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Kim had idolised both of his older brothers, growing up. He had never tried to hide it, precisely - but then again, he’d never been the most demonstrative soul, even as a child.
In his darker moments, he wonders if that hero-worship was where it had all gone wrong. If everything he ever loves is simply doomed to crumble into ashes at his touch.
He can even pinpoint the very moment that any chance of having a normal bond with Kinn - well, normal by the standards of the tooth and nail world they live in - was destroyed. The moment that he unwittingly crushed it to dust beneath his oblivious heel.
It was the day that he’d been sitting beside Kinn, idly kicking his feet, listening to his older brother stumble through some chord practice on the brand new guitar their father had just gifted him. And Kim, with all the enthusiasm and naiveté of a child who hadn’t yet learned that the world does not revolve around him, had asked, “Can I try, P’Kinn?”
It was all inevitable, after that. Music had been Kinn’s first love, after all - at first, Kim had thought that it was something they could bond over together, but he knew better now. The worst parts of him had always been too much like their father for something so trite as simply sharing a passion equally; no matter that in the softest parts of his underbelly he had always yearned for that connection, his claws were too sharp, too greedy. No matter that he’d tried to sever those darkest parts of himself, leave them rotting in the shadows of the family mansion and never return to claim them - in the end, he could never make the cut clean. In the end, he’d walked out the door having knowingly stolen a shard of Kinn’s heart, and the guilt had never once halted his path no matter how heavily it weighed him down.
Of course, in his lighter moments he can’t help wondering if his father somehow orchestrated it - their talents, their estrangement, all of it. Normally, that’s a terribly tempting line of thought to pursue. But for this? Any explanation that absolves him of blame is a leap of imagination too far.
(The thing is, neither Kim nor Kinn ever quite learned to test the limits of their imagination. They’ve always had to rely on someone else for that.)
Tankhun’s sudden and unannounced presence in his flat was making Kim feel deeply, viscerally unsettled. Not necessarily in a bad way - it was more to do with the fact that his monochrome interiors had never prepared themselves to welcome quite such a concentrated splash of colour into their midst, and the sight of his oldest brother flitting around, peering at every detail and meaningless trinket left out on display with single-minded attention, was one that Kim couldn’t foresee himself getting used to any time soon.
After all, it still brought a surprised kick of wary joy to his tattered heart every time he caught wind of Tankhun voluntarily leaving the house on another pilgrimage to the strangest corners of Bangkok imaginable; he also inevitably felt a twinge of resentment every time someone from his old life (his current life, there was no escaping his family’s life no matter how hard or how many times he tried) intruded on his personal sanctum. Reconciling the two conflicting emotions was proving nigh impossible, so he flopped down into the chair nearest the windows, picked up the guitar resting against it, and began to strum.
Stolen as it was, the solace he found in music almost never failed to soothe him.
Minutes passed, almost unnoticed; a new melody danced at the tips of his fingers, words to accompany it drifting almost to his ears. It was almost a shock to pause, look up, and realise that he had no idea how long it had been since Tankhun had ceased his fluttering and settled down to sit opposite him, gazing at him with an inscrutable expression in his eyes.
“...What?” Kim asked, when it became clear that Tankhun had no intention of breaking the silence of his own volition.
A beat of silence. Another. Kim couldn’t quite recall ever seeing his older brother so consumed by hesitance.
And finally, a hand stretching out towards the guitar, bridging the gap between them. “Can I try?”