Work Text:
I sit down for dinner
with my dead brother
again
- Michael Dickman, Killing Flies
Macau remembers meal times as joyous events. The tables were always overflowing with foods and drinks and the air was always thick with cigarette smoke. There was never a quiet moment around these tables. Those moments here were always full of chatter and laughter.
Now most of the tables have been pushed to the side because there is no need for them. It’s quiet like at a funeral.
There were very few who survived the blood path at the Main Family residence. There were even fewer people who stayed when Uncle Korn dismissed them. They had just watched their family die in front of their eyes. No one believed it when his uncle said they would be safe.
Macau doesn’t know whether to worry more about those who stayed or those who left. People became a part of the Minor Family because they had nowhere else to go. Where did they go now?
Gun Theerapanyakul was not a good man and he was even worse father but he did one thing right. He gave many people who had nothing, everything. When you swore loyalty to him you never again had to worry where you would get your next meal from or whether you have a roof over your head or not.
The Minor Family was a family in every sense of the word.
They lived in the same quarters and ate every meal together. They celebrated birthdays and holidays together. They read books and watched movies and played games together. They lived together. And most of them died together, too.
(He feels almost guilty for being alive.)
Macau sits on the same place he always does, on Vegas’ right-hand side. Father’s head bodyguard sits across the table from him. The deep cut on the left side of his face is finally starting to scar. It pulls the corner of his mouth upward as if in eternal smirk.
Pete sits next to the older man and smokes his third cigarette. The plate in front of him remains untouched. The auntie who has cooked most of the meals Macau has eaten in his life sits at the other end of the table, glaring at the other man. That was the look that got him and Vegas to eat their greens when they were young after father’s threats of violence had failed. He doesn’t know how Pete is unaffected by that piercing stare.
His father’s seat at the end of the table remains empty.
Not out of respect for the previous head of the Minor Family. No, some days Macau wants to burn the chair to get it out of his sight.
And it’s not because it technically belongs to Porsche now. No, the other man would die by Macau’s hands before he could even attempt to sit on it.
The seat stays empty because it belongs to Vegas. He was born to sit on that chair. He was born to become the next leader of the family. And because he never had the chance to do so, Macau will make sure no one else sits on that chair ever again.
Sometimes, at the heart of night when he can’t sleep, he tiptoes to the dining area and just stands there, beside the chair. Sometimes he runs his fingers along the wood and wonders. What if.
What if he pried the damned ring out of Porsche’s fingers and sat on that chair? What if he fought for the family he lost? What if–
“Macau?” Pete asks, pulling him back to earth from his thoughts.
“Hmm?”
“I think we should leave.”
He is so surprised by the statement that he finds himself at a loss for words. Leave? Yes, he did spend all his life looking for a way out of here. But it wasn’t because he wanted to leave this place. It’s his home. The only home he has ever known. It wasn’t because he wanted to leave these people. They were his family.
It was his father who he wanted to get away from. And now, with him gone, why would he leave? Where would he go?
“I don’t mean forever,” Pete says, breathing smoke into his lungs. “Just for a while. The house is…”
Too big. Too empty. Too full of memories. Macau knows that all too well.
“I think it would do good for you,” father’s main bodyguard says.
The few people around the table nod in agreement. Who is he to say no to them? They are what he has left of his family. These people have always been more of a family to him than his father ever was, despite sharing the same blood.
It was the auntie who hushed him back to sleep after a nightmare when Vegas wasn’t home. It was the head bodyguard who patched up his bruised knees when Vegas couldn’t. His father barely looked at him.
He turns to look at the house – his home. He can’t see inside because of the sunset reflected on the windows. It looks like the rooms are on fire. Macau doesn’t know if he hopes it was true or if he is grateful that it’s not.
He knows that if the building truly was on fire, he would run into the flames to save what is left of his dead brother, even if it killed him. His books, at least the one on his nightstand with bookmark near the end. The red shirt that was Vegas’ favorite. The handgun his brother had given him when he barely knew how to drive a bike and told him to shoot if father ever tried to touch him like he had touched Vegas.
How could he leave all that behind? Even just for a while?
How could he leave Vegas behind?
As if reading his thoughts, Pete says; “we can take him with us.”
Okay. Macau nods.
“Where are we going to go?”
Pete’s grandmother has a place on the countryside, by the water. It’s a small place, nothing fancy like what Macau is used to but it’s remote, the other tells him. She has a cat. Small black creature with feisty spirit and sharp teeth. The cat is named Venice.
She has fruit trees in her backyard and there is a little swing on her porch. The sunsets are prettier there than they are in the city.
It sounds lovely. It sounds like a place Vegas would have loved. His brother loved the city – in a way. He loved driving too fast in fancy cars and he loved eating in expensive restaurants. He loved the city lights and night-life.
But really, his brother was a simple man. He loved reading books in his room. He loved playing with his hedgehogs. And Macau hopes he loved spending time with his brother as much as he did.
When Vegas was at the safe house with Pete, somewhere far away, he sounded happier on the phone than Macau remembers him ever sounding before. He hates Pete a little for that. For being able to witness that small moment of joy and peace in his brother that he never got the chance to see.
Pete talks and makes plans but Macau barely listens.
Suddenly he feels like a child once more and he wants to take his brother’s hand under the table and he wants the other to smile at him and promise it’s all going to be alright. But his brother isn’t here and he is afraid he doesn’t know how to do any of this without him. How to do life without him.
Macau always knew Vegas would die young, living in this kind of world filled with violence. He just didn’t expect it to be so young. So soon.
He wasn’t prepared. Making plans about going away, even if it’s just for a moment, it scares him. He was supposed to go away with Vegas. They were supposed to find a way out of here and be happy somewhere else. Somewhere far away from father and the Main Family. Somewhere far away where they could live a different kind of life.
They are going to take Vegas with them but it’s not the same. When you look at him, there is a golden urn where his face should be. And on the decorative mirror glass, you can only see your own grief staring back to you.
“Would you like to have some more rice, Macau?” The auntie asks him with a warm smile, pulling him out of his own thoughts.
Macau doesn’t remember his mother, she passed away when he was very young. Sometimes people would ask him if he missed her. How could he? He didn’t know her. But he knows these people. And these people know him. These people are his family – or what is left of them.
He nods thankfully at her and she fills his bowl.
He is going to leave. He is going to take his brother with him. And he is going to come back because even if Vegas is gone, he still has family and his family is here.
The dinner continues in silence. It makes Macau’s skin crawl; it feels so unnatural. He wonders if the others feel the same. He wonders if any of them will ever get used to it.
He takes a spoonful of food. It’s Vegas’ favorite. It’s his favorite. But everything has tasted like ash on his tongue since his brother died.
He swallows anyway.