Work Text:
If you asked Gun why he did it, he would splutter and stammer and blush and probably fake out a phone call to flee. If you asked Por why he thought Gun did it, Por would happily tell you, “I don’t think Gun thought anything at all!”, which is both 1) true and 2) a regular occurance, and it’d make Gun splutter and yell again.
The fact is, Gun did it, and it changed everything.
Maybe that’s a little too overdramatic for you, but at one point, there is a rain scene and eyes interlocked and the fluttering of butterflies in his stomach and a beautiful boy that reminds Gun of the sun-tinted days in high school.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Por says, giggling, and hey, he is right, we are. Before the singing and the rain and the new year, there is:
The restaurant.
Now, there isn’t anything particularly special about the restaurant, other than draining all of Gun’s energies because customers are exhausting and tourists are a particular brand of annoying that test all of Gun’s people skills.
But that does mean that whenever Gun meets a customer that is polite, kind, and flattering, his day is turned around. He remembers that he does in fact love people, and that one day he’ll be a famous musician and he’ll make people happy when he sings and then all the impolite ones won’t be able to affect him anymore because fuck the tourists who complain about the spice level of the dishes, who cares when he has the real public?
Sigh.
Por pats him on the head when he gets that faraway look on his eyes, saying, “There, there,” because he, too, was there when they failed another audition and—
Okay, digression. Back to the real crux of the issue:
When did Gun even get a crush on that guy?
“I do not have a crush on him!” Gun says, voice an octave higher for some reason. Suspicious. “I don’t even know his name!”
Yet we cannot help but squint our eyes at him.
“Didn’t you mention how he always wears a blue tie?” Por asks, index finger tapping his chin.
“So?” Gun shoots back, crossing his arms, not at all defensive.
“So,” Por says, word heavy with implication. “Who even notices what strangers are wearing?”
“First of all, I’m quite observant, thank you very much,” Gun says, index finger raised in the air, yet it is important to point out that he never noticed when Por changed the parting of his hair from left to right early this year. Gun glares, sticking out his middle finger to form the number two. “Second of all, he became a regular, so I just. I don’t know? He seems to like blue, okay, at one point it was hard not to notice.”
“I never noticed it,” Por says as an important addition.
“You don’t even pay attention to the weather forecast before leaving the house.”
“It’s not important! It’s always hot anyway and rain season is already over!”
“Then why do you get annoyed when you’re overdressed for band practice?”
“Because it’s ruining my vibe!”
“Just stop wearing vests, man.”
“You seem to like when glasses wears a vest.”
Gun lets out a sound that is very much like a mouse squeak.
Okay, maybe we should back up a little.
Back to the restaurant and the customers and Gun liking the polite ones.
He likes the ones that tip him with a heavy hand because they’re used to different countries. He likes the one that look him in the eye like he’s an actual person, and the ones that ask him for suggestions and he can see the way they light up when they take the first bite of their dish. Those make his miserable days a little better.
And then there are the dates.
Now, Gun wouldn’t call himself a romantic. That’s Por, and it’s honestly a little irritating because he’ll create whole fics about customers, with background stories and tragic family plots if the shift is chill and he has had too much coffee that day, and a lot of the time Gun tells him to stop shipping people, but mostly he suffers it with a modicum of restraint because it does make Por write some pretty nice lyrics.
Gun still pays attention to those dates, however, wearing his most handsome smile and on his most patient behavior as the lovebirds nervously browse the menu for something mild, as only a tentative first date can be. Gun has never dated anyone, but he is observant when he wants to be, especially when he’s shifted into singer mode, and he tries to fit some of his favorite songs to romantic pairs.
He sees the friends-crossing-the-friendzone-line when the banter is easy and relaxed and the hands keep touching as the pair speaks. There’s the obvious-pining-turned-into-real-date when one side can’t keep their eyes off the other. There are the older couples who share a lifetime of history, knowing each other’s favorite dishes and laughing at inside jokes that Gun would never understand. You can see all kinds of people and how they relate to one another simply by how they make an order and eat their dinner.
So, when glasses guy first showed up, a pretty girl by his side, Gun easily switched into observant mode.
Take that, Por.
