Chapter Text
Banner by Birdy
Your Song
by
Oxxymoron
Kim got out of the car, the heat like a wall once he was out of the air conditioned cocoon. Slinging his guitar case over his shoulder, he texted Porchay he had arrived.
Leaning back against the car, eyes shielded by the RayBans he kept in the car for driving, he looked up at the building behind the gate. It looked like most of the others on the street, white and spread into two floors, a flat garden laid out in front. The iron fretwork of the gate was the only fanciful touch. It looked more like a gate that would guard a princess’ castle than an urban, modern home. He smiled humourlessly to himself. The princess of this castle had no idea he willingly opened the gate to the dragon himself, again and again.
The thing that always struck him when he arrived here was how the house looked just like the ones around it, but what was inside was completely different. Porchay lived in this one, and simply that set it apart. Because Porchay wasn’t like anyone Kim had ever met before.
The first time they’d met he’d wondered at how someone could possibly seem so innocent. Porchay moved through the world, seemingly unaware of things Kim had known before he was old enough to walk himself to school. The monsters that lurked in the shadows, the parts of the world that were ugly and broken, the masks that people wore to hide their true selves, none of it appeared to have touched him. He smiled easily, laughed openly, trusted implicitly. He was nothing like Kim.
The walls Kim surrounded himself with didn’t exist in Porchay. Where he had doors with locks, gates and barriers, Chay had an open highway straight into his heart, open arms for all he met in welcome and friendship. The men Kim had sent to watch him had returned with no reports of meeting his brother or other suspicious contacts. But they had sent back drily worded files and grainy photos showing a young man who would help an old man who couldn’t see count out his change, feed stray kittens in the alley behind his house and help the kid in his class who could never figure out geometry.
Meeting him gave Kim an uncertain sense of otherworldliness. That he’d grown up on the pages of one book, Porchay brought to life over another. In a world where people helped one another, loved easily, trusted before testing. In Kim’s world, trust was earned, love was a weapon and help had a price.
And now, they’d met and the pages were ripped from both, falling and landing to write something disjointed, jarring, unreal and completely…unbelievable. A story where their worlds met, they existed in the same space, breathed the same air. That someone like Porchay could be in the same reality as Kim suspended him in breathless disbelief sometimes.
Just like seeing him did.
On the other side of the gate, Porchay came hurrying out, shielding his eyes with one hand, waving with the other. A wide smile was already painted over his features, unguarded and bright. Crossing the yard, the smile didn’t fade but turned a few shades wider when he got close.
The way he knew the inside was soft, giving and kind, so was his appearance. He looked so heartbreakingly young, so unmarred, untouched and whole. His bangs swept low over eyes that shone from within, his face always easily lit and painted by what he felt. Emotions chased and changed over his face with a touching - or careless - lack of pretense, like sunshine and clouds over the firmament. The rest of him, just on the other side of man from boy, was slim, lanky and with that sense of being slightly disjointed, still coming to terms with living in a body that had changed.
“P’Kim, hi!”
“Porchay.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting, I was doing the dishes and I couldn’t touch my phone. I didn’t think you’d arrive so early.”
“That’s okay.”
As Chay spoke, he pulled the gate open and stepping through, a scent of lemon drifted in the air.
“You have…” Kim peered closer. A streak of shimmering white was painted over Porchay’s cheekbone. “Bubbles. On your cheek.”
Without thinking, he reached out, holding his face still by his chin as he swiped the froth away with the thumb of his other hand. It was only once he’d done it he realized his mistake. Porchay stilled like he’d taken a picture of him, but the skin under his touch was real enough. Under his fingers, a pulse like a trapped bird’s met his hold, fluttering. The moment froze and stretched, reality put on hold. He needed to step back, away from the sensation of that stuttering heartbeat, of the skin that seemed so impossibly soft, paper thin over beating blood. Of a scent of lemon that wrapped around his senses and pulled.
Porchay’s gaze had dropped, dark eyelashes painting longer shadows over cheeks dusted in pink, then he looked up and the impact was enough to send Kim two steps back, dropping his hands. What had lived in that one look was enough to cut him off at the knees. It was the look of a man who was looking at a dream come true, steeped in longing, in wish, in hope. And it was a look meant for a man Kim Theerapanyakun could never be.
“Sorry, I got lost in thought,” he mumbled, pushing his sunglasses higher, hoping they hid the moment left him shaken.
Porchay, the ever-open, ever-truthful, blinked, his shoulders slumping, before hunching in something closer to shame. Kim grit his teeth. He was here to do a job and hurting Porchay wasn’t it. He just needed to find out more about his family and accidentally bruising a gentle, unbroken teenage heart in the process didn’t have to be necessary. Not as long as he kept himself in check.
