. being watched like that.
he really doesn’t know how sarawat does it. he’d been handling this for a while now, after all. is this making sarawat secretly miserable too or would he think tine’s being the biggest whiniest brat in the history of… big tall whiny brats?
sarawat finishes his water and steals a few more gulps from tine’s own bottle. tine watches him silently, a small pout forming.
“there, there,” sarawat coos, and before tine can glare he hears the familiar pop of the airpods case. sarawat gently pushes one into tine’s left ear, then takes the right one for himself. under the light, sarawat’s skin gleams.
tine waits for the music to start, but it doesn’t.
“play scrubb,” he says lamely, after a few more moments pass, and sarawat isn’t even reaching for his phone to start the music.
sarawat laughs. kinda. it’s a small laugh, mixed in with a kind of knowing look. he does that a lot with tine. and each time he’s just thinking, ‘look at you. my favourite idiot in the whole world.’ sarawat is seriously in love.
well, he doesn’t play scrubb. he doesn’t play anything. they just sit there and there are the sounds of screeching tires in a distance where the main roads are. there’s the sound of water running from the cafeteria — and the sounds of a bunch of boys still going at the soccer ball because they have no boyfriend to sit with.
“do they bother you?” sarawat asks, but he already knows the answer.
funnily, he also knows what tine is going to say.
“no.” he’s backtracking, now, after having been caught. well, tine was looking rather annoyed ten minutes ago, but he thought some thoughts and. decided to leave it be.
“the photos do,” sarawat says. “i could seriously ask them to stop. they won’t get mad.”
“it’s fun for them,” tine fumbles with his bracelet. “it’s just like being a fan. like i’m a fan of scrubb and like all the videos of them on instagram.”
“uh-huh,” sarawat nods quietly. and you chose not to take a photo with them because you are a kind person who loved them with consideration. “but it’s not fun for you.” he says knowingly.
“it’s whatever,” tine curls into himself. he feels stupid making this into a big deal now.
“i hated it at first too,” sarawat says after a while. “but how can i hate people that…” he gestures weirdly with his hands, struggling to find the words.
“love you?” tine shoots him a small smile. “would kill to be kissed till they dropped by the one and only sarawat guntithanon?” he adds, half cheekily.
sarawat cannot help but smile warmly at tine. there’s no jealousy there — once they got past those dark days, tine is only ever sweet.
“well.” he shrugs. “they’re nice. it’s very — flattering — they even like me. i don’t want to scream at them to leave me alone. i’m just a student here like them.”
tine nods. “me too,” he says, but it sounds a bit sad.
“and you’re the only one i will,” sarawat starts, and steals a glance at tine’s well-sculpted body. he’s not sure people who haven’t seen tine shirtless knows exactly what goes on underneath his perfectly ironed shirts, but it’s pretty amazing. “kiss. till you drop.”
tine has heard it maybe only three million times but it does nothing to stop the heat from rushing to his ears.
“okay.”
“you know that right?” sarawat asks, eyes back to his face. here comes the hand, gently scooping his face. it makes tine fall again and again because he’s a complete loser when sarawat is tender like that. no one else ever treats him this… gently.
“yes,” tine confirms, and he means it. mostly. he knows, rationally, sarawat wouldn’t drop tine in a ditch or leave him crying in the rain to get with one of his wives. because if he wanted to do that, he would have done it ages ago already.
tine has also heard from a lot of people that sarawat is seriously in love with him. like, he’d been pining over him for a year or whatever.
still, brains are not entirely rational. tine thinks his brain is alright mostly — good enough to get him into law school, actually, but. he can’t really defend himself for taking so long to understand feelings and words about feelings and actions about feelings and just having feelings. in general.
sarawat’s gaze doesn’t falter — he doesn’t look away. he can practically see the gears in his boyfriend’s head in overdrive. but he chooses to be patient, because sometimes that’s all tine needs. he doesn’t need someone to speak on his feelings for him, even if he’s not great at it. he just needs sarawat to wait and look at him like that, like that’s his whole world right there, and tine is always smart enough to figure it out.
“i’m scared the photos will come out bad,” tine speaks softly. “they get all your good angles but i’m always half yawning.”
sarawat stops himself from laughing. but he really just wants to pull his boyfriend into a big buffalo hug. instead, he nods seriously, encouragingly. if there’s anything he’s learned about tine — on top of him needing time — it’s that his brain and mouth don’t always... work together.
sarawat knows it’s not the photos. and tine could never look bad anyways. even if he was in the midst of a big yawn in that one shot.
“and… that they’re just always watching. in case i do something wrong, you know, and they’ll put a strike next to my name.” he sighs. and i already must have ninety-nine strikes because i’m an idiot that hurt you a lot.
sarawat holds his hand silently. the soccer field had cleared out by now. he’s not sure about the girls — but they don’t matter now. not when tine is here, and trying his best. it’s always hard for tine to be honest about the things in their relationship that hurt him. loving tine, he has mastered the art of gently pushing. really, really gently, though. because tine is quite sensitive, his silly little boyfriend.
“like, i… i’m not really a good… you know,” he struggles, “boyfriend. sometimes.”
sarawat wants to interrupt, but tine is begging him not to with his big doe eyes.