He pulled her chair for her, which, yeah, okay, a little old fashioned, but nice. He had a pleasant smile that made the girl smile in return, a little shy, and oh, it was a first date. Maybe a blind date? No, no, if it were a blind date, then they wouldn’t have arrived together. Or maybe they had met up someplace before?
God, sometimes hanging out with Por is like sharing clothes and getting his habits like an annoying rash. Just like in seventh grade.
“Are you ready to order?”
Glasses guy, at this point in time, wasn’t really glasses guy because he was not wearing them. Gun doesn’t know if he was wearing blue that day, either. He made a good impression in different ways, such as when he asked his date, “What would you like? Please feel free to choose anything.”
We love a date that does not care about budget. Yeah, yeah, something, something, dates should split the check, but Gun is a huge supporter of getting free meals out of boys. If the date ends up sucking, at the very least their date won’t have to suffer double the injury by also having to pay for the bill. It makes sense in his head.
Not that glasses guy — or Gun’s guy (“He’s not my guy! What the fuck!”) — presented any indication that he’s a bad date. In fact, from what Gun observed, he seemed to be quite the green flag. He was leaning forward as they waited for the food, clearly interested, engaging in conversation, while his date remained a little stiff, but also a little pink on the cheeks, replying in short sentences. They shared a laugh before Gun arrived with their food, and when he looked up at Gun to thank him, Gun could swear his eyes reflected all the lights in the room.
Por whistles. “You noticed that?”
“Look,” Gun says, palm open in a clear sign that says hold on now, “I just mean he looked friendly! And warm! And very obviously nice to talk to!”
“Sure,” Por says.
Sure, Gun.
Anyway, he was very obviously nice to talk to, and Gun has no idea how that date managed to turn around, because one minute it was going well, the next minute the guy’s smile dropped and he went pale, mouth hanging open, and the girl was shaking her hands then clasping them, and, oh boy, yeah, that was it. It was halfway through their meal too, and they were both too polite to end it there, so they ate the rest of the food in such a state of complete silence that Gun had to visibly wince.
The girl said something — was that a wai? oh God — and then left.
Date boy seemed dejected. Hunched over the table, mouth pulled into a thin line, swirling his drink absentmindedly. The saddest part is that it was not even alcohol, he was just swirling soda around.
Maybe it was the very fact that he was not getting shitfaced in those trying times of rejection that got Gun to move. Or maybe it was the pathetic kicked puppy look on his face. Or maybe Gun just felt highly benevolent on that day.
If you asked Gun the reason, he would not be able to give you a clear answer.
“He has the emotional awareness of a goldfish,” says Pat, and Gun takes offense to that.
As it were, it happened like this: Gun took one look at that dejected man, walked up to him with the menu in hand, offered his brightest smile, and said, “Would you like to have your dessert now?”
The young man blinked a little owlish at him.
“I didn’t order any.”
“Are you sure, khun? We have the best oh aew outside of Phuket.”
He still looked a little lost. But something in Gun must have convinced him, because a few beats later he said, “Okay.”
Now, Gun’s boss would be pretty proud of him for securing another order out of that failed date, but the truth is, Gun wouldn’t even charge the man if he could. Whenever he lost an audition, his mother would make him the sweetest shaved ice to cheer him up, so when he saw that crumbled paper bag of a man, he wanted to give him some sugar.
Maybe the man said something to fuck up his date, but Gun’s gut didn’t agree, so he did what he wanted. And Gun was not known for making choices agreed by the general population (or even his band mates).
So, he did bring the dessert to the man, and also a little extra. He watched from afar as the man ate all of his sweet treat before he noticed the message Gun left on his paper napkin: Don’t give up. It’ll be better next time.
“But I’m the romantic, I’m the embarrassment,” Por says. “You left him a love message—”
“It wasn’t a love message, it was—”
“—And then you bolted to the kitchen before he made eye contact with you!”
“—not for the eye contact! Or any contact! I just wanted to cheer him up a little! He looked really damn sad, Por.”
Like a kicked puppy, as we established. And Gun’s message did have the desired effect. The corner of his lips immediately curled up, his smile a shy, tight-lipped thing. Gun couldn’t see anything else due to the aforementioned bolting, but he did see the smile, and he understood why people wrote about making others happy. It was a great feeling.
