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It starts from nothing. At least, Kim is adamant that it's nothing. Uses those exact words, in fact.
“It’s nothing, Angel.” He says when Chay asks what's bothering him.
Since reconciling some months ago and beginning to work out how a relationship looks for them, they have found routines. Chay spends Thursday and Friday nights at Kim's apartment, and that way Friday can be date day. Chay initially suggested Saturdays, but as it turns out when you make a living as a musician and idol, your weekends are your busiest days. Chay will be driven home by Kim on Friday evenings and they will text and video call as often as Kim can manage in between his scheduling. Monday's Kim needs to recover from working himself into the ground, so Chay gets a lift from his driver (because he has one of those now) and will spend the day at Kim's place snuggled into his side. The rest of the week is flexible, worked around what is both achievable against their respective free time and their actual desire to see one another.
Not that Chay doesn't want to see Kim all the time, or vice versa, but they're both so used to being alone that it's nice to have that space sometimes. They're okay having it when they need it.
Granted, they may be physically apart on those days, but they're very much digitally together. See aforementioned texting and video calling.
Today is Thursday. Kim is here, waiting obediently outside the compound as he does every Thursday evening, but the picture isn't right.
"Are you sure?" Chay takes a step closer, trying to catch Kim's eye, but it's almost as if he's not even there. "P'Kim?"
Kim blinks and his gaze refocuses. Instead of looking through Chay, he's finally looking at him. It's not any better, to be honest. "Really, it's nothing."
It's so obviously not nothing that Chay is torn between comfort and fury. He wants to go to Kim's side and hold him until he feels safe again. He wants to smack him upside the head and call him a moron. Maybe he can do both. Should do both.
Chay doesn't do either.
Instead he just, waits. Patient the way he's always had to be with those in his life. With his gambling uncle and with Porsche, and now with a present-yet-absent mother and a whole gaggle of mafia in-laws. And Kim, most of Chay's patience is reserved for Kim.
Already Chay can tell he's going to need a lot of it tonight. Kim isn't budging on his stubborn silence, his gaze has gone a little unfocused again and Chay has to wonder if Kim even registers that they're just hovering silently in front of his family home. Neither moving or speaking. It's absurd. Before long one of the guards at the door are going to feel obligated to check on him. People do that a lot lately, check on Chay, he thinks that's Porsche's influence.
But there's nothing wrong. Kim says so.
The longer they stand there, the more frustrated Chay is getting. With good reason too. His boyfriend is... well. He's not lying. And that's frustrating for Chay. Because he's not lying, technically. It's not outright. Blatant. It's not even meant in cruelty. Kim is not technically lying, because he knows that Chay will tolerate a lot for Kim, in the name of loving him. Chay can be calm and optimistic. He has been so careful with Kim, and yet firm when needed. Chay has been supportive and affectionate and so. Fucking. Patient.
But they both know the one thing Chay will not tolerate is lying. No more lying.
There had been nothing of his sweetness when they had finally reunited months ago, sobbing on Kim's bathroom floor with the coppery scent of blood clinging to Kim's clothes and gunpowder on Chay's. All their dirty laundry had been aired that night, and Chay had laid down his law.
"Lie to me like that again, Kimhan, and I will leave. You will never see me again."
Kim had taken Chay's word as gospel, and since then had been doing everything in his power to worship at the altar of Chay's desires. Kim took each day by Chay's side with reverence. He threw himself into bettering himself and his behaviour, because he wanted to be someone worthy of Chay. Worthy of his love.
When he explained this, Chay had called Kim an idiot and promised that he had always been worthy of not just Chay's love, but any love, he just needed to work on letting himself have nice things.
That night had ended in tears too.
And they got better. They really did. Together, Chay and Kim learnt how to communicate with each other. They opened up, or, actually, Kim opened up. As it happened, Chay didn't really have much of himself left to bare, since he'd been willingly handing it all over since the moment that they met. Kim let Chay see all the faces he could wear, shed light on his darkest parts, and shower them all with affection. Chay learnt to please himself as much as he tried to please everyone else, and how to stop viewing himself as burden to be shouldered by everyone around him.
