Chapter Text
Being Nuengdiao Kiattrakulmethee’s bodyguard was an interesting job. It wasn’t exactly what Eve imagined doing with her life, say, five years ago, but she enjoyed it. It would have probably sucked, if she was one of the many nameless bodyguards of some random rich guy who didn’t deserve protection in the first place, but, first of all, she was Khun Nueng’s most trusted bodyguard, and, second of all, he was actually a surprisingly decent person. Most people would expect a twenty-three-year-old rich kid who inherited a fortune worth millions of baht to be careless, spoiled, if not outright evil, but Khun Nueng was none of those things. He was wise and generous and even kind.
He was also kind of closed off in a way that made the possibility of friendship between them hover in the air, visible but out of reach. And maybe it was a bit weird to want to be friends with your boss, but, to be fair to Eve, he was the person she spent almost every second of her life with for the past year, which also meant that she barely had any time to meet anyone else the whole time she was living in Bangkok. He was also a decent person who she could sometimes genuinely talk to, and he was gay, which, despite what straight people might think, actually made him a perfect person for her, as a lesbian, to be friends with.
The main obstacle on the way to building that friendship, though, was that Eve simply could not figure Khun Nueng out. Whenever they talked about something casual or about her, conversations flowed smoothly, but the second she wanted to know something about him, he shut down. She was trying to figure out what made him build this wall around himself. His father dying on his eighteenth birthday? His mother being in a coma for months? The responsibility of the family business on his shoulders? The expectations? None of those things quite fit. So, what was it?
Eve would soon find out.
♡♡♡
“Thank you for your time, everyone,” Khun Nueng said, standing up from his seat at the head of the meeting table, polite as ever but still inspiring respect. “I will see you all next week.” He turned to Eve, who was standing to his right, as usual. “Let’s go to my office, I have a special task for you today.”
Khun Nueng usually did not ask her to do anything aside from standing next to him and occasionally jumping in front of both metaphorical and real bullets. He always needed at least one bodyguard by his side, and he always preferred it to be Eve, so she was surprised that she would clearly be assigned a different job, for the first time in her career.
“So” - Khun Nueng began as they walked into the office, straightening out his already perfectly placed tie - “I need you to track someone down for me and find out everything you can about his life. Where he lives, what he does. Is he married? Maybe to a girl named Maggie, I don’t know if they would have kept in touch… Kids? Is it too early for kids? Some people have kids at 20, so maybe not…” He was rambling. Eve had never seen him rambling in the entire year that she had known him.
“Khun Nueng, with all due respect” - and there was a lot of it due - “but isn’t it better to give this task to Ter or Amm? I’m not the best tracker, and I don’t really ever do jobs like this…”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted her. “Don’t worry, you won’t actually need to materialise him out of thin air like they usually do. I have an inkling where he might be, and, even if he isn’t there, it shouldn’t be too hard to follow him from there. Most importantly,” - he paused - “I need someone I trust to do this, and I need it done seamlessly. I don’t want you to seem like you are fishing for information, like you are a professional - you just need to talk to him, see how he’s doing. And report all the details back to me.”
Eve looked at him inquisitively, a twinkle of curiosity in her eye. “Who is this guy exactly?”
Khun Nueng was silent for a moment, as if trying to decide something, and then finally said, “He used to be my bodyguard. I just want to make sure he is doing well without roping him back into this life by showing up myself.”
Ah, so this is a personal task, Eve thought. Makes sense why he’d want to send me then.
“So you want me to track down my predecessor?”
Khun Nueng furrowed his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t call him that.” He coughed. “Regardless, here is what he looks like.” He handed her a printed-out photo of a smiling young man. He had a nice mid-length haircut, full lips, a sharp jawline, and ears that poked out a little more than most people’s. He also looked kind, somehow, which made Eve a little less anxious about talking to him. “There is an address of a bar & resort on the back. You should start your search there.”
Eve nodded. “What’s his name?” she asked, putting the photo into the pocket of her suit jacket.
“You will find out when you meet him,” Khun Nueng responded, finally ceasing his pacing around the office and sitting down, slightly less stressed than before. “Good luck.”
♡♡♡
Finding the bar Eve was supposed to start her search at was not too hard, though the journey there was not particularly pleasant - she was never a huge fan of buses, and the man sitting next to her was manspreading like he was trying to do the splits.
When she saw what the place looked like, she immediately breathed out: she would fit right in. The name ‘Jannaloy’ did not exactly scream ‘queer bar’, but literally everything else did. There were as many different pride flags as one could imagine, and pretty much all the patrons were queer as hell, at least as far as Eve’s gaydar could tell. Her I-am-a-lesbian-on-vacation outfit was right on the money.