Seeing the guy on his second date was less of a great feeling.
Not because Gun was embarrassed or anything (quote, unquote), and the guy was pretty nice and his tip was even nicer, but now his date was a guy. A very good-looking guy with possibly the best hair Gun has ever seen, and it made Gun feel some type of way.
As soon as the pair sat down and Gun didn’t move towards them, Por had so many questions, expressed not with words, not with any proper language, but a secret third way (moving his eyes back and forth between Gun and the pair and widening them each time Gun refused to move). Resigned, Por walked to them himself, friendly and ready to take their order, while Gun pretended his thoughts were leading somewhere coherent.
Of course he didn’t have problem with the other guy. Gun would never be the kind of singer that sang of just one type of love. Especially because, in theory, Gun didn’t have experience with any kind other than platonic and cuddling with Por when it wasn’t too hot. And hey, the girl didn’t work out (maybe his guy snored? Wait, not his guy, fuck), so maybe he’d have better luck with a guy.
They certainly seemed to vibe. From the window in the kitchen, he watched as the pair talked, relaxed and close, feet touching under the table. At one point, guy-with-good-hair grinned wide and appeared to reach forward to pinch the other’s cheek and oh, the other was definitely blushing.
Huh. Now that was new.
But the guy wasn’t smiling, at least not in the same way that he had smiled in his previous date, or the way he smiled when Gun gave him his napkin message. Not that Gun was categorizing his smiles or anything, that seems a little creepy, actually? Maybe? In any case, the guy kept looking around even after Por brought them their meal, a little distracted, and even though he seemed to get along pretty well with this date, guy-with-good-hair still excused himself and left first.
Gun wasn’t an expert on dates in any capacity, but he did have to wonder what green-flag-guy was doing to get ditched so easily.
“Maybe he’s oversharing,” Por suggests. “Maybe he has an overbearing mother and it’s scaring people away.”
“Maybe he has bad breath,” Win quips.
“He doesn’t,” says Gun, who would know.
“You’d know,” says Yo.
“I think we should start band practice,” says Gun, moderately, getting off his chair at a normal speed.
“Pat’s still in the bathroom,” Win says, and Gun groans, sitting back down, looking over their setlist, willing band thoughts over guy thoughts.
“It’s not that bad to have a crush, you know,” says Por in a very amiable, sweet voice. Gun groans again.
Because the third time had been the worst.
It was on the third time he came to the restaurant that Gun saw him in glasses for the first time. He was also wearing a blue vest and white pants, and it was all so pastel and friendly that he looked like he had walked out of a laundry detergent commercial. If Gun touched his vest, he would probably feel it dip softly under his touch. Not that Gun had any touching thoughts. That’s ridiculous.
Especially not with the guy’s date glaring at him in such a way that Gun almost feared for his life.
Almost. He had never backed down from a confrontation in his life.
(Por resented that.)
When he walked to their table, glasses guy did seem to perk up at him. He was all smiles — the small, timid ones that made him look like an emoji — and friendly, asking, “What do you suggest?”, as if he and Gun and his date all miraculously shared the same taste.
Gun was not sure if his date even blinked the whole time he was there to take their order.
“Is it even a date this time?” Por asked, brows furrowed, speaking to Gun from behind a menu.
“I think so?” Gun tried. The angry one kept his arms crossed but glasses guy was leaning forward, trying to appeal to him in some way or another, and Gun was glad to see that he was not so fucking easy that the guy’s eyes only melted his insides. Arms were uncrossed, eyes were rolled, and the man… flicked glasses guy on the forehead? “Is that romantic?”
“When I was in fifth grade, maybe.”
They both tilted their heads, musing over definitions of love.
And there was definitely something there from the way the guy glared at Gun in a very pointed, gratuitous way when he brought them their order. There was also something about how glasses guy kept adding meat to his date’s plate, as if trying to please him. But again, once the dishes were clean, his date stood up and left, and glasses guy remained there, in his pastel blue silence.
“I feel bad for him,” Gun told Por.
“Why though?” Por asked. “I mean, he seems nice, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen bad dates.”
