Chapter Text
Dylan Zhou was born with a diamond spoon in his mouth, which, contrary to popular belief, was less about luxury and more about being perpetually watched. His life was not a lavish adventure; it was a portfolio that needed constant, quiet management. He was a fifth-generation heir, his family steeped in hedge funds and equity; trace back far enough, and he could probably find a duke in China before his ancestors immigrated south to Thailand, gold and coins in tow. It was a legacy of stuffiness, not passion, enforced by parents who only communicated through spreadsheets and brief, formal dinners where the most important discussion was the annual yield of their latest venture.
As a single child with perpetually busy parents, all Dylan ever actually craved was affection; strong, consistent, familiar. He didn't want a gift-wrapped car for his sixteenth birthday; he wanted someone to notice the dark circles under his eyes from staying up late reading, or ask about the scraped knee that took three weeks to heal. What he got instead was a love-deprived, stoic, introverted upbringing that left him with a sharp sense of self-preservation and, paradoxically, a streak of recklessness. He liked knowing the rules, perhaps because his entire life was governed by them, but he loved the idea of setting them on fire just to see the smoke.
So, when the most charming boy in all of grade ten, newly transferred for the school’s fencing program, extended a hand of friendship across the cafeteria, Dylan was convinced it was a sophisticated, high-budget prank. Junn Tangsakultham’s family were in the diamond business, yes, meaning Junn was just as insulated by wealth as Dylan was, but Junn himself seemed too real, too unpolished, too impossibly friendly. He looked like the sun had decided to manifest in a tailored school uniform. Dylan, the boy whose posture reflected a lifetime of disappointment, was certain a camera would pop out any second with a loud, “You’ve been pranked!” He kept his back to the wall, waiting for the punchline that never came.
Junn was the epitome of a golden child: rich, smart, and a prodigy. By grade ten, he already had his own fan club—the kind of group that would whisper and giggle when he passed, and that, Dylan reasoned, explained everything. Yet somehow, Junn chose to spend his lunchtime talking to the silent bookworm with a taste for alternative rock and a deep suspicion of happiness. The offered olive branch quickly grew into a friendship, which grew into what everyone called, by grade twelve, a platonic soulmate bond. It was a term Dylan secretly cherished and vehemently denied out loud. Junn was the only chaotic variable Dylan allowed into his meticulously ordered universe.
Dylan didn’t know exactly when he fell in love with Junn. It was less an explosion and more the slow, silent realisation that the water level was rising—he just did—and he hid it brilliantly. He filed the entire tidal wave of feeling away under ‘things that will ruin my carefully planned life’ and locked the cabinet with a double bolt. By grade twelve, Junn had asked out the prettiest girl in school, Pahn, and they became the school’s untouchable power couple, leaving Dylan in the wings, which was exactly where he told himself he preferred to be. It was safer back there, in the dark, where his heart couldn't be seen or touched.
Did Dylan follow Junn to the same university? Yes. Yes, he did. It was the only acceptable university for his major, a lie he repeated to himself until it almost sounded true. But university is a strange place; even the best friendships, once separated by departments and new interests, grow thin. Their differences became glaring. Dylan’s hair was dyed silver; he wore baggy jeans and hung out with Pepper, the only other dork he found friendly in the Economics department. He was deliberately making himself difficult to love. Junn, meanwhile, was stylish, always put together, a finance whiz who’d gone to his first Olympics at nineteen. They still met, they still hung out, but those meetings were scheduled, not spontaneous, and no one called them platonic soulmates anymore. The effortless connection had curdled into effort.
Then came the flirty side of Junn. He charmed everyone with a pretty face or a winning smile, boy or girl—it didn't matter. It was a natural reflex, like breathing or being excellent at fencing. Dylan considered confessing countless times, standing on the precipice, tired of being an observer in his own life. Tell him, before he moves on. But deep down, he couldn’t risk breaking the one fragile, five-year-old thread he was holding onto. He was terrified that if he admitted the truth, Junn wouldn't just say no, he would simply vanish.
Then came Po, Po Pawat Nuenganan. the law student, the university’s star swimmer, and the other Thai Olympian on the call list. Po was also Dylan’s maternal cousin. As a kid, Dylan had envied the attentive, caring set of parents Po had, the kind that showed up to every event and seemed genuinely interested in the answer to "How was your day?" Now, as an adult, he found himself envying Po for another, far more devastating reason entirely: Junn.
Junn stopped flirting with everyone else just to court Po. It was a 360 from what he was previously. Every interaction, every casual smile, every stupid, endearing joke was suddenly directed at the cousin. Po, however, seemed perfectly, maddeningly oblivious to Junn’s attempts, seeing him only as a friend and fellow athlete, and Junn took whatever Po would offer. The Saturday ramen and anime nights—their sacred high school ritual—were slowly but surely replaced by joint gym sessions and a genuine, deep connection forming between Junn and Po over their Olympic ambition. Dylan spent countless nights crying into his pillow at 2 a.m., watching his heart break from the sidelines, an unwanted audience member at a tragedy he wrote. It felt like his own private Atlantis: a beautiful, submerged city, drowning him in feelings he couldn’t share, sealed off beneath five years of denial.
It was their final year, and Dylan was done with the show. He decided he would suck it up, graduate, and leave. And so he did. He left Thailand five years ago to join London Business School, a place suitably far and grey enough to drown out the memory of Thai sunlight. There, he met Thame, the only other Thai student who understood his particular brand of miserable. Thame was infamous back home: a Thai-Russian heir, one of two heirs everyone in Thailand knew. Like Dylan, Thame carried the heavy weight of expectation, but unlike Dylan, he was actively trying to shed it. In two years, Thame became Dylan’s best—or closest—friend, the one person who finally understood him like no one ever had, not even Junn, not really.
Then everything ended again. Thame returned to his stable, established life in Thailand, leaving Dylan to the perpetually damp, isolating skies of London, navigating an even emptier city. Years later, Thame called, gushing with uncharacteristic sincerity about the boy he had fallen in love with. Dylan was genuinely happy for him. Thame, of all people, deserved that kind of stable, visible love.
But then, two years later, the heavy, embossed, gold-leaf wedding invitation arrived and with it, a shocking, gut-wrenching realisation. Po, the boy Thame had fallen in love with, was Po Pawat, Dylan’s cousin.
Attending the wedding meant returning to everything he had left behind five years ago: his life, his country, his small circle of friends and most painfully, the one person whose presence had once drowned him in feelings, his beautiful, impossible Atlantis: Junn Tangsakultham.