She briefly thought back to what Khun Nueng was rambling about. He said the guy would probably have a wife by now, which sounded very heterosexual to her. Not because it was a guy with a wife, but because of the immediate wife assumption, as opposed to a bi/pan-appropriate partner assumption. For a moment she thought that she was fresh out of luck and this would be the first of many stops she would have to make trying to chase her not-exactly-predecessor, but then she turned to the bar.
The bartender had shorter hair, a couple of piercings, and an even more chiselled face than he had in the photo, but it was definitely the same guy. Luck was on Eve’s side today, after all.
As she was walking up to him, he noticed her immediately and smiled. “Welcome to ‘Jannaloy Bar & Resort’! Are you here for a drink, a room, or both?”
“Ehhhh…” she prolonged, feeling suddenly out of practice, socialisation-wise. “Just a drink, thanks.”
He nodded. “What would you like to start with?”
“I’ll have a…” - she quickly scanned the menu, looking for anything recognisable - “…a screwdriver”.
“You don’t drink very often, do you?” he asked, looking at her curiously before grabbing a vodka and a bottle of orange juice.
Eve chuckled. “Is it that obvious?” The bartender / Khun Nueng’s ex-bodyguard shrugged. It felt like she needed to explain why she was suddenly drinking, and she could not exactly say that she had been too busy working as a bodyguard to go to bars. “I just came out recently and really wanted to go somewhere gay-friendly, I guess.” That was a lie. She came out years ago.
“Oh! Well, congratulations, and welcome to the club,” he said, seeming genuinely excited for her.
“You are also a lesbian?” she joked.
“No,” he laughed. “But I’m also a homosexual, so we are kind of in the same boat, just from different sides of the river.”
Wife my ass, Eve thought. No offence, Khun Nueng, but your gaydar sucks.
“Here’s your screwdriver,” he placed the drink in front of her. “Let me know if the ratio is alright for you, and don’t be afraid to chat people up - everyone here is really friendly,” he said, pointing at the crowd.
Eve looked at him, panicked. She was, of course, afraid that their conversation would naturally come to an end there and she would have to awkwardly force all the necessary information out of him. He, however, clearly mistook her alarmed face for general anxiety at being in an unfamiliar environment.
“Or you can stay at the bar and chat with me,” he smiled kindly. “I’m Palm, by the way.”
“Eve,” she responded. “So are you like a bartender and a receptionist here at the same time?”
“I am the owner of this place, actually, so I just do everything. My friends do help sometimes, though,” he said, pointing at a nearby table.
There was a group of five people there. She couldn’t properly see the two sitting with their backs to her, but the other three - two guys and a girl - were directly in her line of vision. The first person who caught her eye was, of course, the girl sitting in the middle. She had beautiful, long brown hair, her makeup was very blush-heavy, making her look absolutely adorable, and she was wearing a jean jacket, which - even after sunset - meant she was dressed to impress, ignoring the weather. Frankly, it seemed like everyone at that table cared about fashion far more than they cared about comfort. The guy on the left was dressed casually, but in that “this could be worn to a red carpet and it would still work” kind of way, and the guy on the right, who had bright orange hair, was wearing a tight black long-sleeve that was cut to reveal his shoulders. They looked cool but also slightly intimidating.
“Do you want me to introduce you?” Palm asked, clearly noticing her interest.
“Maybe later,” Eve smiled awkwardly. “The owner though, huh? You seem like… really young, so that’s impressive.”
“Yeah, I’m just twenty-three, but this place belonged to my mother,” he responded, smiling but almost a little sad.
“Ah, so you inherited it.” That seemed to be the only way her generation could have anything nowadays, so she was not surprised.
“Kind of.”
Eve raised her eyebrow. “Kind of?”
“It was a little more complicated than that,” he sighed. “But I’m glad it’s mine now.”
Eve nodded, deciding not to pry. She was supposed to find out how he was doing, not the details of his business ownership. Speaking of which…
“So, you have your friends helping you, but what about a boyfriend?” she asked, trying to seem as nonchalant as possible. Judging by Palm’s face, she did not do a very good job of it. “I’m freshly out of the closet, I need some gay dating advice.” It was a weak excuse - the gay and lesbian dating scenes were very different - but Palm seemed to take the bait, no longer surprised at the line of questioning.
“Can’t help you with that, sorry,” he shrugged.
“So no boyfriend then?” She was not about to give up. With all that talk of wife and kids, this specific topic seemed of particular interest to Khun Nueng.
“No,” he responded simply.
“Well, you must have dated a couple of people before, right?”
“Just the one.”
“For how long?” It was like pulling teeth with the guy all of a sudden. It almost reminded her of how Khun Nueng reacted whenever she asked him anything about his dating life.