Gun shrugged. Because he kept trying, even after that disastrous first date? Because he seemed nice, always appearing interested in his date when they spoke? Definitely the rather pleasant color scheme of his clothes, if Gun were being honest.
Or maybe, really, it was the way he looked up at Gun when he walked to him. Pretty eyes, looking right at Gun’s.
“Would you like to order dessert, khun?” Gun asked. Since your date has left again.
He smiled, and it looked cuter now that he was wearing his silly round glasses.
“Yes, Khun Gun.”
Gun took a slight step sideways and almost tripped over his own feet.
Wait, wait. The nametag. He was wearing a nametag, of course. Fucking idiot.
Something must have showed on his face, because glasses guy had his hand raised in the air, almost ready to touch him, before awareness hit them and he placed it back on the table, while Gun looked down at his notepad to write the guy’s order.
“I think,” he told Por, after the guy had eaten his dessert and left him a generous tip again, “that he reminds me of someone.”
“Who?” Por asked, holding the menu to his chest.
“I don’t think you know them.”
“Gun, I know everyone you know.”
“Obviously,” Gun said, because it wasn’t a lie. “It’s not like I knew them either.”
“That makes no sense.”
But it did to Gun. Not as a tangible person, but more like… A feeling he had back in high school. Sitting in the back of the class, watching those in front. Those who were smarter than him and would definitely get into their university of choice. Those who tutored others, and spoke well in school assemblies. Gun wouldn’t say he knew any of them well, or that he had like one of them in particular, just… When Gun thought of high school, he remembered his band practices, the school festivals, and his class president who always knew his name and hyped his songs on the school radio.
“You have a very specific taste,” said Por, after Gun expressed those feelings in something less put together.
“Shut up,” Gun fired back eloquently.
But worse than the confusion, worse than paying attention to the guy every time he came back to the restaurant, worse than having a crush for possibly the first time in his life, was how, not even a week later, on an inauspicious Friday night, glasses guy’s angry date showed up at Pat’s garage, where the band practiced, with a guitar on his back.
Gun made an excellent second impression by choking on air.
“Instagram,” the guy said, taking his phone out of his hoodie’s pocket and waving it around, like it was a flyer. “You said you’re looking for a guitarist.”
Por was looking at Gun very attentively. Gun vowed not to make eye contact with him for at least 3 business days.
“Yeah,” he said, pretending to tune his own guitar. “Yeah, sure, let’s see what you got.”
One song later, Gun had to admit that he was infuriatingly good.
“Gun, I think we might actually win an audition like this,” said Yo, awestruck, looking at them as though he was seeing them like a real band for the first time and not like they had been playing together for the past several years. He would definitely be paying for barbecue next Tuesday.
“I’m Sound,” glasses-guy’s-last-date said.
“Holy shit,” said Win meaningfully. Everyone just stared at him.
Apparently, Sound was kind of a big deal online.
Unfortunately for Gun, all he could think of was Sound wiping sauce off glasses guy’s face with his thumb, kicking him under the table, and then calmly listening to whatever glasses guy was rambling about.
Was he the one? Did they meet again after that date? Was glasses guy going to show up one day during band practice to pick Sound up for a date, and then Gun would watch them—
“We’re not dating,” Sound said, and Gun turned towards him so quickly that he’d be feeling that in his neck for the weekend at least.
“What?”
Sound leveled him with a look. Gun was growing wary of the fact that Sound could read his mind.
“I’m not dating Tinn,” Sound continued, putting his guitar away. “You looked like you were curious.”
Out the corner of his eye, he could see that Por’s eyebrows were raised to his hairline. In his head, Gun was already trying to run the math of how long he could go without talking to Por before he came barging into his bathroom so he didn’t have where to run.
“I’m not,” Gun said, fiddling with the strap of his guitar.
“Who’s Tinn?” asked Pat.
“No one, good night,” Gun said, fleeing the scene without even getting Sound’s number to add him to their groupchat, which prompted Por to call him later that very night.
“He said they’re childhood friends,” Por said in a tone that made Gun feel like he was five years old. And also wonder why Por and Sound were talking about glasses guy — Tinn — while he wasn’t there.