“i just, i’m not jealous. okay? i know you — and i trust you. and i know you’re not planning on leaving me.” sarawat’s heart swells in pride and happiness hearing tine say that. he’s so, so happy knowing tine believes in him and in them.
“but i still can’t… can’t help but to feel like,” he winces, “like i have a lot to… live up to.” tine looks at his feet. “they’ve been waiting for you for so long. and you chose me. you —” he looks up, and sarawat sees the fear written all over his eyes. “you waited for me.”
“i did,” sarawat just agrees. “and i always will.”
tine shakes his head. “i know you want me ,” he repeats, “but my brain just wonders… they could. be better. they wouldn’t have been slow like me,” he frowns sadly. “or you know. get jealous like me. or be bad at understanding.” like me. “ i doubted you so many times. i didn’t know what i wanted.”
oh, sarawat thinks. or he feels, really, because it’s less a thought and more a big pull in his gut, making his brain go, ‘no. no. no.’
it’s not about the photos — that much he already knew. but he didn’t think it would be. this. that tine sees foils of himself. that they are a stark reminder that tine wasn’t perfectly docile and waiting and more importantly, that they’d both had to hurt a lot to get here.
“that’s…” sarawat protests. “that’s in the past. you know i don’t — i don’t blame you, tine.”
tine swallows. it makes sarawat hurt seeing tine this sad.
“but i do,” tine just says miserably. “every time i see them hanging around giving all their time to you and how they look at you like. oh god like they’d never question you for any second and i feel so, so bad.” a part of him wants to kick himself because he feels stupid for even thinking like this. but he’d gone and done it — thought too much, too hard, and let sarawat’s patient egging unscrew the tap and now it’s all just, coming out. all the bad thoughts he tries to keep and lock up in a corner of his mind. they’re spilling, it’s graceless, and the best or worst part is sarawat never lets him go.
no, he pulls tine closer to him.
“but that’s not what i wanted,” sarawat says. “not them — and not someone who thinks i hung up the moon in the sky,” he continues. “you, tine, you had… every reason not to believe me.”
“i know, look, i know we laugh about it now,” sarawat rubs tine’s hands. “that you were really fucking confused. that i could’ve shouted to you from the rooftop i loved you and you would be like, ‘wat, you’re funny.’,” and he sees tine grimace. “but that’s not, that’s not — accurate.”
“you didn’t even know me, tine. your plan was to chase that idiot green away from your pretty ass,” he jokes lightly, and they both know they love green.
“and i had spent a year thinking about you. and liking you. i had all these feelings. but why would you? you literally didn’t even know you’d like a guy.”
tine huffs. yeah, he… he really thought he was straight.
“my point is, tua woon wai ,” and tine thinks it’s low that sarawat would go there and use his favourite nickname. “we worked hard to get here. remember what i told you in the bus?”
tine smiles at him. how could he ever forget? sitting in an empty bus with sarawat while a thunderstorm raged on outside — tine doesn’t even like them much, but he had felt so safe. and found. quite literally, because he was an idiot that got lost in the park.
“us being together is no coincidence,” he repeats obediently. “we made it happen.”
“it was all us. me pining after my high school crush,” he looks sheepish, and tine’s smile grows wider. “and you… trying so hard. so, so hard.”
tine nods. he guesses he had tried really hard. yes, his brain didn’t lead him to the best conclusions a lot of times, and yes, he did make a lot of dumb decisions. but god knows he really — he wasn’t trying to string green or wat or pear or even mil on… anything. he was sincerely trying to do only what was right; but he hadn’t known what that meant by him or his feelings.
“okay,” he accepts. “okay.”
“so,” sarawat clasps his face gently, “when you see my fans, don’t feel like they would do any better. they wouldn’t.”
“you’re the kindest one here. you have the biggest heart,” he says, and he doesn’t mean it pervertedly, too. “and that’s why i chose you.”
because you love people by putting them first. you love your friends so much you join them on food poisoning escapades every week. you love scrubb so much you support them from afar, never overstepping, never obsessive. and — you love me so much, you still think you need to be better.
sarawat himself has a lot of things he doesn’t know how to say to tine. he just realises, only now. he wants to tell tine he loves him so much it scares him, because he actually thinks he will take on the universe if it ever tries to hurt him. maybe one day. maybe one day he will tell him.
instead, all he says is, “it’s getting late.”
by now, all the girls have left, no one willing to watch them look at each other with those big, sad, heart eyes for an hour. if they’d been looking closer, they’d have seen the soft touches, the ways their hands always found their way together, and it would’ve been so, absolutely gross .
tine doesn’t know why they had to have the conversation with an airpod in. or maybe he does, because it made him forget about the girls for a while, and got him to listen to sarawat. he pulls it out and returns it to him, anyway.
“i’ll play scrubb for you when we go back,” sarawat promises as he keeps them. like always. he never gets bored of playing the same songs the same way tine never gets bored of listening to them — or of sarawat’s raspy nighttime voice against the old guitar.
“okay,” tine agrees easily. as if he could ever say no.
“hey, wat,” he adds a moment later. sarawat hums, blindly feeling for tine’s hand as they leave the field. his eyes are on tine’s face, as usual.
“thank you,” tine says softly, his own hand clenching around sarawat’s one tight.