Chapter Text
Something is wrong with Nani.
He knows it sounds dramatic, but it’s true.
He’s noticed it since he left the airport after their Phuket trip, which in itself was already plagued with weird happenings, including but not limited to Nani’s sleep being infested with strange dreams that he could only remember bits and pieces of once he startled awake. The hours on which he was awake, however, he would suffer from an uncharacteristic seasickness almost the entire time. It was almost as if something inside him was changing, was being transformed without his knowledge.
This thought in itself, Nani belatedly realizes, already sounds like a sentence only a mental patient would casually think in their head — indicating that Nani already has a non-tedious foundation to support the argument that he is indeed losing his mind.
However, he swears he’s not hallucinating this, not when the changes show up and become clearer and clearer everyday.
At first it’s his stomach.
Slowly but surely, the toned abs that he had been accustomed to having almost his entire adult life, sinks away into soft flesh. No matter how much he works out, how many sit ups he does, how dizzy he makes himself doing planks, he can’t bring them back.
Putting up with a soft, pudgy stomach is one thing, but he also notices himself getting quite a bit weaker. He can’t lift as much, run as fast, push himself to work from morning until late at night like he used to. He’d tried, multiple times, but it always ends with him collapsing from exhaustion or quite literally passing out for a few minutes before several concerned crew members heave him upright and splash him with cold water.
The director of his new series had already given him several pep talks within just the past few weeks about pacing himself and taking care of his body because he could recognize that Nani is, in his words “on a rapidly deteriorating trajectory in terms of your health”, whatever that meant.
As a result, he feels as if he’s become soft everywhere else too.
The muscles in his arms lose their definition, and his cheeks become puffier, his jawline softening considerably.
Inevitably, it gets to a point where he can’t ignore it any longer. His pecs start growing in size, and become weirdly swollen and tender. He can’t even seem to squeeze into his favourite pair of work trousers because they’ve become too tight at the rear.
This is when the thought that he’d caught some rare disease enters his mind. Perhaps he’d caught something while on the trip. Of course, he doesn't tell people around him. There's no point in doing that. Even if it’s something serious, it’s not something they can help him with. Telling them would just make them worry for no good reason.
He does withdraw from his friends quite a bit though.
Namely, Sky.
He tells himself that it’s because they still don't know what's wrong, and so there's a chance whatever it is could pass to him. Perhaps being around Nani too much could be potentially putting Sky in danger, make him catch whatever weird thing Nani has. At least that’s what Nani constantly tells himself.
In his heart of hearts, though, even he doesn’t truly believe his own excuse. If this… condition were really contagious, Sky must be immune to it because he doesn’t seem to be going through any changes of his own, even though they’re around each other everyday. Sky still as lithe and muscular as ever, not a single sliver of squishy fat in sight.
Nani knows deep, deep down it’s because he's insecure in himself, and now even more self-conscious of his new appearance.
Nani had always believed that he isn’t handsome enough to be working around people like Sky. He never thought he looked good enough to be an actor. He had just found himself almost getting over it, reassured by their fan’s love and recognition, by their newfound popularity as a duo…
And when, finally, he had learnt to become comfortable in his own skin, had slowly begun to let go of his cool, tough protective facade, he's once again not himself anymore.
His body certainly doesn’t look like itself anymore, like the version Nani had grown accustomed to seeing.
its even harder when Nani is still acutely aware of how Sky noticed him in the first place. How it was his physique, his body and nothing else, that led them to the complicated situationship they’re in at the moment.
After a while, though, avoiding Sky without him noticing proves impossible, especially when they’re on a trip to Japan together for work. Claims of catching a cold, drowning himself in thick, oversized sweaters in the day to hide his deformed body from prying eyes in spite of the blaring heat can only fly for so long.
“Nani!” Sky bursts suddenly into his hotel room with a shopping bag in hand. He had probably just come back from one of the malls adjacent to their hotel.
“Nani is coming, Sky.” Nani places the half-finished bowl of ramen on the bedside table, the result of skipping group lunch with the crew to hole up in his hotel room early, feigning jet lag. The thought of eating in front of anyone right now, risking them seeing how much weight he’d gained, makes Nani queasy inside.
“Khun Nani, look!” holds up a huge throw blanket from across the room, eyes crinkling as he searches Nani’s face for a reaction.
At Nani’s bewildered expression, Sky breaks into an easy grin. “I’ve noticed you get cold easily nowadays, so I thought—“ He beckons Nani over and taps the empty space beside him on the hotel sofa. “This would help you, so you don’t have to keep wearing so many layers on the van. And it’s big enough for us both, so I won’t accidentally steal your half on the plane like I always do…”
Nani winces internally as he tries to keep his expression neutral. It’s one thing to tell Sky a fib and have him believe it, it’s another to have Sky repeat his lie back to him in such a trusting tone, with such disarming puppy-like innocence in his eyes. It makes Nani feel even more disgusting for hiding stuff from him.