“It’s literally not any of my business. Can’t you just send me Sound’s number?” A pause. “Please?”
It’s not like they couldn’t date just because they were childhood friends; Gun had watched plenty of dramas with his mom to know that. And still, it’s not like it was any of his business who Tinn dated or not. He actually wanted Tinn to find a nice date, because he looked nice, and he looked like he was trying. Whenever his mom talked about his father, her face would take on a different kind of glow, and she could talk for hours. Tinn looked like he could talk for hours, too. He seemed to talk plenty in his dates, so Gun was sure that love would look good on him, in his eyes—
His dark, round, sparkly eyes.
Lying in his bed, Gun hit his hand against his forehead, as he would many times after that.
He knew there was nothing wrong with having a crush. Crushes would render many good memories and many a good song and it was only natural, of course, but... Every time he looked at Tinn at the restaurant, he felt like he was intruding. Like he was looking at someone from a completely different world, and by following the curve of his smiles and the way the tip of his hair fell softly against his cheek, he was being inappropriate. Seeing more than he was supposed to see.
And Tinn would raise his eyes and find his, and it would make him panic.
“Gun,” Por says, and he drags the syllable of his name, dejectedly. “You’re killing me.”
“You’re being too harsh on yourself, man,” Pat adds, patting him on his back.
“He’s coming to the gig, isn’t he? So he wants to be around,” Yo says.
“What do you have to lose by asking him out?” Win asks, crossing his arms.
Gun almost drops his water bottle.
“I don’t want to ask him out!”
“You literally do,” Win deadpans.
“Gun, they’re right,” Por says, and Gun knows, and he hates it, and he’s going to murder Por in his sleep for explaining to the others who Tinn was.
He didn’t mean to crush on the guy. He didn’t want to do anything about it. He didn’t mean to ask him to come to their gig. He just…
When Tinn came back for his fourth date, Gun was at the end of his shift, so he didn’t even serve him. He was in the break room, with a single earbud in his ear, singing along to the song he was planning to use to open the gig they managed to land at the end of the month. A song about finding someone in the big wide city, who shows up against all odds and stands beside you. Gun had sung it many times before, ever since high school, but when he sang it that day, it sounded different to his ears.
As if it had changed color.
He stopped singing at that verse, letting the instrumental rush over him. It was raining that night, so there was the melody in one ear, the pouring rain in the other, and sweet eyes filled with stars before his eyelids.
It’s so strange how even the most well-beloved verses can take the shape of a person if you let them.
When he walked through the restaurant on the way out, he did see Tinn there. Sitting at a table alone, squinting at his phone. He must have forgotten his glasses, Gun thought, and smiled despite himself. Was he stood up? Gun didn’t think a guy like Tinn could be stood up. But then again, he didn’t know anything about him. Not his hobbies, not his profession, not anything about his life. And Gun was nobody to him. Just a server without a college degree, trying to make it in an industry that didn’t care about him.
He walked out and stood by the porch, waiting for the rain to subside. Patrons walked past him, running towards their cars, and Por left him on read, probably too busy eating dinner to reply to Gun.
The pattering of the raindrops against the roof of the restaurant, coupled with the sound of the cars on the road before him, kept him from noticing the footsteps that approached and stopped by his side.
“Did you get stood up too?”
He turned sharply to the side, coming face to face with Tinn.
Was he always that tall, or did he grow taller in the short couple of months since their first meeting?
“Ah,” Gun said after a few seconds of staring into Tinn’s eyes, “no, actually, my roommate is already home. I’m trying to decide if I should call a taxi or make a run for the bus stop.”
Tinn hummed, and Gun’s eyes strayed from his control, falling from Tinn’s eyes, down to his mouth, and then to his neck. He was wearing a light blue button-up that day, but with the first four or five buttons undone. It was a physical effort to look away.
“I’d offer you a ride but,” he paused, laughing, showing off beautiful pearly teeth. “I’m not confident enough to drive in the rain without my glasses.”
To think that even Tinn had things he didn’t feel confident about.
“Guess we both lost our chance at free rides tonight then,” Gun said, a lopsided smile playful on his lips.