“Should we go inside? It’s hot today.”
Flipping his hair out of his eyes, Porchay nodded. “Yes. Yeah, it’s open.”
Kim entered, breathing a sigh of relief at being inside the cooler air, the cold floor meeting his feet, anchoring him from the dreamy haze of the outside.
“Would you like some water? I’ll bring you some water. Just go have a seat, I’ll be right there,” Porchay slipped over some of the syllables, sliding in his hurry to get the sentence out. And to escape.
He hurried into the kitchen, and as directed, Kim settled on the couch. Glancing around, he noted in amusement that the younger man had tidied up this time, but the gleaming surfaces betrayed it was a recent development. Taking his guitar out of the case, some of the stability returned. He always felt the most like himself with the instrument in his arms. The comforting curve of its waist embraced him back, and the strings could always be trusted to respond as he asked them. Strumming aimlessly, he let his eyes trail over the shelves, searching out family photographs, if there were any folders with important documents. Aside from a recent shot of Porchay and his brother, he couldn’t see anything. Maybe there was another room downstairs he hadn’t seen yet, something like a study, or even storage. He’d have to-
“Here,” the younger man interrupted his thoughts, setting down a glass - on a coaster, clearly company behavior - in front of him. Thanking him, Kim took a sip. The vague scent of lemon had him quickly replacing it, harder than necessary, and Porchay looked up in surprise at the clunk.
“Sorry.”
Rummaging around his guitar case, Kim noted Porchay lifted the instrument out reverently, carefully sitting down with it on the other end of the couch. It seemed like an unnecessarily small piece of furniture to Kim, the way they sat leaving their knees inches from touching.
“So, did you try writing a love song?”
Porchay smiled like something inside him was funny, shaking his head. “I did. I mean, I tried.”
“You tried?”
“I did! It’s just…hard. The words, finding them, lining them up.”
“But you were thinking of someone you liked? While you wrote?” He imagined there was someone at his old school, perhaps even in Porchay’s class. Some immature kid who everyone else thought was cool, a vapid projection of high school perfection who-
He stilled his thoughts, realized he was gripping the neck of the guitar too hard, his nails whitening.
“I was. It’s not the feeling, P’Kim,” Porchay smiled shyly yet somehow looking wise beyond his years. “I know what it feels like. It’s about…feeling so much, when words are just…,” he shrugged, “...words.”
“In music, words are never just words. That’s what makes lyrics. If it isn’t true to your song, or to your feelings, then it’s just words.”
He knew, because there was one truth in his life, and it was that music allowed him to be free. It was the one place he could speak his mind, could exist outside the world as it was.
“Okay, but P’Kim, you can’t laugh!”
“I promise.”
Porchay bent over the guitar, bangs falling forward as he searched out the first chord. Drew a deep breath, teased out a “G”. Picking up the lyrics, his voice searched the key for a moment, sliding into the first line.
“ I melt when you’re near
I can’t hide my feelings
My heart will burst and
Every thought scatters ”
The melody was sweet, and Porchay’s voice carried it nicely, but trembled a little on the higher notes as he found his stride. On a professional level he heard a dissonant chord change he’d alter, a place or two where he would have cut a syllable or added one. But most of him was spellbound.
Porchay looked up, finding his pace and a small, self-conscious smile warmed his tone as he carried on.
“ I can’t keep it in, I have to speak the words
That are etched in my heart,
But they stick and I stutter
And in the silence I can only wait
Even though this heart is yours to own ”
The little smile reached his eyes, lit something there Kim couldn’t look away from. His breath held, his body readied, almost like reflex in expectation of a fall, braced for the impact.
“ There are millions words in the world
And I want to find the ones to give to you
It’ll drive me crazy one day
To keep all those synonyms for what I feel inside
So I collect them in this song, for you
Listen close, and you’ll hear
The beat of my heart in this song
Tell me, darling, can you hear it,
That this song is for you? ”
The last note faded out, ringing in his ears, an echo like rings on water through his body. Porchay’s face started falling before Kim realized he was still staring, unable to speak. He blinked, wet his lips, tried to clear his throat of the thorn lodged there.
“Nice,” he managed, his voice rusty. “It’s nice.”
Porchay lit up, his face splitting in a radiant smile. “You like it?”
Kim didn’t think “like” began to cover what the song had pulled from within him, what it had woken and brought into the light.
“Yeah. It…” he looked down, tried to steady himself by breaking the song into components. The chords, the tempo, the key, but the figures in his mind had nothing to do with the sensation that had filled him to hear it. To hear Porchay’s voice wrap around those words, his eyes both far-seeing and present as he sang to the tune of something inside himself. “It needs a chorus.”