These few months they have been together, for real this time? Chay has never been happier.
Happiness doesn't mean there aren't bumps, though. Neither of them are perfect. They make mistakes. Chay is just as guilty of omitting things and telling himself it's not the same as lying. Sometimes, he falls back into the habit of putting everyone else's happiness before his own, forgoing his desire to say no because he never wanted to disappoint anyone. And Kim... well, Kim sometimes forgets he is in fact human. Not a weapon. Not a rabid dog held in check by his father's leash. But a person.
It makes it harder for him, Chay knows, to forgive himself when he does make mistakes. Because Kim has spent his life being taught that a mistake means failure.
Worse, sometimes Kim forgets he is human and rather than make a mistake, he chooses to fall back into old behaviours, because if he isn't a person then he doesn't deserve anything resembling care from anyone. Especially not Chay.
"It's not nothing, P'Kim," Chay hates that he's the one to break, but Big is getting twitchy behind him, and the last thing he wants is a bodyguard getting caught in the crossfire. "Did something happen?"
Chay braves stepping closer, his hands outstretched with the intention of gathering Kim's trembling hands in his own. To try and siphon some comfort into him with his touch. But Kim twitches away from him.
Twitches. Which is worse than if he'd flinched away. So much worse.
Something catches fire in Chay's chest. His simmering frustration erupting into burning rage the longer Kim allows this to go on. Not providing an explanation, not doing anything except shutting down right before Chay's eyes and expecting Chay to just be fine with that? Kim either doesn't know him at all or simply doesn't care. Irritatingly, hay knows it's neither. Kim knows him too well, and he cares too much, and this is a charade. It's an act to force Chay's anger, so Kim can keep him at a distance.
It's not the first time this has happened. Probably won't be the last either, there's a lot Kim has to deal with in his past, and lifelong habits like this are hard to unlearn. But they'd been doing so well lately.
The fact Chay knows what's happening does nothing to prevent Chay from falling into the trap though. As a general rule, Chay is an incredibly forgiving person. Holding grudges is not in his nature, and despite everything he has gone through in the past year, he likes to believe in the good in people. The good in Kim. His forgiveness has been a saving grace with Kim, to be honest. It's helped a lot when Kim fumbles, forgets how to not be alone, when Kim turns back into someone he's been forced to be through the sheer bad luck of being born into this life. Chay always forgives him because he can always see that Kim is trying to be better.
Hell, he even forgives the smaller, niggling kind of habits that in comparison to all the other things, are actually fairly minor. Like the fact Kim talks in his sleep and always has alarms set for ridiculously early, or that he never hangs the towel up again after he's showered or that he loves to press his cold feet against whatever part of Chay is exposed just to hear him squeal. Chay is forgiving all of it.
Today, he's not in a forgiving mood.
Chay used all his capacity for forgiveness before lunch and now Kim is just testing his goddamn temper.
"Don't do this, Kim." It's not quite a plea but not quite a demand either, it lands somewhere unknown in between.
This time, Kim flinches, and he follows the movement through, turning to open the rear car door and indicate for Chay to get in. It draws attention to the fact that they're using Chay's driver... which they never do on Thursday's. Kim prefers to drive himself. Its another item on a growing list of things that point to Kim's 'nothing' actually being a pretty big something.
As if it will help his case, Kim plasters on a fake smile that Chay hasn't seen since those first music lessons. Even then he'd known it was off. It felt painted on. Unnerving like a porcelain doll that's eyes followed you around the room. He hates that smile when it's directed at him, an Kim knows it.
"Come on, we'll go home." Kim says. The inflections all off. Chay's just... tired. He's so tired.
People always tell Chay how sweet and kind he is, but Chay also knows how to make people hurt. Typically, he just chooses not to be a force of negativity. Right now, seeing Kim's fake smile and the false cheer to his words. Chay wants to hurt Kim. He ignores the door that is open for him, ignores that Kim is waiting for him to slide in. Instead, Chay walks around the car, his shoulder pointedly brushing Kim's as he passes, and he climbs in the other side. The entire time he feels Kim's gaze follow him, it's fierce and sharp.