“Oh, God, no,” Tinn said, making a face. “Kajorn has road rage, I’d rather run to the bus stop too.”
They chuckled together, and turned back towards the rain. The city was just a blur, making it seem as if only them and the restaurant were tangible and real.
“Are you a singer?”
Something in his expression when he faced Tinn again must have made him shy, because Tinn quickly shook his hands, palm up, before clasping them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude, I swear I was just looking for the bathroom, but I heard you... singing, earlier.”
Gun had been a singer for many years already, but he could feel his neck and ears flushing at Tinn’s admission. As if Tinn could have read his emotions, transparent like glass, from the way he sang. Por always said that he was bad at lying, and that he could tell what Gun was feeling by the way he sang each song. But even if Tinn heard him, there was no way he could know who the one person among the million others in the rain-soaked city was.
“Yeah,” Gun said eventually, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He kept his eyes in the rain, but he could see Tinn visibly exhale beside him. Again, like it was impossible to stop it, a smile tugged at his lips. “My band is performing at Rendezvous on New Year’s.”
Before his brain could catch up, his mouth said,
“Do you want to come?”
He kept his hands inside his pockets as he turned to look at Tinn. For every purpose, it was a casual invitation, speaking nothing of the thudding of his heart against his ribcage. And if Tinn thought anything of it, the only thing he showed was a momentary surprise, a slight widening of his eyes. The seconds in which they looked at each other seemed to stretch, and the space between them seemed to shorten. It felt like, if Gun tilted his head slightly upwards, he could feel Tinn’s breath against his lips. The rain receded, but still echoed its pitter-patter like calm, static noise.
Someone bumped into Gun’s shoulder as they left the restaurant and ran, and just like that, the ticking of seconds resumed.
“Yeah,” Tinn said, just as Gun regained his posture after almost tripping into the curb. His smile was a pretty thing, pleased and shy all at once. “I’ll be there.”
Warmth took over Gun’s chest, and that was all he could take that night.
He nodded and started to sprint into the rain, but stopped when Tinn called for him to wait.
“I’m Tinn, by the way!” he said.
Gun felt really proud of himself.
“I know!” he answered, waved, and turned to run, the song in his earbud resuming, surrounding the night in melody.
And this is now: bar Rendezvous, New Year’s Eve. After the exposé about his feelings before the show, his bandmates didn’t exactly call Gun out about Tinn, but they didn’t not say anything. “You haven’t stop shaking your leg in the past half hour, you know that, right?” said Por, and “Do you have stage fright tonight?” asked Pat with a frown, and “If you don’t stop pacing around, I’m going to break your legs,” promised Sound.
Gun isn’t nervous. He isn’t. He can sing perfectly fine, they had rehearsed despite everyone’s schedule; not even Yo cancelled a single time. It’s fine, it’s all fine. A crush — and he will give you that, okay, maybe it is a crush by the way something unfurls in his stomach when he thinks about the way Tinn looked at him — won’t impact his performance. Nothing can possibly beat singing on stage with both his parents in the audience when he was in third grade, and if he survived that, he can survive a beautiful boy in the audience of a warm-lit bar.
But he sees Tinn in the audience as he’s adjusting his mic, and he goes deaf for a second. Just like the night outside the restaurant, even if there is no rain now, the rest of the world is just static. He’s wearing his glasses tonight, and his jacket is a beautiful forest green. Gun is once again thrown back to memories of high school, of their P.E. uniforms, of big crowds and loud laughter during sports events. The smell of chlorine from the school pools, the taste of lemon soda in his mouth.
Gun doesn’t really understand why Tinn brings him back to when he was seventeen, but one thing is certain: every day was so bright and alive when he was seventeen. Maybe Tinn is just like that — a tilt in the axis of his world, a pocket time machine. There is no other time to feel as intensely as one does when they’re seventeen.
He wants to know him. To talk to him. To sing to him.
And then Gun notices the man beside Tinn. The handsome curls of his hair and his cat-like smile.
If his guitar hadn’t been securely strapped around him, he might have dropped it.
“Ready?” Por asks him, and he must have seen something in Gun’s face, because he frowns and asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Gun says, without much conviction. He looks at Por, blinks, and says more firmly, “Yeah, of course. Let’s do this.”