“A couple of months when I was eighteen.”
“Eighteen? That’s like five years ago!” she exclaimed.
“When you find your soulmate, there isn’t much point in being with someone else,” Palm responded, like it was the most normal thing to say. It was not. It was something that only heroes from romantic novels could come up with.
“Are you telling me you’ve never moved on from your first teen romance?”
Palm’s face turned sour. “It wasn’t just some teen romance, he is the love of my life,” he said with such confidence that Eve did not dare to question it anymore. “And when you find someone like that, you either want to be with them or no one at all. I don’t see a point in dating just for the sake of dating when the other half of my soul is out there and I know exactly who it is.”
While speaking, Palm began fiddling with the bracelet on his right hand. It was a woven brown one with some kind of pendant on its end. “Nice bracelet,” Eve said, trying to return the conversation to a more relaxed, casual path.
“Thank you,” Palm chuckled. “It used to be his, actually. Do you know the story of two lovers who were separated by Gods?”
“There are a lot of stories like that,” she responded. She was a bit of a mythology nerd, something she had in common with Khun Nueng. Their shared love of mythology was also one of the precious few things she actually knew about him.
“Ah, that’s probably true,” Palm nodded. “I only know the one. They were both offsprings of the Sun, and they were joined together. But then the Gods decided to punish them and separated them into two, so they had to search for each other. They only became one whole Sun” - he raised his right hand, and Eve saw what the pendant was, a Sun symbol - “when they reunited. Right now, I am just half a Sun.”
“Are you scaring customers with your sad romance stories again?” Eve suddenly heard someone ask. She turned to her right and saw that adorable girl in the jean jacket, one of Palm’s friends.
Palm looked at her, unimpressed. “Eve, this is Maggie. Maggie - Eve,” he introduced them.
Maggie, Eve recalled. I wonder if it’s the same Maggie Khun Nueng thought of. He also thought she might be Palm’s wife though, so what does he know anyway?
“Hi,” Maggie smiled, waving her hand and sitting down next to her.
“Nice to meet you,” Eve smiled back.
“Has he told you about the tattoo already?” she asked mischievously.
“No,” Eve responded. Palm sighed.
“Oh, please show it to her!” Maggie begged.
“I am kind of curious now,” Eve admitted.
“Fine,” Palm said, taking his Hawaiian shirt off, now only wearing a low-cut white tank-top. He turned around, revealing a small tattoo on his upper back.
“It’s his ex’s name,” Maggie whispered almost conspiratorially. But Eve did not need the clarification.
That specific name, written in Chinese, had become a symbol of the Kiattrakulmethee legacy. It was almost inescapable at the office, the hotels, pretty much any building Khun Nueng owned. That was her boss’s fucking name. On Palm’s back. They were exes. And not just exes. This guy, who waxed poetic about his soulmate and who might be the only person in the whole wide world that genuinely knows what love is, was talking about Khun Nueng. He was the other half of Palm’s Sun.
She thought back to Palm saying he was eighteen when he was dating his soulmate, to that story he clearly knew from some mythology buff, not being particularly knowledgeable about any other myths himself. She also thought back to what Khun Nueng was saying before he sent her off to find Palm. How he acted.
It’s a good thing I’m a bodyguard and not a detective, cause how did I not see this? Eve thought.
It was clear as day now. Khun Nueng was sending her to check up on his ex, his ex that he was still clearly not over. The wife, the kids - it was all him catastrophising, the worst case scenario of how someone he desperately wished to have back in his life could never step back into it. And this was also undeniably the thing that made him build walls around himself. Fucking bingo.
“Why the back?” Eve asked faintly, trying to say something, anything other than Nuengdiao’s name.
Palm almost started speaking, but Maggie beat him to it. “As a symbol of protection,” she said, mimicking his deep voice.
“How so?” Eve asked, genuinely curious and a little less shocked now.
“He had a pendant with the same symbol,” Palm explained. “Probably still does. It fell right here.” He pointed to the middle of his chest. “If he stood behind me, the tattoo and the pendant aligned.”
So the bodyguard thing wasn’t a lie, Eve thought. Definitely agree on him not being my predecessor.
“Ok, well, that’s enough sad ex stories for tonight,” Maggie interjected. “Eve, can I buy you a drink?”
She definitely did not mean it literally. Eve hadn’t finished her screwdriver yet, afraid that she might reveal herself somehow, if she was drunk. But her mission was over. All she needed to do now was tell Khun Nueng to stop being an idiot and come see Palm. (Maybe not in those exact words, but…)
“Sure,” Eve responded with a smile. If she woke up in Maggie’s arms the next morning, that was nobody’s business but her own. Khun Nueng can consider her showing up late to work payback for making her stalk his ex.