Whatever predator Kim tries to keep away from Chay, it's setting it's teeth on his neck. Chay lets it happen. Basks in it, because he knows it's going to irritate Kim more.
Kim doesn't join him right away. He remains standing just outside the door for almost a full minute. Porsche has told Chay about Kinn's volatile temper, Chay understands it's a familial trait. He's only seen Kim's rabid anger under neon lights of a club and the haze of alcohol. Somehow, he knows Kim is hovering outside because he wants to make sure Chay doesn't see it again.
That's fine. Chay's got all night, he reserves it for Kim anyway. He uses the alone time to reply the moment Kim had avoided his touch, to pick it apart and agonise over it.
Often without him knowing, Kim's body speaks for him. Chay's learnt how to read it quickly, because he's had to. Each divot on Kim's spine, the dark intense gaze he has, those long musicians fingers covered in callouses not just from the guitar. It talks to him whenever Kim finds it too hard to. And Kim had recoiled.
Kim's jerked from his touch before, yanking back as if burned. That Chay can make sense of. He is well aware that when Kim falls back into that persona he despises, the one built of violence and a vicious need to survive, he rejects touch. It's part out of a misguided fear that he might hurt Chay (he would never) and part out of belief that he simply isn't clean enough for Chay's hands.
Perhaps this is something like that. Only Kim hadn't jerked. He'd just... moved away. As if contact with Chay was simply beneath him.
Chay can handle Kim, snarling and cold, trying to push Chay away because he's clutching the shattered pieces of his identity to his chest, worried that the shards are going to slice at Chay's skin.
What Chay cannot handle, is the twitch. The calm retreat. He cannot handle being something that Kim treats as easily ignored.
Kim slides into the car. The engine starts and they begin to move. A look passes between Chay's driver Jin and Kim, and without a word, the divider rises. It's meant to give them privacy but it does the opposite. Jin knows they're about to fight now, surely. There's no other outcome.
Only when they finally leave the compound's elaborate driveway and join regular traffic does Kim speak.
"You're angry with me."
Turning to Kim, Chay gives the best condescending eyebrow raise he can muster. "How many years of mafia training did it take for you to make deductions like that?"
Kim has the audacity to sigh as if Chay is being unreasonable. "Angel..."
"Don't call me that unless you do it while telling me the truth." Chay hisses, and Kim is caught short at the intensity of his anger. Good.
The accusation doesn't sit well with him either. Kim has never liked it when those that matter to him label him as such. Liar. Schemer. Spy. Nosey. He'd told Chay once under the cover of night, Chay's fingers dancing over his bare ribs. People who don't matter, targets or rivals or even the fans he glimpses on twitter. They can think what they like, call him what they like, it doesn't matter. But those he loves? It's hard for him to be the villain, even if he has to be sometimes.
Kim's working his jaw, his rage simmering beneath his skin. Chay can feel it rolling off him from the other side of the car. Kim's periodically clenching his fists and taking noticeably deeper breaths. Even after all he's done, he's still trying not to make this worse and Chay hates that he is proud of him for that. "I am telling you the truth, Porchay." Comes through gritted teeth. "It's nothing. Nothing you need to worry about, anyway."
And all that does is remind Chay why he's so mad. Why today of all days, he will not be exercising any patience with Kim.
He'd fought with Porsche mere hours ago. It began as a rehash of Chay's future, because he still hasn't decided what he wants to do yet, he's been a bit busy processing all the other shit going on, thanks. Which had devolved quickly into Chay lashing out, feeling cornered, and undermining Porsche's ability to give decent life advice when he'd become a mafia wife. Things escalated, Chay had hear variations on the phrase 'this is for your own good' or 'I'm trying to protect you' and each one made him want to scream more than the last.
He'd stormed out to get boba tea, an effort to cheer himself up, and promptly spilled it all over the only new item of clothing he'd allowed himself to buy with his new shiny allowance--a pair of fancy washed-out jeans.
Enter Kim. His pain in the ass boyfriend who decided to pull another version of the 'you need to be protected' routine.