Pat times the one-two-three with his drumsticks, and the rest is as easy as breathing.
Tinn spends the entire time with his eyes on him. Good-Hair talks to him a couple of times, but mostly he smiles at the band too, moving his head to the rhythm. It’s still a couple of hours until the countdown, and Gun sings with abandon. They take a few requests from the patrons, and Tinn sings along. When Gun sings his own songs, the light glows pink in Tinn’s glasses and he closes his eyes, Gun’s lyrics falling over him like rain.
About half an hour before midnight, the band takes a short break. For a brief moment, Gun wonders if Sound will walk up to Tinn, but he walks away with Win. The rest of his friends scatter, taking their bathroom break or drinking break or simply doing anything other than walking up to their crush, sitting beside their stool at the bar, and ordering carbonated water.
“You’re incredible,” says Tinn, loud and clear and close to his ear, and Gun tries to convince himself he does not shiver. “I can’t believe I had never heard of you guys before.”
“Do you hang out at bars often?” Gun asks. Tinn’s mouth opens and closes without a word and Gun can’t help laughing at him. “That’s what I thought. What about your...”
Gun lets his sentence hang there when he notices Good-Hair is nowhere to be seen. Tinn glances behind him in slight confusion, before it dawns on him. His thought processes are so transparent, Gun wants to scream at him to stop being cute.
“Tiw’s enjoying it greatly. He seems to have a particular interest in your keyboardist.”
Gun blinks at Tinn. Tinn points at somewhere over Gun’s shoulder, and it takes him a moment before he sees them — Por holding a water bottle and talking animatedly to Good-Hair, the latter bending slightly to Por’s height, listening attentively. It’s only when he hears Tinn giggle that he notices his jaw had dropped.
“Por’s super shy, I don’t think he’s taken so quickly to someone before,” Gun says, sipping his drink.
“Tiw is very good with people. It was always difficult to study with him; the entire grade came to ask him to tutor them. There were so many people at one point that he had to use the gym once.”
Gun laughs, looks at Tinn as he rests his elbow on the bar counter and rests his chin on his palm. Gun rests his arms on the counter as well, sustaining Tinn’s gaze.
“What about you?” Tinn asks.
“What about me?” Gun shoots back.
“Do you come here often?”
Gun’s both surprised and delighted, another laughter bubbling out of him.
“Was that a pick up line?” he asks, brows furrowed but an unstoppable grin on his lips.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tinn says, and the pink on his cheeks doesn’t seem to come from the lighting. “Do you want it to be?”
Gun shakes his head and the drink in his glass.
“You’re ridiculous. This is why your dates don’t work out, you know?”
And he didn’t mean to mention it, he really didn’t, but now it’s out and he’s looking at Tinn, and Tinn is looking away. Gun could take it back. He could make an excuse and walk away, but the distant look in Tinn’s eyes isn’t scary. He seems to think about something before he looks at Gun again, and there it is. The look Gun hasn’t been able to stop thinking about.
Tinn looks at him like he’s the only person in the room, and the one who shines the brightest.
“The first date was something my mother asked of me, and as pleasant as it was at first, it would never work out because the girl already had a girlfriend. Do you know why I kept coming back, Gun?”
Gun couldn’t answer, his whole being taken by anticipation.
Tinn leans in, head tilted slightly to the side. Gun finds that he likes having to look up to look at Tinn, unlike all the other times at the restaurant when Tinn looked up at him.
“It was for you. I wanted to see you.”
It stirs something inside of Gun. Maybe he’s blushing, maybe he’s blinking, but he can’t look straight at Tinn anymore. He licks his lips, bites them, finishes his drink, and then his friends are calling him, waving him back to the stage. Gun gives them a thumbs up, before he turns to Tinn again.
Tinn’s smiling. Pretty and friendly and inviting in baby blue.
“See you next year, Tinn,” Gun says, flashing him a grin. Tinn’s eyes become crescent moons when his smile widens.
Gun’s the one who does the countdown. And when he shouts, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”, he and Tinn can’t look away from each other.
