Chapter Text
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
F I R S T L O V E
Kimhan rarely remembers his firsts. To many, it seems to be something so relevant and significant to one’s life but not to him. Especially if most of it isn't pleasant to remember. If he could forget everything that he experienced under his father's surveillance, he would—the first time he ever held a gun, his first kill, and every first that tainted his life. He was in a cage that no matter how he tries to break free, he’d always be pulled back—bruised and scathed.
His music was entirely a different world. It wasn’t his first, but he liked to think of it as an escape of who he was. At some point, it was still a cage, a room he locked himself in so it wouldn’t hurt.
Porchay was a first. In every description of the word that he didn’t expect.
He came in like a whirlwind, even when he was just there standing with his bright smile that caught him off guard—and no one caught him off guard, Porchay Pichaya Kittisawasd was the first one.
The confession he got? It wasn’t the first, but it was the first and only confession that felt like a promise and a devotion at the same time. It was terrifying. But for once he had been selfish enough to bask and let himself drown in his love even for a moment. All he had was a borrowed time after all. But he should’ve known that a force that was Porchay was something he can never underestimate, something he could never escape—and he wasn’t even doing anything but exist.
“You wanted to protect me?” Porchay mutters, gritting his teeth with the truth that he just told him. “You trampled on my heart on your doorsteps because you want to protect me?”
Kimhan didn’t bother to answer, looking at his side to avoid the hurt he painted on his eyes, but he could feel it—ever since he came—all the emotions he didn't know he was still capable of having. He was the first one—not like every other first in his life—to elicit such pain that it was tormenting him alive. He should've stayed at home, he should've stayed locked up in his world so he wouldn’t face this but he missed him. He longs for him that it was infuriating how much.
He just wanted a glimpse, but of course, Porchay would corner him the moment he found him alone. Porchay was always the braver one between the two of them, always patient for answers but makes sure he gets the honesty that he deserves. His brother had crumbled his resolve with just one look, and Kimhan … for Porchay, he was just weak man.
"Is it so easy for you to assume that I could be safe in this hell rather than with you?" Porchay asks inching a step closer to him, finger pushing against his chest and he might as well be crazy because the warmth at the end of his fingertip was already enough to be addicting.
“How can you love me if you don’t even know me? What if you don't like every part of me?” he asks, his hands circling around his wrist and pinning it against his chest like it was his lifeline.
Porchay’s gaze softened and his closed fist was now palm wide against his chest, just atop of his heart. "I want to know you,” he says quietly, "under that mask you wear, under that skin you tell me has been covered with crimson blood, and hold these hands you tell me that have killed. I can love you, Kim. I am already in love with you with every piece of this heart that you broke, for goodness sake—just let me in."
And let him in, he does. Because who was Kimhan to refuse the way his heart, for the first time, had begged to be alive.
Porchay is Kimhan’s first, in every description of the word he could find and he could ever know. But instead of saying the word first, he calls it Chapter One—just like the name of his first album dedicated to Porchay himself. Chapter One—the beginning of a story that may have been written in the middle of the character’s life but always significant.
“Knighty?”
He was humming a new tune that suddenly popped in his head when hears Porchay call his pet name from outside his room. He chuckles to himself because Porchay doesn’t have to knock or call his name to come in but his angel was just polite that way.
He gets up from his bed, still shirtless, to open his door for the younger.
“Hi, love.” He greets, leaning on his door frame as he watches the colour blooms on his lover’s face—eyes going down to his displayed torso.
“Hi, Knighty.” Porchay smiles as his eyes meet his, and Kimhan was taken aback as always, with how Porchay looks at him like it was always the first time. His gaze was soft yet deep, luring Kimhan in and he would drown in his eyes willingly. So he pulls him near, chest against chest, his lips dangerously close to his and he unceremoniously dives in. He was sweet as honey and as intoxicating as an elixir—he can’t get enough of him.
When Porchay pulls him in his own bed after closing and locking his door, he pushes him on his bed and follows, lying on top of him and nuzzling his face on the crook of his neck. Kimhan contentedly sighs, wrapping his arms around his middle. This was what home felt like.
“I want to remove my shirt, can I?”
Kimhan laughs, something that he had been doing a lot lately. “Love, you’d be doing me a favor.”
With a giggle, Porchay sat up and gracefully took off his shirt. Kimhan had to restrain himself from pushing him on the bed and ravish him. When Porchay came back to his position, the warmth of his body felt like heaven against his. He runs his hand on his naked back, gently tracing letters on his skin.
“You’re the comfiest bed I have ever laid on.” Porchay murmurs against his neck, kissing a patch of skin just under his jaw, nipping it lightly. Kimhan grins.
“Are you drunk?” he chuckles, “my clingy baby.”
“Speaking of getting drunk—”
“It was because of me.” Kimhan finishes, the memory bringing an ache to his chest.
Porchay scoffs, “I did a lot of things because of you.” Unlike Kim, Porchay thinks of that memory as something he’d just shrug off, as if what happened didn’t hurt him enough. How Porchay was able to forgive him for that, Kimhan has no idea. Porchay just told him that he regrets getting drunk without thinking what might’ve happened to him if Kimhan didn’t come in time.