“A chorus?”
“It’s four verses. I think it should have a chorus. The last verse, that could be the chorus.”
“The last verse?”
“Yeah, the one that went…” He picked up the pace, the key, the “G” that each verse started on, “ Listen close, and you’ll hear, the beat of my heart in this song …Something like that?”
“Oh, right. So that would go…”
“After each verse. Try it again from the start.” Watching Porchay’s hands move between the chords helped him focus and he mirrored it, simply humming the melody as the younger man sang the words again.
“And now, last verse as chorus,” he spoke it, watched for the chord change and joined in the lyrics. Their eyes met as he found the words, as if he’d heard them many times before. The harmony was easy, a minor third down and it slotted into Porchay’s voice like a puzzle piece, the picture clearing. “ Listen close, and you’ll hear, the beat of my heart in this song. Tell me, darling, can you hear it, that this song is for you? ”
The sense of reality faded. The song had transported him away from all he knew, the world he lived in. He was suddenly in the reality Porchay inhabited, one where everything was brighter, softer. His own was a concrete wall, an asphalt road, a gunmetal gray sky but Porchay lived in the sun dappled shade of a tree, with grass tickling his bare feet. It was like being set free, being able to draw a full breath. And in it, he wasn’t himself, he wasn’t weighted by rules, by expectation, by predetermination. He wasn’t bound by his responsibilities or cuffed to the marble image of himself he portrayed. He was just…Kim. For a brief, shining second, he was nothing but a man, wishing and wanting, and set free to reach for it.
Mesmerised, he leaned closer, close enough to see the sunlight reflect in Porchay’s irises, just like the dapples through a tree crown, moving and playing. Unable to remember a single reason why he couldn’t, shouldn’t, he let himself tumble into and through that new world. He laid his lips over Porchay’s in thanks, for the moment he’d been allowed, the breath he could draw.
He tasted of sun motes and smelled of lemon. His skin was warm, and he stilled like a deer caught in headlights. If he’d stayed that way, Kim could have caught himself. He could have reeled himself in, pulled back. But then Porchay made a tiny noise, a small, hitched sigh, before his lips melted against his, moved in instinctual welcome, softened to mirror his. And Kim lost the last foothold in his own reality, the last handhold on himself.
Running his hands into Chay’s hair, he guided his head to tilt, moving the kiss from searching, to asking, to giving. Timidly, a warm hand met his chest, pressed against the heart that was knocking as if to break out through his ribs. Helplessly that hand tightened in the fabric of his shirt, held on, pulled for closer, for more, in unworded askance. Floored in the face of the trust, his heart contracted and bled. Like he held a brittle, vulnerable, easily broken creature, a bird caged in his hands, and yet was met with no fear, no hesitation. Porchay’s lips moved against his, a reflection of his yearning and gave generously of all he was. He was sunlight and joy and wonder. He was a dream come true, a hope realized, a wish granted.
A murmur of his name, not in warning or hesitation, but in wonder met his ears and it hauled him back into reality. His own reality. The world where someone like him had no right to someone like Porchay. Where the breathless “P’Kim”, was a whiplash to his senses. Rearing back like burned, disgust at himself razed through him before Porchay’s hand had fallen from his shirt.
Blinking, like he’d just stepped into blinding light, Porchay spoke in askance, “P’Kim?”
It burned through him. He’d broken every rule he’d set himself, every promise he’d sworn to Porchay without his knowledge. It had taken so terrifyingly little for him to throw everything away. He’d been so close.
“I…I’m sorry.”
The words were not enough, they’d never atone for the sin he’d almost committed, the line he’d crossed. His life was a curse he’d promised to shield Porchay from, and instead he’d weaved the prison of it himself, started laying the foundations around him in the wake of his own, selfish want.
Porchay’s face fell, emotion as always so nakedly shown on his features.
Getting to his feet, Kim’s heart writhed, agonizingly torn between wanting to stay, to soothe, to mend and knowing he needed to run. He needed to put as much distance between himself and Porchay as he possibly could.
“I have to go. It would be…I think it would be best if we…didn’t meet again.”
He managed to stumble his way to the door, out the gate, into his car. And when he drove away, glancing in the rear-view mirror, he saw Porchay, standing in the middle of the road. Despite the distance making it impossible, he imagined that the look in his eyes, the hurt in them, bored into his soul.
Kim clenched his teeth, hands tightening around the steering wheel and turned, the image of Chay disappearing from view. Wincing at the strong light, he realized he’d left his sunglasses behind as his eyes teared up.