“I don’t want to go,” Tinn whines, dragging every word, clinging to Gun’s middle. Gun pats Tinn’s clasped hands on his stomach and Tinn’s cheek as he hooks his chin over Gun’s shoulder.
“Tinn, it’s fine if you can’t go tonight,” Gun says, and Tinn drags him along with his ridiculous movements as he sways from one side to the other.
“I want to be there,” he says. “It’s our anniversary. I’ll ditch my shift if I have to.”
“You’re doing no such thing,” Gun says, making eye contact with Tinn through the mirror. Tinn tries to hide his face in Gun’s neck, but Gun sighs and turns around in his arms to face him.
“Tinn,” he says, but Tinn interrupts him.
“We’ve been apart for too long. I can’t remember the last time I heard you sing that wasn’t through my earbuds.”
“Last night, in the shower?” Gun asks, cocking an eyebrow. Tinn frowns, as it is a matter of great importance.
“Doesn’t count, you weren’t even on key. Gun,” he continues his whining before Gun can hit him for that comment.
“Tinn. We can always plan something for Valentine’s Day, if you want,” Gun says, hands resting on Tinn’s neck.
“But it’s our anniversary,” Tinn says, and he’s honest to God pouting, Gun is dating the world’s most overgrown fifteen-year-old. “I was looking forward to it.”
His antics are playful but his eyes are always honest. He’s so sad, and Gun is once again faced with the fact that Tinn likes him so damn much. He wants to kiss him, give in and spend the entire day inside the house with him, doing everything and nothing.
But his mom has raised him better than that and he will not give in to his boyfriend’s clingy impulses.
That doesn’t mean he can’t try and make him feel better.
“Today isn’t our anniversary,” Gun says, and Tinn’s frown deepens somehow.
“Yes, it is.”
Gun pretends to try and remember, eyes glancing up.
“I gave you the napkin back in... October? The 20th, I believe.”
Tinn’s whole face changes, lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“You’re counting our anniversary as the day we met?”
Gun rises on his tiptoes, pecks Tinn on his silly, pretty lips.
“It can be if we want to,” he says, thumbs brushing against Tinn’s flushed cheeks. “Or it can be the day you heard me sing for the first time. We can celebrate anytime we want. We can celebrate whenever you get home, no matter how late it gets, and then in the morning again.” He backs away from Tinn’s space as an idea hits him. “Oh, do you want to have a brunch date? At the new place that just opened.”
Tinn doesn’t answer. He pulls Gun against him, arms around his middle, nose nestling in the space between Gun’s neck and shoulder which he claimed for himself.
“I do. I want to have all the dates with you,” he says, just to make Gun tremble again, like a teenager in love for the first time. (It is his first, and it as wonderful as the songs say.) “I don’t want to leave you at all. Let’s ditch work today.”
Gun is already dressed though. And the sun that filters through the window is warm, and the birds are chirping, and although Gun loves to be in Tinn’s arms, he does want to go through his day, see all the vivid colors of the last day of the year where he had Tinn and Tinn had him. A winter day that was like a summer day.
Gun whispers, “See you next year, doctor Tinnaphob,” kisses Tinn’s temple, and then backs away and runs before Tinn can react.
He giggles throughout his day, because he’s lovesick and disgusting and annoying and a nuisance like all his friends say he is.
Sound, in his most benevolent, shakes his head at him almost fondly during practice. Gun can only hope that it means Tinn’s oldest friend approves of him for a long time.
Ten minutes before countdown that night, the door to the Rendezvous opens and Tinn walks in, panting and beaming and beautiful. He’s forgotten his glasses again, like an idiot.
Gun kisses him while everyone shouts, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” A long kiss, lips parting and coming together again and again. Kissing had never been as good as when Tinn kissed him for the first time, under a lamppost on a sweet night in January. Gun keeps track of that anniversary, too, and of so many other memories, until he has so many firsts to keep track of that it all blurs together as a life shared with Tinn.
He kisses Tinn until he gets tired of it and then some more, until his friends start playing the first song of the year on stage, and their kiss breaks with a soft pop. Gun grins, the happiest he is on the first day of the year, backs away from Tinn, the person who gives meaning to all of his songs, tall and giddy and in love with him, and then, Gun sings.