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Some mornings Chay wakes up to the sunlight slipping through the blinds in their room, but others he wakes up to the feeling of Kim’s warm hand slipping under his shirt.
This is one of those mornings.
Chay is awakened by Kim’s gentle fingers running across the skin of his torso, stopping at the base of his waist with a squeeze.
Chay loves Kim best like this, soft and tucked in his arms. Kim’s head is pressed to his chest and Chay doesn’t hesitate to bring a hand to gently massage his boyfriend’s fluffy hair.
One look at the clock on their nightstand tells Porchay that they both have to get up soon, but he is reluctant to wake Kim up. He remembers how hard it was for Kim to be able to relax like this, a year ago. How Kim has only recently allowed himself to indulge in his desire to simply be with Porchay, without worrying about what awaited them outside the safety of their apartment. Without doubting his own ability to love.
So Chay allows both of them a few more precious moments like this—lulling between the soft state of almost-awake-almost-asleep that leaves him feeling weightless with Kim in his arms—before he gently shakes Kim awake.
“Babe, time to wake up,” Chay whispers and Kim immediately tightens his hold around him, burying his face in Chay’s neck and making the younger boy giggle.
“And who do I have to kill for that?” Kim grumbles, throwing one of his legs on top of Chay.
“I mean you were the one who signed us up for morning classes once a week,” Chay teases, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend. “You said it’d give us more time for ‘afternoon dates,’ remember?”
Kim sighs, lifting up his face from Chay’s chest to give him a soft smile.
“Well who could fault such sound logic,” Kim’s eyes begin to sparkle with a mischievous glint and he suddenly surges up against Chay, peppering kisses on his cheeks, nose, forehead, and eyes.
“You can’t bribe me to stay in bed with kisses, Kim,” Chay giggles, but Kim doesn't cease his endeavor.
“Try and stop me, baby.”
[...]
Kim has lived on his own for a while, and Chay is witness every day to his innate sense of independence. Kim doesn’t like asking for help, won’t ever say it in so many words. So Chay often needs to be subtle in his attempts to aid his boyfriend (or in extreme cases, truly put his foot down so the idiot won’t make things harder for himself).
But considering Kim is a child of wealth, Chay wasn’t surprised to learn his boyfriend wasn’t exactly skilled in cooking pretty much anything beyond a bowl of instant ramen.
Still, that never seemed to deter Kim from trying to cook for Chay.
The first time it happened was a few days after Chay had made Kim a homemade meal for the first time. (At that time, Chay had politely not pointed out Kim’s misty eyes when Porchay had set the plate before him, and simply smiled at all the choked-up praise he received from Kim that night.)
Chay woke up on that fateful day, to an empty bed and a peculiar smell that led him directly to Kim hard at work in the kitchen.
Kim had looked so cute then that Chay regretted later not having snapped a picture—with his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, his tongue peeking out of the side of his mouth as he tried to flip eggs on the saucepan.
Chay had watched in secret his boyfriend visibly sweat trying to cook him eggs for breakfast, not wanting to interrupt and embarrass the youngest Theerapanyakul.
Only when Kim carefully plated the eggs did Chay fake his entrance into the kitchen.
“Wow, what is this?” Chay asked with an amused smile on his lips.
Kim pushed his dark hair back and crossed his arms, leaning against the kitchen counter trying to feign nonchalance. Kim was still wearing the soft, baby blue pajamas Chay had gotten him for Christmas but Chay would never tell him it—coupled with the kitten slippers, was totally ruining his cool, mafioso image.
“I woke up a little earlier today so I decided to make something for… you know…” Kim trails off and Porchay has to fight the instinct to laugh when he sees the soft blush riding high on his boyfriend’s cheeks.
Chay walks into Kim’s arms, pressing his chin against Kim’s chest to look up at him with innocent eyes.
“…for?” Chay leans in and plants a soft kiss on Kim’s lips, enjoying Kim’s flustered state and the way he holds on tighter to his waist.
“For you. Breakfast for you, love.”
Chay doesn’t know how he didn’t simply burst into tears on the spot, but he did burst into giggles when Kim, in a complete 180° of his earlier state, lifts Chay up with ease and places him on top of the kitchen counter.
He grabs the plate of eggs and contentedly feeds them to Chay, stealing kisses every now and then from where he stands in between Chay’s thighs.
The eggs were a tad on the burnt side, and perhaps a bit too salty but Chay still ate them like he would a 5-star meal, just like he did to every meal Kim prepared for him ever since.
[...]