“Come test it out. Cuddle with me.” Sky demands, “I’ll help you finish unpacking in a bit, I promise.”
“B—But—” Nani wiped his clammy hands against his pyjamas. “N-nani is almost finished. Just let Nani unpack the rest and I’ll be right with you—“
“Will you really?” Sky replies, suddenly quiet. “Or will you keep avoiding me once you’re done like you’ve been doing the entire day?”
He feels like he’d experienced something akin to a standing heart attack as he freezes in his tracks.
Sky’s easy smile melts into a frown as he takes in Nani’s evident panic. “Nani, did I….” The pleading expression in Sky’s face never fails to make his heart rattle a little in his rib cage. He could never say no to Sky, not even before he realized he’d fallen in love with him, and certainly not since. The boy turns him into mush instantly.
“Did I do something wrong?”
No. Nani wants to violently shake his head, but he stays frozen.
“I would apologize for being a nuisance at the airport and forgetting my passport today,” Sky looks so much like a kicked puppy right now, Nani wants to pull his hair out. “But I know it’s not that. You’d never get mad about me about something like that. And it’s not like this started just today. You’ve been avoiding me for days now.”
Nani let’s put an aborted breath in lieu of a response.
He’d assumed Sky hadn’t noticed, because Sky hadn’t acted any differently, even when he supposedly had known.
When Nani pulls away from his hugs, or turns away from a friendly poke on the cheek, or flinches away from a hand on the small of his back, Sky didn’t push him, or ask for an explanation. It created a false sense of relief thinking that Sky bought his flimsy excuse about a cold because — bar a few concerned remarks he had made about how Nani had to take better care of himself so that these bouts of ill health don’t happen again — Sky had pretended not to notice Nani's strange behaviour.
“Nani… Nani hasn’t.” The denial sounds weak to his own ears. He can’t even look at Sky. Instead, he takes the throw blanket being offered to him with his head down, scrunching the fabric in between his fingers. ‘100% cashmere’, the tag on it proudly proclaims.
“Nani really has just been feeling a little tired. I-it’s probably a bug from the movie set—“
He knows he shouldn’t keep lying, but in his head he really has no choice.
It’s not only his appearance Nani is concerned about. Apart from the tenderness in his chest, he’d noticed other weird things too. He’s so much more sensitive now, everywhere really, but most importantly in places that Sky touches. Every small brush across skin, every peck on the cheek, nose on his neck now makes him feel like he’s losing his mind, like he’d melt into a puddle on the floor under the strength of his own arousal.
This is leading to dangerous territory. It could spell the end of whatever Sky and Nani were at the moment.
They’re not lovers, not even anything more than friends…
But since that first night together, Nani had allowed himself to make the same mistake over and over again, like a druggie searching hopelessly for a fix. He’s not tough enough, resolute enough to resist when Sky whisper sweet promises into his ear about adoration and love… Again and again, he’ll let Sky tear off his clothes, let him crowd Nani against the nearest surface. Let Sky inside his body…
Sky never acknowledges it afterwards, so Nani doesn’t either. He knows, though, that this tedious physical attraction is only possible if the facade of aloofness and indifference to the feelings blooming in Nani’s chest stays up at all times.
It’s only gotten worse in the past few weeks. Nani can’t even touch himself, because every drag of his fingers across his own skin would make his knees weak from a mix of that pleasure and a weird type of pain (the kind he’d only experienced before from being overstimulated) that he had to give up quickly after starting. It scared him to no end. He can’t let Sky see him like that.
“Okay.” Sky nods after a pregnant pause. “Then how are you feeling now?”
“Nani—Nani is…” fine . He’s about to say. But he doesn’t. He just closes his mouth, a deer in headlights.
“You have to tell me if you…if it—if this thing gets worse.” Sky gives him a pointed look. This time, Sky doesn’t even pretend to believe him. “If it starts really bothering you. We can go to the hospital, figure something out…”
Sky had suggested the hospital the first time Nani mentioned the cold.
Nani had vehemently smacked down the suggestion, the embarrassment proving too much. How will he even explain to the doctors his symptoms? How will he ever be able to look at Sky straight again if he finds out what kind of freak Nani is slowly morphing into?
Perhaps if Nani gives it enough time, if he excercises harder still to build back the muscles, this…condition will go away on its own.