Kim is not lying. In his heart of hearts, he believes that whatever he is dealing with, Chay is better off not knowing about it. That he will be safer if he is kept in the dark.
This absolute moron that Chay has chosen to date, is happy to allow himself to be crushed under the burden of a problem if it means Chay is left unscathed.
And it's as heart-warming as it is incredibly fucking annoying.
“You saw your father today, didn’t you.” Really he needn't ask. After all the positive steps they've taken in their relationship, there is only one trigger that can set Kim off like a grenade. Kim tenses, and it’s all the answer Chay needs. “Phi, I can--”
“No, you can’t.” Kim snaps the words, but quickly corrects himself, his hands are hovering weakly in the air like he wants to reach out to Chay but can’t bring himself to. He is convincing himself the touch won’t be welcome. “Chay. Porchay. Please.” Kim softens, and not in the calculated way he always had while luring Chay in the beginning, this is a real, bone-deep exhaustion causing him to slump against the seat, head tipped back. Eyes closed against Chay's upset. “I know you want to help. I love you because you’re the kind of person who will always want to help. But I promise you, there is nothing you can do to help with this. Nothing I will let you do.”
It’s sad really, Kim had been doing so well to make Chay sympathetic to his cause and he’s ruined with seven words. “ Let me?” Chay’s voice rises in pitch, screeching his indignation. “You won’t let me?”
Kim says nothing, so Chay fills the silence for him. “You and Porsche are just the same.” He yells. Because the Kittisawasds are nothing but passionate in the expression of their emotions. Intense firecrackers that burn bright, explode with a pop and a bang, and then snuff out into calmness shortly after. “Neither of you will treat me like a person. I’m something to be seen and not heard, right? Poor little Chay, incapable of playing with the adults, just a clueless child who would be better off locked up safe in an ivory tower--just like his fucking mother.”
Kim startles at the curse word, turning wide eyes on him, because Chay doesn’t tend to do that. Even in his anger. But he just can’t… there’s no thoughts in his head right now except to make Kim understand. Make him.
“I’m not useless, Kimhan--and don’t you dare say you know that--” Kim freezes, his mouth open where he had been about to interrupt, at Chay’s scolding, he snaps his jaw shut again. “Not when you are still shutting me out. After everything. Still keeping me at arms length the second you’re forced to feel an emotion that you think I won’t like. And it’s always after you see your father.”
Chay had noticed the pattern within weeks of being back by Kim’s side. Korn and Kim meet, and suddenly, Chay is back to being something breakable. Something delicate. Something Kim isn’t allowed to have and needs to push away for it’s own good.
And Kim is trying to protect him. Does what he does out of a misguided sense of love. Chay knows that. Has been tolerating that.
But no more. He can't take this anymore.
“Do you think I don’t know he’s trying to use me as leverage?”
This time, Kim jerks as Chay is used to. The full bodied startle that Chay associates with metallic scents catching in the back of his throat and torn clothing. This is Kim, bruised and feral and wanting to keep Chay away. This is the killer Kim tries to hide, who’s features are twisting in a snarl just at Chay’s words.
Not snarling at Chay, but at the truth of the matter. At his father. The puppet master.
“Did he threaten me today? Or just use vague metaphors to hint at what could happen?” Chay knows it’s cruel to take all of Kim’s anxieties, his fears, his twisted thoughts, and lay them in the open after spending so long pretending he didn’t know they existed. But Chay is also tired of everyone assuming he doesn't know. He doesn't want to be underestimated anymore. Brushed aside as if he isn't clever enough to understand or grown enough to handle it. “Does he tell you I’ll leave if you let me in? Hmm? Is he the one who convinces you that I only love the beautiful parts of you and am repulsed by the ugly ones?”
“Porchay…”
Chay isn’t sure what hurts worse, the raw, emotion filled plea, or the fact Kim uses his full name to beg. Both.
“I told you in the beginning, Kim, that I love every part of you.” Chay can feel his own tear streaked cheeks. Hates that he’s an angry crier. He powers through, though. For Kim. Kim needs this as much as Chay does. “And to some extent that’s true. But there’s one part of you I don’t love, and that’s the part that won’t let me make my own choices about what I can handle.”