People usually take one look at Kim and Porchay and seem to collectively arrive at the conclusion that Chay must be the smitten, hopelessly devoted one in the relationship. They wouldn’t be necessarily wrong—Chay was younger and a huge fan of Wik before he and Kim met, so yes, he probably did start pinning way before Kim did.
And Kim was nothing short of breathtaking. Not only was Chay’s boyfriend tall and unbearably gorgeous, from his sharp cheekbones to his dark bottomless eyes and his easy smirks, but Kim was also a talented musician .
Yet what had truly won Chay over was how gentle Kim was with him at all times—how kind. Especially when that behavior seemed reserved solely for Chay—he was only human after all and couldn’t say he didn’t fall victim to the appeal of Kim’s dangerous, chilling gaze on anyone who looked at Chay in an unpleasant way.
So yes, Chay was absolutely head over heels for the mafia brat.
But Kim was still definitely the romantic one in the relationship, no matter how many times Porsche refused to believe Chay. His older brother should know better when it comes to the Theerapanyakul brothers, after all, P’Kinn never spares expense or effort to woo Hia.
Kim wasn’t grand in his gestures of devotion, which only served to make Chay all the weaker, because Kim’s gestures were heartfelt.
When they both started to live together it was only a matter of a few weeks until pieces of paper containing song lyrics started showing up all around the apartment. In cupboards, under Chay’s pillows, in the pockets of his jackets. And Kim’s lyrics never failed to make Chay swoon.
If we’re still holding hands today
and the world falls apart, it’ll be fine.
It’s you, just having you, no matter what
Even in a world without stars, we’ll be able to go forward
No matter how long, hold me tight
Tonight is only ours, why don’t you stay?
Whenever Chay wrote a new song, it was all Kim would hum and sing around the house for weeks, making Chay reluctantly fall in love with even the songs he struggled with the most.
And it was Kim, after all, who said “I love you” first. On a night when the sky was so clear even the city lights of Bangkok weren’t able to obfuscate the shine of the stars. Kim had made a makeshift bed for them both on the terrace with their softest blankets and pillows.
Chay’s head was resting on Kim’s naked chest, his mind still a little cloudy from the whirlwind of their previous activities when Kim began to hum a sweet, foreign melody.
“What song is this?” Chay had asked and Kim dropped a soft kiss on top of his head.
“A song I just wrote,” Kim answered easily, tracing the love bites he’d littered across Chay’s body with a careful finger.
“Oooh,” Chay perked up, turning so he could look into his boyfriend’s eyes. “What is it about, Phi?”
Kim had looked back at him with so much longing that Chay was caught off guard.
“It’s a song about how much I love you.”
Chay had indeed burst into tears this time, and Kim the menace had laughed and kissed his breath away into the stillness of the night.
“I love you too, Kim,” Chay sobbed into his chest and Kim giggled, holding him tight.
“I know dearheart.”
[...]
No matter how much Chay wished for it at times, Kim and he still existed beyond the sacred confines of their apartment. Which meant sooner or later, reality always violently caught up to them.
“Hia, are you sure P’Kinn hasn’t heard any news? Kim’s been gone for almost 17 hours,” Chay frets over the phone, exhausted of pacing back and forth all day with his stomach tied into knots, no longer physically able to vomit.
“I’m sorry Chay, but I think this might be another one of the brat’s solo missions. Kinn doesn’t have much beyond his location from about 8 hours ago,” Chay can hear the concern masked in his brother’s voice because even if he liked to deny it on Protective Older Brother principles, Porsche cared about Kim.
“Tell Chay I have a team ready. We’ll find my brother by the end of the night, sweetheart,” Kinn’s voice comes through the phone and Chay can practically see the worried furrow of the man’s brows as he tries to reassure Hia even though his own voice is wavering.
Just as Chay is about to answer, the front door opens, and a trembling Kim steps through the door, dripping blood onto their clean floor.
“Kim!” Chay calls out. “Hia, Kim is here! I have to go, t-there’s so much blood,” his voice shakes as he runs to reach his boyfriend.
“Chay, do you need help? We can be there in 10 minutes if we take my bike?” Porsche’s voice comes out rushed through the phone. “Kinn, love, have them fetch my bike! Kim came home.”
When Chay finally reaches Kim his hands are shaking and there are already tears pricking his eyes. He does a quick but thorough check over Kim’s body for any bullet wounds or anything that would require immediate and extreme medical attention and lets out a sigh of relief when he falls short.
“Hia, it’s fine. I can handle it, it’s nothing I can’t handle,” Chay replies, more to himself than to his older brother at this point. “You and P’Kinn can relax, I got him .”