Sky places both hands gently, hesitantly on his waist. Nani fights successfully against the impulse to flinch away. He tries not to think about whether Sky can feel how plump his hips have suddenly become.
“I don’t want to have to be so distant from you all the time…” Sky looks like he was trying, desperate, to find the right words, but they never come, so he settles belatedly on “I miss you, Nani. A lot.”
Nani looks away. It’s sounds so perfectly platonic, the way Sky says it. If Nani wasn’t privy to what they’ve been up to these past few months, perhaps he too would have bought into it.
But he does know. The images of them tangled together burn like tattoos in the back of his eyelids, as clear as day even if Sky himself might not remember.
“Nani misses Sky too.” He blushes, mind subconsciously bringing him back to the last night they were together. The sounds, the way he had shamelessly let himself go, pinned under the younger’s grip. “Nani a…also doesn’t want to seem distant from Sky…”
They’re young men. Sky is only a few months younger then himself, but sometimes it feels like the age gap spans half a decade. They have physical needs. Nani knows how intense Sky can be, how his stamina can be both a blessing for him and a curse to anyone who might find themselves as his partner.
It must have been tough on Sky these past few weeks to go without sex.
Sky, taking the way Nani becomes suddenly pliant and spaced out as encouragement, pulls him swiftly back onto the sofa and into a tight back hug. A few months back, Nani would have pouted, gently scolding the younger for doing something so abrupt knowing how easily startled Nani can get.
But Nani had denied himself Sky’s touch for so long that this time, he can’t even find it in himself to complain.
“You’re so sweaty.” Sky murmurs against Nani’s temple, smoothing some of his unruly hair back out of his face. “Are you sure you’re not hot in that thing.” He eyes Nani’s wooly cardigan dubiously.
Nani let’s put a vague “Mhmm” in response. They’ve always been like this, lingering touches, innuendos, way too close to be strictly platonic. It’s only when they’ve had a few drinks in them that the line gets crossed completely.
He squirms in Sky’s lap as another thought enters his mind.
What if Sky gets tired of waiting? What if he tries to get his ‘fix’, so to speak, from somewhere else?
It’s not difficult for Sky to find a partner if he actively looks for one, especially in his position. He’s so handsome, and funny, with a goofy attitude that is balanced out by a face that looked like it came straight out of a runway.
Nani fidgets with the sleeve of his cardigan, biting his lip.
It would be so easy for Sky to replace him, for it to be someone else that he spends those drunken nights with. The mental image makes Nani physically sick.
“Sky” he blurts out before he can stop himself. “Let’s…Nani wants to have sex.”
”What?”
Nani knows he’s not thinking straight.
Sky is pressed tightly against his back, caging Nani in with his strong arms, hot breath on the small of his back, and Nani’s mind flashes back to the phantom touch of Sky’s strong thighs squeezing his waist, or his large hands running roughly down the arch of his back as he swallows Nani’s cries with his tongue.
“I…” Nani swallows. There’s no going back now. He’s acknowledged it for the first time, what they’ve done. There’s no more pretending…
“N-Nani…” he starts again, voice trailing off as he loses even more confidence. He can feel Sky’s gaze boring a hole into his back. “Nani wants to…w-with you—“
“Why—” the younger finally says, sounding like he’s choking a little on his words. “Why suddenly-“
Nani sucks in a breath, searching for something, anything. He stares at his hands. They’re shaking. “W-we haven’t done it in a while. And, I…I miss you.” Nani squeezes out, past the huge lump in his throat. “I want you.”
“But—“
“D-does Sky not want to?” Nani’s mind is in overdrive, running a mile a minute.
Do you not want me?
Now that I’m not pretending to be intoxicated like all the times we’ve done it before, do you no longer want me?
Nani feels his shoulders slump, curling into himself even further.
“Is it because we’re not drunk?” He whispers. The rejection shouldn’t sting that much, but it does. It’s forcing him to say stupid things, forcing Sky to give him an answer when Nani knows the response will only further hurt him. “I-It doesn’t have to mean anything, e-even if we’re sober.”
He regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth.
There’s a jagged inhale of air from behind him, Sky’s muscles tightening under his lap.
”Sorry.” Nani apologizes. Head bowed even lower. “This is stupid. Nani is being stupid.”
“You’re not stupid—“ Sky denies immediately… “Nani—”
But he’s already breaking out of Sky’s embrace and halfway across the room, shuffling back to the mess next to the hotel bed.
“You must be tired.” Nani mutters, eyes looking anywhere but at Sky. “Nani will finish unpacking on his own. Sky can go rest…”
He scurries out of Sky’s sight before Sky can make another move, trying to busy himself with the luggage. He’s hiding again. It’s his default solution.