"I wish your first drink was with me." he murmurs in his hair, caressing the back of Porchay’s neck just the way he likes it. "Just to keep you safe.”
Porchay hums, his own fingers dancing across his chest in mindless circles. “You still did,” he whispers back. It was intimate, the quietness of the conversation that they are sharing, laying with each other without any care of the world outside their created bubble.
“What made you change your mind?” Porchay suddenly asks. “About us?”
"I don't want you to be my greatest what if." Kimhan truthfully answers, “I don’t want to live in a world without you. I had enough of it. But I was a coward and you are the braver one between the two of us.”
Porchay tugs his arms, moving both of them so Kimhan is now the one laying on his chest. The comfort he brings was like a gift he wouldn’t trade for anything. “You are the first person to ever make me feel powerless. Unsure. Reckless. I had never been reckless , but you … you brought back the human in me again."
"Knighty—"
"I'm not finished, my love." He interrupts. Porchay knew that this was something he doesn't do—speak his heart out. But for him, he'd try. To tell him the parts of his story that he had never shared to anyone else. He was going to be the first person who would hear his thoughts, and for once he isn't afraid to be vulnerable with his honesty. "I sorted out my fear. I had a lot of it with you. The fear of losing you permanently. The fear of getting you hurt. Then there's this fear of losing you to someone else."
He looks up to Porchay and he was already looking down on him with loving eyes and he reaches up to touch his face with his hand, assuring. "The day you cornered me here in this mansion, the night before that—I dreamt of you. You were walking down the aisle and at first it was me waiting there for you at the altar."
It felt real. That dream. Porchay was wearing a white tuxedo, as gorgeous as ever, and he was holding a bouquet of pink and purple tulips. There was a smile beautifully plastered on his face, his eyes somehow even more enthralling with the brightness of their surroundings, and he was inching closer to him as the second ticks by, albeit a little slow. Kimhan wanted to pull him towards him, make him walk faster so he could reach him in record time. But as the music played, he wanted to savor the moment looking at him as he walked down the path to a future with him.
It was perfect. "But it changed all of a sudden."
Porchay looks at him curiously and even if it was just a dream, thinking that those eyes that bleed too much love had been someone else's, breaks him into pieces. "I suddenly found myself watching you instead, on the corner, while walking towards someone else. Someone faceless. Someone not me."
In that dream, he felt like he was pushed by a force he cannot fight and he found himself hidden by the darkness, unseen and unheard. His screams of protest and objection fell on deaf ears and he couldn't find a place more suffocating. He was just there watching the wedding, hearing Porchay’s vows that weren’t for him.
He woke up crying. Nightmares weren't uncommon for Kimhan, he had it ever since his mother died and he had to grow up the way his father wanted to, no longer protected by his mother’s love. But that particular dream was like a knife repeatedly pierced on his heart even when he was already wide awake. It wasn’t the kind of nightmare that he wanted to get away from, he wanted to be there ans stop whatever dream it was.
It wasn’t the kind that was bloody, full of gunshots, and pain—oddly enough, you get used to them. Seeing Porchay happy was never a nightmare. It was always a dream, yet the particular feeling it gave—excruciating—made it almost feel like one.
"I came to the compound with that silly thought of assuring myself that you weren't somebody else's." He says, burying his face to Porchay’s chest, arms wounded around his waist that even with their almost same build, it looks like he was carrying him while they lay in bed. “I wanted to fool myself that you will never be happy with someone else. That you wouldn’t be able to love someone else. It was selfish.”
Porchay was quiet for a while but he felt how he threaded his fingers to his hair, gently combing it down to make him calm down. Maybe he felt his fear, the agitation that Porchay always seemed to hear. “Even if I try, I will never be able to love someone else the way I had loved you, Kim.”
Kimhan looks up from where he lays on his chest and Porchay holds his face in his hand, thumb gently caressing his lower lip. “You are my first love, my first heartbreak, and they may try, but no one will ever compare to you. There’s too much of us that I will never forget. Too much of you that I am willing to keep that they will never be able to erase. You understand me, Knighty?”
He does. In front of him, the person in his arms is his first love—not the kind of love he innately had, but the kind that he found in the most unexpected ways. He was the first one to ever held his heart and keep it, the first boy who held his bruised and calloused hands and kissed them, he was his first heartbreak, too — he knew it was love then when the pain no longer came from guilt, but with the need and the fear, and everything that came with it…both its beauty and tragedy. Because what is love if it wasn’t flawed, if it wasn’t selfless, if it wasn’t Porchay.
But he doesn’t know how to answer him, in a way that would put everything that he felt in words that would declare how he loved him. How he would tell him that he will be forever grateful for being able to love him, and how he will be eternally indebted to be loved by him. He would kill and be killed protecting his smile. He would bleed dry just to make sure that he was alive.
There’s too much of what he wanted to say that he could almost burst with it. Yet even with his silence, Porchay smiles and kisses his forehead like a promise and an affirmation of all they are and will ever be.
So instead, he says. “Marry me.”