When the line finally goes dead at his insistence and Chay’s entire attention is solely dedicated to Kim, he has to stop his knees from buckling. There was blood staining Kim’s torso and arms, trailing down his face and unto his collarbones. Kim looked frail and vulnerable, in a way that only Chay was allowed to witness and Chay wouldn’t repay such a sign of trust with his own weakness.
Kim needed him.
Kim always liked to appear tough, and detached. Chay knew just how incredibly resilient the young man was. But people often forgot Kim wasn’t that much older than Chay. That he was capable of falling apart just the same, and Chay could tell with a single look at his boyfriend that this night of patching up would be rougher than most.
“You got a little blood on your clothes, huh, baby?” Chay says instead, willing his voice not to tremble in an attempt to soothe his boyfriend.
Chay wasn’t rewarded with an answer, but he didn’t expect one. There was a faraway gaze on Kim’s eyes telling Chay Kim wasn’t truly present. When that happened he often went non-verbal so Chay wasn’t caught off guard.
It's alright, Chay would do most of the talking. He always did.
“Let’s go to our room, hmm? I’ll get you patched up and cleaned up love.”
A while back Kim would protest receiving any help from Chay in such a state, but now he hardly puts up a fight. Chay had been insistent and Kim desperately wanted someone to break down his walls. Chay now mostly talked Kim through his actions in an attempt to ground him.
He slung one of Kim’s arms over his shoulders, prepared to bear most of his boyfriend’s weight as he treads across their apartment.
Under the harsh light of their bathroom, the blood seemed even starker against Kim’s pale skin. Chay removed his shirt with a bit of struggle, careful to not inflict any pain as he peeled off the cloth that clung to Kim’s wounds.
No matter how many times Chay did this, his hands always trembled when he began the process of putting Kim back together. He cleaned open cuts, wrapped them up and found himself desperately wishing his needle and thread would stitch up so much more than simply Kim’s flesh.
Kim was still quiet when the mending was done, so Chay began to hum quietly as he used a warm, wet cloth to try to remove the stains of blood on Kim’s skin. So much of it, turns out, did not even belong to Kim.
Chay couldn’t risk a bath with Kim’s new stitches, so he sat on the edge of their bathtub and laid Kim’s head on his lap so he could wash off the remaining blood off his hair. Chay was deliberate, slowly running his fingers against Kim’s scalp as he continued to sing to him.
Kim’s gaze, ever so slowly, became less and less distant and Chay finally let out a breath of relief when Kim’s eyes were clear and conscious again.
“Look who’s back? Hi, love, I’m almost done with your hair,” he whispers, kissing Kim’s forehead.
Kim raises a shaking hand to Chay’s cheek.
“Y-you’re crying?” he asks with a hoarse voice and only now it dawns on Chay that he’d been crying from the moment Kim had stepped through their door.
“I’m just…” Chay swallows down the knot on his throat. “I’m just really happy you’re here, baby.”
Kim looks deeply tormented just then, tears springing in the seam of his eyes and quickly running down his face. It shatters Chay’s heart. Kim remains quiet as Chay towels his hair dry and tucks him into bed.
“I’m sorry, Chay,” he whispers much later when their foreheads are pressed together and their hands intertwined tight. “I’m so so sorry.”
“You’re fine, Kim. You’re okay,” he whispers back, trying to soothe him.
“I’m sorry,” Kim continues to chant but all Chay can hear is please, don’t leave and he wonders if Kim is truly back at all. Or if he is still stuck in his own mind, begging to not be left behind.
“I’m right here. You came back home, and I’m right here,” Chay says, pressing a soft kiss to Kim’s forehead. “I’m not going anywhere. And you’re going to find the truth about what happened, love. You are.”
[...]
Kim had broken Chay’s heart beyond repair more times than Chay could count. Every time he returned, with that desolate semblance on his face, Chay felt his entire being crack open like glass. He couldn’t tell if Kim was cruel or kind for always reassembling the pieces and returning them to Chay when both of them knew Chay would continue to shatter again and again. That Kim’s hands would be dripping with blood again.
And Chay wondered if it’d be better if he did leave. If the pain of seeing someone he loved so much distorted beyond recognition would ever become too great to bear.
But then Chay would wake up next to Kim the next morning, tucked in his embrace, and would eat the terrible breakfast he cooked and sing songs on the radio with him as they drove to university together, and send Kim photos of any and everything that reminded Chay of him, and would paint his nails, and antagonize their brothers together and Chay knew he would never leave.
Because moments like this, with Kim’s hand in his, made all the pain seem sweet.