Kim blinks at him, a tear slips free. “I’m scared.” He says, the first sliver of honesty Chay has heard since they met by the car.
“I know.” He wants to reach out to Kim, badly, but needs to hold off for a little longer. “I know you are. But I need you to trust that I can take care of myself. I’m not good at shooting like Kinn or fighting like my brother, I’m not even all that good at the whole plotting thing like you are… but I’m good at keeping myself safe, Kim. I did it for years before I met you, I haven’t suddenly forgotten how to do it.”
Kim closes his eyes, Chay waits, patiently. Now that his temper has burned through it’s most volatile phase, the air around them begins to settle. Chay takes a few deep breaths. They both spend a moment collecting themselves. Gathering whatever chunks had been chipped off in their brief but ferocious fight. Chay scrubs at his damp cheeks with the sleeves of his sweater but Kim lets his tears fall freely. He's not hiding anymore.
“I’m so used to…” Kim has to clear his throat, sniff away some of his despair, and try again, “I’ve always been the one protecting everyone else. From afar. What they didn’t know kept them safe.”
“Your brothers?”
Kim nods, he’s staring down at his lap. “I’d just monitor from a distance. Take care of anyone making trouble for Kinn. Keep tabs on any guards getting close to Khun. Try to pick apart things that didn’t make sense so I could… I don’t know. Stop problems before they even arose. And they never knew. I didn’t want them to.”
Chay slides his hand across the middle seat, Kim snatches it up like a starving man offered food. “Did you ever think talking to them would also help keep them safe? That if they knew what you were trying to do then they could help?” Kim gives him a look then, a one that reads ‘are you serious’, Chay finds it in himself to laugh, a pathetic wet sound. “No, of course you didn’t. Okay, so you’re used to being a lone wolf and looking after everyone around you. I know that already, I understand that. But you trust P’Kinn to take care of himself if push comes to shove, right?”
Reluctantly, Kim nods.
“And P’Khun, you told me you know he’s smart. You trust him to be aware of threats, and to handle them if he really needs to?”
Again, Kim nods.
“Then I need you to explain why you don’t trust me to do that.”
Kim wisely doesn’t try to deny that he views Chay this way. Though, it’s likely that until Chay had a tantrum about it just now, Kim hadn’t been conscious of it either. Likely he was rationalising it as being the same kind of protective as he is of his brothers. It took Chay screaming at him for it to become obvious it’s not. That he's been treating Chay as someone a lot less competent. Someone that lacked trust.
“I think, I don’t want you to have to.” Kim says eventually, each word pulling from him with obvious discomfort, the same kind that comes anytime Chay asks for him to let himself be known. “I want to… I feel like I need to be there, always. Like there should be a shield between you and everything me and Kinn and now Porsche has to go through and I--” Kim finally looks Chay in the eye. “And I need to be the shield.”
Chay can’t take it anymore, he hauls himself closer to Kim’s side and throws his arms around him. They hug as if they have been separated for years. Kim cling to Chay, fisting his hands into his sweater and burying his face in his shoulder. Chay turns his face into Kim’s hair and holds him, lets Kim's shoulder shake with a few more sobs that needed to be free. Chay pets his hands over Kim’s back and through his hair, he shushes him gently. He rocks him the way Porsche used to rock him as a child when he'd had a nightmare.
“Kim…” Chay says gently after a few long minutes of them embracing. He draws away just enough that he can see Kim’s face and Kim blinks up at him, red-eyed and still so beautiful in his sorrow. “You’re a human being.” He puts as much emphasis on the words as he can, drenches it in affection and warmth and awe, because Chay knows it’s times like this that Kim doesn’t see that as a good thing. “You’re just one man. A man I care a great deal about. You can’t just throw yourself between me and every single threat that manifests.”
The pout on Kim’s face says he absolutely can or will die trying.
“But I understand,” Chay says, and finally, all the tension in Kim’s body evaporates. He sags against Chay, as at ease as he is capable of being when they’re not in the sanctuary of his own apartment. But that’s enough for Chay. “Because I sometimes feel like that about you.”
“Angel,” And how Chay's heart sings to hear the return of his favourite pet name. “I’m not sure what I’ll do if you put yourself in harms way for me and get hurt. I can’t--I won’t be able to--”
“Shh.” Chay gives Kim’s hair a little tug, preventing him from spiralling back into that dark place where he looks at Chay and all he sees is a tragedy waiting to happen. “Listen to me.” Chay waits, and when no further protest comes, he continues. “I want to protect you just as much as you protect me, Kimhan. I want to keep you safe from your father, and from the voice in your head that tells you I’m going to leave you, or that you’re not enough. I want to be your shield from yourself sometimes, you can be so cruel to yourself, you know. So needlessly cruel.”
Kim’s breath shudders out of him. Chay keeps petting his hair. “We can both get what we want. Keep each other safe.” Chay presents it as a suggestion, a plot they can hatch together.
Kim doesn’t give any outward sign of interest, he doesn’t ask how, doesn’t pull back to look at Chay with a question in his eyes. But Chay knows he’s eagerly awaiting an answer, can sense the cells in Kim’s body standing to attention and pointing at Chay. The hitch of his breath against Chay’s neck, the slight flex of his fingers in the sweater he’s still clinging to. It’s all an invitation.
“But to do that, you have to stop taking my choices away from me.” Kim gives a weak whimper, perhaps of apology, perhaps pained at the idea of having to involve Chay in whatever he has been keeping from him. “Because every time you keep something from me in order to protect me, that’s what you’re doing, Kim. You’re removing my ability to choose for myself.”
“I know.” Kim mumbles weakly. “I’m sorry, Chay, I’m so sorry.”
Now Chay pulls Kim off him, makes him sit straight so they can look at each other. Chay brushes tears off Kim’s cheeks with his thumb, tidies his hair back in to some semblance of styled. Looks him over from head to toe with a soft, encouraging, smile. Slowly, Kim starts to return the expression.
“I forgive you.” Chay says, and Kim's small smile blooms into a grin, still tinged at the edges with exhaustion and dulled of it’s usual shine with anxiety. But at least it’s real. The porcelain smile from earlier long forgotten. “On the condition that going forward, you promise to stop shutting me out like this.”
Kim goes to agree, but then, as Chay has been teaching him, pauses to consider. In the early days of being back together Kim had a terrible habit of just saying yes to everything and it gave Chay worse anxiety than Kim ghosting him, always worrying he was holding some kind of power over Kim, that Kim would do anything even if he didn’t want to in the name of retribution. Now, Chay advocates for Kim to think about the answers he gives--especially if he’s making promises. Chay wants him to be honest about whether he can fulfil said promise.
“I can promise to try.” Kim says, and Chay is so in love with him. “I can’t promise I will change right away, it might take… time.”
Beaming, Chay brings Kim closer, forcing him to dip his head so Chay can kiss his forehead. “That’s all I ask, P’Kim, thank you.”
Kim returns the affection by pecking Chay on the cheeks. One on each side, and then he sits back. Now that all of that is in the open, Chay feels the tension in the air begin to clear. Kim looks like he's had the weight of the world lifted from him the way only a good cry can do. He's slumped casually, his string cut, free from the puppet master for now.
And that’s all Chay needs to revert back to his default state.
“Oh, hang on!” He scoots back across the seats, and this time Kim’s gaze on him feels warm and affectionate. Chay roots around in his backpack and pulls out a bottle of peach iced tea, a brand he knows Kim loves. He'd bought it at the same time he'd gone for his boba, knowing Kim might need the pick-me-up after working in the studio all day, Chay springs back to sitting with a grin and holds out his offering to Kim. “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.”
Kim breaks into laughter, that almost silent wheezing when something has entertained him so much he can’t even make a sound. His features scrunch up and he covers his face with two hands.
They’re going to be okay, Chay thinks, watching Kim laugh, knowing Kim is laughing because of him, they’re all going to be okay.